Last night, Melantha left work and trudged home, but home wasn't so very far now. She wore her big, long coat with the hoodie underneath, the hood up and her hands in a pair of thick mittens. Her breath steamed as she hiked up to the tinyhouse, took out her little key for the front door which is so seldom locked and likely did not have a lock for a very long time, and lets herself in. She disrobes, shedding layers and hanging them or laying them where they should go because there's not enough room for them to just throw things wherever all the time.
She is not alone here so seldom that she is unnerved or sad; Erich will probably come back later tonight after he has dinner with his friend. Charlotte will come back either later tonight or tomorrow morning, or whenever she isn't patrolling or doing Charlotteish things that are very Theurgely and bewildering. It's cold, so she starts a fire in the little fireplace. She goes into the bathroom, and then Melantha takes advantage of knowing they won't be back for a while and lets herself use up allllllmost all the hot water in the shower. It isn't very much, truthfully, but it is still more than she usually takes for herself.
She brushes her teeth while standing in her towel, the door open to let steam out and let heat in. She combs her hair. She changes into a set of flannel pajamas and a pair of socks, makes herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and curls up on the couch to read one of the books she got herself from the Evergreen Library. She is reading -- wait for it -- Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women. She eats an apple. She makes some hot tea. She looks out the window and sees no sign of either of her friends.
So, finally, Melantha turns off the fire. She turns off their lights. The heat from that fire fills the tightly-sealed space, drifting upward to her loft, where she curls up under her feather-filled comforter and only that, because it will be another week or two before the true cold snap sets in, chilling people to their bones at night.
Melantha is asleep in moments, even though she expects to be woken
any minute now.
ErichWell, technically she is awoken any minute now. It's just that the particular minute in which she wakes up is .... hours and hours hence. Close to dawn, actually. In summertime, which is when they got here, it would be dawn. But it's not summer anymore, as that feather comforter, that tiny oft-used fireplace, the new thick curtains on the tinywindows, and the entire weekend they spent putting some heavy duty insulation into the tinywalls and tinyroof all attest.
But we digress.
Melantha awakens. Maybe to the sound of a truck pulling up outside. Maybe to the footsteps on the porch just under her loft. Maybe to the quiet snick of a key in the lock. Maybe! To the smell of steak and lobster, which, although cooled now, still smells REALLY good.
But: if not to any of that, and if not to the muffled thuds and bumps of Erich feeling his way around in the dark, trying not to wake his packmate(s) while he puts the leftovers away, then certainly, certainly, she wakes to the quiet thud of the ladder against her loft and -- moments later -- an Erich climbing up, peering over the edge at her.
"Hi," he whispers. And then he asks just about the most inane question one can ask: "Are you asleep?"
MelanthaYou go to bed earlier when you aren't on the internet. Or at clubs. When your life goes, in general, from sunup to sundown. She sleeps easily and heavily, is asleep long before Erich and his friend sneak into the IMAX at DMNS, and she sleeps all through the night. Light is starting to peek up at the sky, turning it from black to soft, fading blue, and the tinyhouse has cooled but is not frigid inside. Charlotte isn't home yet. Erich isn't home yet,
until he is.
Out here, the sound of trucks isn't such a rarity, not since they moved the tinyhouse closer to Evergreen proper around the time of the floods. But it wakes her all the same, in the quiet that is so profound compared to the city. She breathes in, and she listens, and the car turns off. Footsteps come to the porch, the door opens and closes, and she smiles, rolling back over, peeking out through slits between her eyelids, through slits between her curtains to the little alcove she calls a bedroom.
She watches him down there, putting away food and tiptoeing around. She watches him walk over to the ladder and that's when she closes her eyes, not in a sudden squinch but the easy closing of a practiced liar. Erich climbs up, as dextrously as he can, as quietly, even though he's just intending on waking her up anyway. Whispering his inane question. Melantha, the only one of them who has had a full night's sleep, cannot help but grin, her eyes still closed.
"Yes," she whispers back.
Of course she's happy. She hasn't noticed any of the wounds he's still carrying yet.
ErichOh, her happiness is infectious. Or maybe he generates his own, seeing that Melantha! is not! asleep! His ears want to perk. His nonexistent tail wants to wag. He grins, big and bright, and then he pulls himself up another rung or two.
"Can I climb in?" he asks. "And like, maybe curl up in wolf-shape for a while? I have to shower first, but: I mean after. Can I join you?"
Oh, he's so eager. So eager and so pleased and so -- happy. To see her. And also: to have lived the night he just lived. To have the friends he has now, when not very long ago he thought he had nothing and no one.
MelanthaThree questions. Melantha is opening her eyes as he's asking the first one, and since he's close now she can see his jaw, and in the coming light of dawn she sees the mottled rainbow of colors across his skin. She doesn't take much mind of that; she was raised among garou. It will be gone in a moment, and it could be anything; maybe he just needed to hit something, and that something hit back. Maybe he ran into a tree that happened to be ambulatory and Wyrm-tainted. Why make a fuss?
The rest of him is thankfully hidden beneath the edge of her alcove, so she doesn't see. She smiles, and nods. "Yeah." Smiles again, softly and sleepily. "Yes, you may."
Because there's no 'of course'. Ever since the day -- some time ago, now -- that they talked about birth control methods and fought about a few other things and then they played in the rain, Melantha hasn't been slipping up into Erich's loft, and for a while immediately after it was pretty clear that he shouldn't climb up to hers, and then after that while it just seemed kinda normal that they weren't crawling into bed together even to snuggle, really.
So she's starting to wonder, even when he asks. And says wolf shape. And her smile is fading a tiny bit after she gives that happy little consent, asking -- still in a whisper, for some reason:
"You okay?"
Erich ReinhardtIt's been a long time since they've crawled into bed together. It's been a long time since either of them really felt comfortable doing such a thing. Or at the least: it's been a long time since Erich felt comfortable asking.
He doesn't hesitate tonight, though. There are any number of reasons why. Dinner. Battle. The exhilaration of survival. The ache of injury. The exultation of thinking for the first time ever,
if only peripherally and not-quite-consciously,
maybe i'm not a pawn. maybe i'm not a nobody. maybe avery's right. maybe i can be somebody.
Any number of reasons. More reasons than there are stars in the sky. Well; perhaps that's an exaggeration. Nevertheless, he climbs up to say hi. He asks. She answers, gives permission, and she is so sleepy and silver-sweet and dark and alive and she smells of primordial things, primal things, growing things, mist-shrouded antiquities and ageless truths. He wants to roll into bed with her right now.
He doesn't. She is looking at him with furrowed brow, concerned eyes. He shakes his head, smiling. "I'm fine," he whispers. It's not a lie: "I'm great. I really am. Don't worry about me. I'll be right back."
And then he slides down out of her view. She sees him, a shadow amongst shadows, making his way to the tiny bathroom where he clicks on a light
that instantly illuminates the bruises not only on his jaw but on his body as well -- great spiraling patches of them where the star-wyrm had gripped and flailed. Patches of blistering redness where he was burnt. And, when he pulls his clothes off and flings them haphazardly every which way to be picked up later (and it does have to be picked up. there is no room for mess in such a tinyhouse.): the ugly, ragged wound on his side, punctures and lacerations, a masticated mess of a bite.
He shuts the bathroom door. Not all the way; just a little. Then the shower runs.
Melantha ArgyrisThe truth is, Melantha hasn't felt comfortable asking, either. Even when she's wanted to. Even when she can't stand the sight of him because she wants him so much. Even when Charlotte isn't there, and if they wanted they could just make out like whatever until they just about lost their minds. Even when she's had a bout of strange and quiet sadness and she just wants to be held. Even when she has heard from one or both of them that it is very good she is not in the city, it isn't safe, even when some of the Not Safe things happening away from the mountains have infiltrated their conversation and Melantha has felt a deep stab of revulsion and fright. She hasn't felt comfortable asking, because something about some argument some time ago made her think that Erich just can't stand to be that close to her, not if she's going to touch him or kiss him or smell the way she smells, be what she is to him, and not if it's not going to Go Anywhere.
It makes her sad, and it makes her angry, and there's been an unpleasant spikiness between them at times because of it. Because, frankly, feeling wanted and then simultaneously rejected because you're wanted is enough to confuse anyone, even She Who Entangles Men. Even the Fenris-blooded grandson of Thunder.
Right now, though, this morning, he just seems happy and she is just happy to see him and it is a pretty and cool morning and she is warm and cozy and he is so eager to just bound into bed with her and it makes her feel so comforted, so relieved, so aching and sweet and eager in her own right.
Complicated and volatile, too, but she is always that. It is in her spirit. It is in her very blood to be changeable and wild and uncertain, and now it is even more in her spirit to be just a bit more explosive than she was anyway.
"'Kay," she whispers to him, and he drops down from the ladder. She tugs her blanket up a bit more, watching him, not feeling leery or gross about it but just watching him because he's back and he's here and he's her friend and she is happy to see him and they are going to cuddle and probably doze off a bit more and yay.
That bruise on his jaw didn't catch her off guard, but seeing that many of those bruises swirl and merge with burns and blisters makes her eyes widen a bit as the light clicks on. But it isn't until he pulls his clothes off and she sees the wound on his side, patchy and sticky with coagulated blood, that Erich hears a gasp from up above. And sure, she winced and had to visibly expend effort not to flinch when Charlotte threaded that needle through all their knuckles, but it was easy to pass that off as just normal mammalian anticipation of pain. This, too, this little gasp, looks like the sympathetic pain of pack, and if she were actually a wolf more than a girl she might be nosing up against him, giving little throaty whines and trying to lick it better.
For Melantha, she barely even hears herself gasp, and then she's glad she's already lying down. She squinches her eyes shut a second after that sudden inhale, breathing out slowly through her nose, then deeply in, willing down the rise of nausea and commanding the alcove not to tip and spin so unpleasantly. And as with every attempt to bind her to the pack, Melantha's will proves very strong, stronger than most human beings can fathom. She doesn't open her eyes again though until she hears the little shower close and the door mostly close. Then she opens her eyes again, thinking about Other Things, such as whether they have eggs in the tiny fridge and if maybe her breath smells bad. She rolls over and reaches for the little fake-candle in her beautiful bowl in her strange little shrine, turning it on. The glow fills the inner reflective surface, filling her alcove with a gently flickering light. There are other things in her shrine now, tiny things: a rock or three that she found and liked, an empty and washed-out bird's egg from spring, some dried flowers she picked, the stub from her first paycheck at the saloon, a bookmark from the library.
When the shower turns off again, she rolls back over, having sipped some water from the mason jar of it she keeps nearby, squinting down at Erich so that if he's still naked or half-naked she can catch it and maybe not freak out again at the sight of that mess his body has turned into.
Melantha Argyris[Willpower]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Erich ReinhardtErich hears that gasp. It's so quiet here in this tiny, sleepy town that he would literally be able to hear a pin drop. It gives him a second's pause, but he doesn't turn. He doesn't look up at her, or explain, or -- really even acknowledge. Not yet, anyway.
Some minutes pass. Melantha thinks of other things. Erich washes: gets the blood off, scrubs the wound and the blisters, wincing, until everything drains clean and healthy. When the shower turns off he's in there just a little bit longer, and when he comes out he has clean boxers on. He has a fresh t-shirt on. He has a towel wrapped around his middle under the shirt, soaking up whatever blood might seep. When the light turns out, she can't even see that anymore.
The ladder creaks softly as he climbs it. His head pops up over the side of her loft again. He looks at her in the darkness, folding his forearms along the edge, resting his chin atop. Smiles.
"It's really not as bad as it looks," he whispers. "And I really am feeling great. It was ... an awesome night.
"Can I still come up?"
Melantha ArgyrisA towel, since they don't have whole piles of medical tape and gauze lying around. They have Charlotte, who seems able to coax little spirits into gourds as easily as the piper lured children away from their parents. And Melantha doesn't exactly live a high-risk life; she goes to work and the library and she gets groceries and helps take care of the tinyhouse and her tiny pack. Her life is, right now, more comfortable than the commune and much safer than the luxury of sin she used to live in. It is a good rehabilitation for her. It is gentle. It is soft, and it allows her to be soft, too.
A bit. Like admitting to Erich, as his very-blonde, slightly-damp head pokes up again, smiling at her and reassuring her: "It's not that," and still whispering, because it is dawn and it feels sacred somehow, like they refuse to acknowledge that they're actually awake. She's scooting back towards the wall, which is his answer about whether or not he can come up. "I'm not... worried about you. I just really don't like blood."
Erich ReinhardtIn truth, a far subtler answer -- the faintest flinch, the slightest drawing-away -- would have sufficed. Erich isn't unaware of how long it's been. He isn't unaware of how rarely they've touched since that day in the mountains and the rain. He isn't unaware of what it meant when she smiled and welcomed him,
and he certainly isn't aware when that welcome becomes a closed door.
His crest falls. He looks a little puzzled, too, because: well. He is a Shadow Lord Ahroun, raised by Fenrir. One imagines he can hardly fathom what there is not to like about blood. Or -- well. That's a little unfair and prejudiced. More simply: he can't imagine Melantha, who is a bit of a badass in his eyes, being put off by something like that.
So -- there's a beat of pause. Then: "Oh." He slides back a little, hands on the side of the ladder. "Oh, well. Okay. Sorry I woke you up."
Melantha Argyris"Nonono," Melantha says, quickly, a little rushed, as his crest is falling and he's sinking away, slipping back down. She reaches out of her cocoon, even, grabbing his hand. Hers is so very warm. "I was making room for you. Come. Come up. I'm totally fine when I'm not looking at it." Her brow stitches. "Come up."
Erich Reinhardt" -- oh!" And now he feels dumb. Her hand catches his; his affixes, gripping tight. He grins: sheepish, happy. "Oh, I get it."
And so he climbs back up. And she tugs him, even though he doesn't really need the help. He climbs over the edge and they squish a bit and there's really not a whole lot of room up there but they make do. His feet aren't cold per se, but they're cooler than hers -- his skin is cooler than hers from evaporation, from not-being-under-a-feather-comforter, and when he slides under the covers with her he laughs a little, whispering a sorry as he brushes her.
Eventually they settle. He's on his back, closer to the ladder. He tucks a hand behind his head -- because he likes to, and also because if he doesn't his arm might flop off the edge. His chest expands; he sighs contentedly.
"I love you," he says, not so much like a confession as a nice, pleasant thought that makes him happy. "I brought some steak and lobster home for you and Charlotte. It's a gift from Avery. She's a Fostern Philodox Silver Fang, the one that Charlotte went back in time with? She's awesome."
Melantha ArgyrisMelantha just smiles at him, warmed, as he slips his hand from hers and works his way into that tiny alcove that she has no trouble at all fitting into. He has to be careful not to bump his head here and there, especially with the sloping roof, and he has to be careful not to fall off the edge if he rolls, but when she realizes he intends to get in the covers she smiles and lifts them up and he gets in, soaking in her warmth when usually it is -- or was -- the other way around.
They settle. She wiggles her feet away and then tucks them into a corner of blanket, and when he's on his back she comes closer again so she's not scrunched to the wall, wrapping her flannel-covered arm over his chest, above that towel that is soaking up any errant seepings of we'renotthinkingaboutthat, above the wound.
He loves her. He brought home steak and lobster and his friend is soooo awesome and Melantha just grins as he yammers. When there's a break: "I thought you were gonna go into wolf form for a while so you could heal," she says, but not questioningly. Not critically. Curiously.
Erich Reinhardt"Well it's gonna take a while," he explains. "I'll probably hang out in wolf or maybe near-man or ... something, for the next few days. Or until Charlotte gets sick of it and slaps a gourd on me, but I'd rather she not waste them like that. But yeah, it's not gonna make a difference whether I go wolf now or in an hour, y'know?"
She wraps her arm around his chest. He moves it just a little, matter-of-factly, so that it's not right on top of a raw area that she can't see, so it's not like it's her fault, and if she thinks it is he'll tell her otherwise. Adamantly. His own arm goes around her, then, and they
quite frankly
are cuddling in her little nook, near that little window where they can look out and see the sky ever-so-slowly go from black to dark blue.
"How was your night? Did Charlotte come back at all, or is she still off doing Stuff?"
Melantha Argyrisuntil Charlotte gets sick of it makes Melantha smile. "It's not wasted," she murmurs, when he's finished. "You never know when something could happen. And somethings that happen don't always wait til you've recovered from the last something."
Which is true, and smart, and hard to argue with. She kisses the inside of his bicep as he moves her arm a little, which doesn't seem to bother her, nor feel like a criticism of where she put her arm and ow and thanks a lot Melantha. She seems unconcerned. Pragmatic.
"I think she probably crashed at the caern or something," Melantha says. "She hasn't been back yet." She nuzzles back down again, closing her eyes. "Well, we had that late lunch... and then I went to work around 2, and I worrrked, and then I came back up here and took a shower and ate a sandwich and read a book and went to sleep." She smiles. "And then you came stomping in and woke me up."
Erich Reinhardt"Yeah but if something happened she could heal me THEN," he argues, because that is what they do. They argue. It used to infuriate him, way back in the day when they didn't like each other much. Now, if he had to be honest: he sort of loves it. "And then we wouldn't risk wasting a gourd on healing I could've done naturally anyway."
She smooches his bicep. He smiles at the ceiling. She tells him about his day, and his fingers sort of trail lazily, thoughtlessly over her back; the nape of her neck. Comb through her hair.
"You know, I don't think I've ever asked you: how's work? Do you get nice customers? Or mean ones. If you get mean ones, you should tell me. It'd make me so happy if I could beat up mean customers for you."
At least he's honest about who, really, would be most gratified by such gratuitous violence.
Melantha Argyris"What if she's not around then?" Melantha argues right back, because he jabs and she parries. He stomps his foot and she dances and he growls and she snarls back. And now they do it without as much growling or snarling or real jabbing. They argue like steel sharpening steel, because Melantha has a backbone and a mind and makes regular use of both. They argue like friends. Most of the time.
Sometimes they just argue, and they hurt.
"Then you're fighting wounded, and you've got that much less to give, and you really don't have an excuse since it's a greater risk for you to be wounded than it is for Charlotte to make talens." Her eyebrows lift: WILL YOU ADMIT YOU HAVE LOST?
Even if she just kissed his arm and nuzzled him and even if he's stroking up under her hair and petting her, drowsing with her beside him. He still has to admit that she has won, she's totally won, and she's right, so if Charlotte slaps a gourd on him he can just deal with it.
He asks about work. She shrugs. "Now that I have the hang of things it's easier. And it's winter but it isn't snowing yet, so it's not super busy. It'll get more intense when ski season really gets going, they say." She thinks a moment. "As it turns out, the stuff that kitchen and wait staff do to mean customers is waaaay worse than beating them up, especially since if you beat someone up over me, I'll probably get fired and I really don't want to go work at Baskin Robbins. At the saloon I get tips, and people there are pretty protective of me."
Why wouldn't they be? Look at her eyes, how big she can make them, how doelike, how soft her lips when they pout. Who wouldn't look at her quiet attempt at strength when she wants to cry and not ache to fix it?
"Most people aren't mean. I smile and I bring them drinks and all the bands are always 'whoo! tip your waitresses!' and stuff. Most of the time it's fun. Even when it's hard."
Erich Reinhardt"Okay fine," he concedes -- just a tiny bit, "Charlotte is allowed to fix me if she knows she won't be around for a while. But if she's gonna hang around me for the next three or four days, then she's not allowed to fix me."
Her coworkers -- and her customers, he suspects -- are pretty protective of her. She doesn't want to work at Baskin Robbins. He laughs softly, giving her a hug against his side.
"I'm pretty protective of you," he says, which isn't exactly something she doesn't know, but: he says it anyway. Because he is. Because it's truth. "But if you worked at Baskin Robbins I bet you'd get free ice cream. Which is pretty much the best thing ever.
"I'm not really trying to convince you to," he adds. "Why is it hard, though? 'Cause it's busy? Or 'cause there are mean people?"
Melantha Argyris"Charlotte is allowed to do what she wants," Melantha mutters, partly for the last word, partly to defend Charlotte, who is Totally Boss.
They settle on that. For now.
"I bet I wouldn't get free ice cream," she says, again arguing. "You know places like that, if you mess up someone's order -- like at a coffee shop, too -- you're not allowed to eat it, because they think employees will just screw up stuff on purpose to get free snacks. It's so ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much of that four-dollar-plus cost is pure profit? I mean even after overhead, just net gains. It's sick."
She shakes her head. "But yeah. The saloon's fine. And --"
he looks so worried. She smiles, her brow furrowed. "Oh, Erich. There are sometimes mean people," she says, without the tone of admission or confession, because what does she care if he knows reality? "And there are really great ones. And bands sometimes who are always nice to me. My coworkers are all cool. My boss is okay. But it's hard because... waiting tables and serving drinks and stuff is hard. I'm on my feet the whole time, I have to remember about three thousand things in my head and not screw any of it up at all. You have to time things and sometimes you have to get really assertive with your coworkers and kitchen without crossing the line, and you're carrying stuff and not spilling it and I definitely spilled stuff those first couple of weeks. But they have me doing nights and stuff now. It means they trust me. And when it's busy, I make more."
She's quiet a moment, and then -- maybe she's trying to derail him from worrying about whether people are mean to her and how he can't even beat those people up, which is just unfair or maybe she's just derailing herself a little:
"I can even get us a room," Melantha says softly. "And condoms."
Erich ReinhardtIt's not that Erich doesn't think Melantha can handle herself, even if she does get a mean customer. Seriously: he knows she can handle herself. This is, after all, the girl that's already retired from her first career as a secret agent of Gaia. He's pretty sure she can handle herself better than either he or Charlotte.
Still. He worries a little. He thinks of mean people and then he thinks of those cubs and Cliaths that kept sniffing her and then he wants to jump up and raise his hackles and show his teeth and growl.
He does listen to her, though. He listens, and he closes his eyes, and he imagines her working, busy busy busy, the live music and the buzz of conversation and the clink of glasses and the sizzle of pans and the chaotic rhythm of silverware on plates. He imagines the people, the nice customers whose lives are made a little happier because she graces them with her presence, who repay her with smiles and thank-yous and hefty tips. He imagines her coworkers and the busy cooks in the kitchen, the senior waitresses showing her the ropes. It's a nice picture. She is surrounded by smiling faces in it, and even though she works very hard, he doesn't pity her for it. Hard work isn't always a bad thing.
And then she mentions a room.
And condoms.
And his eyes flicker open, and he stares at the ceiling for a beat, all wide-eyed. Then he turns his head to look at her. A faint stitch between his eyebrows:
"You know I don't just want you for the sex, right? I mean, I know you know. But I just wanted to say that again."
Melantha ArgyrisErich's mental image is a whole lot better than Melantha's reality, but that's Erich. It comforts him to think of it, even if it's a lot more picturesque and pleasant than some of her harder moments. It helps him not worry, and that makes Melantha happy, just like snuggling with him and arguing about Charlotte healing him or not healing him and how he can handle it if she doesn't but Charlotte can do what she wants, Thor... all these things make her happy.
She has missed him. Missed being this close to him, and not just arguing on the couch or from across the tinyhouse but actually cuddling. She has missed the gentle, slow stroking of his fingertips along the back of her neck, which she finds hypnotic. She has missed the way he smells, and even if in the back of her mind she's wondering if he needs to be cleansed after Something bit him, he seems okay. He smells the way he should smell. He is normal Erich.
After he falls asleep and after Charlotte gets back, she'll ask Charlotte if maybe he needs to be cleansed, and Charlotte will sniff at him and inspect his big lumpy sleeping body and reassure her that no, he's okay, he is not infected or tainted, and Melantha will hug her.
His response, which is not him rolling over her and moaning as he kisses her, hand rucking up under her flannel bedshirt to cup her breast in hand as his cock grows instantly and almost painfully hard because he's young and strong and it's been something like seven months since they've had sex and a month and a half or so since they've even cuddled or kissed and she just said a room and condoms -- well, it surprises her. The fact that this is not his reaction, immediately, catches her off guard. She blinks.
"Um. ...Yeah?" she says, watching him like he's got a screw loose. Her brow is furrowed, much deeper than his. "Why would I think that?" she asks him, confused.
Erich Reinhardt"Well, you wouldn't." Sometimes Erich just doesn't make a lot of sense. Sometimes he seems to operate by some internal mechanism, some black-box way of thinking that bubbles to the surface as weird phenomena like:
not rolling her over. Not kissing her and pawing at her and just about going at it right here even though Charlotte could be home any minute -- and not because he doesn't want to be pushy, he doesn't want to be rude to Charlotte, he doesn't want to be a neanderthal (though all that is also true), but because --
he apparently feels the need to establish this truth that they both already know. Even though he knows she knows.
"I didn't think you would. But just. I dunno. I didn't want you to think I was just waiting around impatiently for you to unlock the front gates and open for business again or something. And I know you didn't think that! Just." He frowns; he's confused himself a bit. "Just: I hope you're not working really really hard just to make money just so we can have sex again. Argh, except I know that's not why -- I don't even know why I said that."
He falls silent. It's a grumpish sort of silence, though not directed at her. He thinks about it for a long time, brow beetled. Then he tries again:
"I think I'm just trying to say, you matter to me because you're my friend and because I love you and because I'm probably in love with you too. I just want you to know that."
Melantha ArgyrisMelantha listens, through all the false starts and inward-turned frustrations that Erich suffers through in those few moments. She knows sometimes he's just... animal. The sort to stick his muzzle into the thorn bush to sniff at the rabbit hiding among the roots even though some part of him knows that those thorns and prickles are going to scratch and hurt him something fierce. He goes face-first, rushing headlong into everything.
Which is good, in some ways. Charlotte isn't like that. Charlotte who drifts sometimes with clouds across moonlight. And Melantha certainly isn't like that: grounded, earthy, practical Melantha, who sometimes thinks too much, because as of yet she has not met any obstacle in this life that truly challenges her intellect's capacity. They are share some traits, but are stronger in their own than in others. Erich has instinct and raw physical strength, and though these things are not the whole sum of who he is, they are things that she loves about him.
So she smiles a little, and snuggles under his arm and against his (uninjured) side. "You're such a weirdo," she mutters softly, fondly, but there's an undercurrent to it of seriousness, of thoughts that haven't yet found expression yet.
Her hand smooths against his pectoral through his t-shirt, beneath the cradling feather comforter they're cuddled under. She can feel his heart beating steadily, deeply held within his chest.
They both know that hotel rooms and contraceptives are not the only reason -- nor even the main reason -- why Melantha got a job. They both know that he cares about her, and loves her, and he is not secretly skulking around, resenting her more and more every day for the abstinence borne out of necessity as well as respect for their friend. They both know that Erich isn't so dumb or cruel or douchey as to warp his perspective until he sees Melantha as withholding and him as victimized by being denied what he's entitled to. That would be gross. And that isn't him. There's never been the remotest reason in her mind to suspect any of those things of him. They both know that
she's his friend. He loves her. And he thinks he's probably in love with her, too.
Melantha lifts her head from his shoulder, leaning over him and kissing him softly on his cheek. "I know all that, too," she says softly. And after a moment, where she feels the same pull she did when they unzipped each other's sleeping bags in a frantic rush, she draws her head back to his arm. She doesn't want to be pushy, either. Especially when he's all hurt and stuff.
"I love you, too, Erich," she whispers, into his chest.
Erich ReinhardtErich closes his eyes as she kisses him on the cheek. Smiles, as she whispers what she does against the side of his chest, like she's hiding the words in his heart.
"We're all kinda weird," he says, and he sounds oddly ... happy about this. "That's why we're such a good pack. We're the oddballs, and maybe where we came from we didn't really belong, but ... we belong with each other. And now I can talk to you with my brain. We're like superheroes. We're like the X-men."
He opens his eyes again, then. Just for a little while. Thinks back to what she was talking about before, and --
"If you ever want to get a room in town," he whispers, "I found this one B'n'B that'll rent their rooms really cheap if you check in at the last minute and they still have a vacancy."
Melantha ArgyrisMelantha gives a little roll of her eyes. He describes them like they're from the Island of Misfit Toys. She doesn't want to agree that she didn't belong where she came from, because the thought of that still makes her want to howl, still makes her want to cry, because it was home for almost her entire life. The hardest thing she's done since she was a very, very little child was leave that place because she knew, deep down, that she was not made to live with them, there, that way. And right or not, it still hurts.
But this is before the eyeroll, and she just curls up a little tighter, her brow furrowing, because thinking about that doesn't really make her feel like a superhero and maybe it shows that she's saddened because she doesn't even launch into a tirade about how fucking disgusting the comic book industry is to women and how maybe it'd be nice if women in comic books had more than 1 body type and sometimes got to wear fucking pants for fuck's sake, can't he think of something better than the X-Men, ugh.
None of that. Which is probably a sign that she's distracted by something. Which she is: sadness.
Her brow slowly unfurrows though, if only because she's starting to get a better handle on these waves of depression as they come. She breathes in deep and sighs, holding him, thinking to herself that things are better here anyway, she's with Charlotte and Erich and she's happy and working and just like she said on that first camping trip: now she lives in a place where sometimes she can just pick a direction, start walking, and not see another human being for miles and miles and miles. And that's good. And it's better. And Erich is so damn happy and doesn't think dumb things about how maybe he's MEANT TO BE ALONE FOREVER *HOWL* and not in a pack, and it makes Melantha happy that he's not thinking dumb shit like that anymore.
She lifts her eyes to his, looking at him as he says that there's a bed and breakfast that isn't too expensive. If she ever wants to get a room in town.
'If'.
Melantha huffs a breath out. "If?" she tells him, but she means the first If he said, not the second. Which is obvious a moment later, because she also says: "Erich, I want you now. I'd take you there right now if you didn't have a huge hole in your torso."
Erich ReinhardtIn some sense, Erich must feel that wave of sadness washing over Melantha. That must be why he doesn't linger on the subject, even if the idea of being the X-Men sounds pretty fucking fantastic to him. He wonders which one he'd be. He hopes he's young Magneto. But he suspects he's actually, like. Sabertooth or something large and furry and dumb like that.
Anyway.
Those thoughts slip out of his mind when she just kinda ... lays it out on the table for him. She wants him now. If only he didn't have a hole in his torso! And Erich opens his eyes: he stares for a second. Then he turns his head and looks at her.
"I'm pretty sure Charlotte keeps some extra talens in a little bag near the medicine cabinet," he says.
Melantha ArgyrisAt that, her eyes just about fly out of her head. She resists -- barely -- the urge to start smacking him. Repeatedly.
"You want to argue for ten minutes about Charlotte healing you in case a monster attacks, but as soon as it's about sex, then -- hup! Off to the extra talens!"
She is aghast at his ridiculousness. And shaking her head at him. "You are the worst!"
Erich ReinhardtErich bursts into laughter. "Hup!" he repeats, infinitely amused. "Sex time! Hup!"
Melantha ArgyrisSo now she does smack him. Gently. Thwapping his chest with her palm, smirking, just appalled at him. "You're just repeating what I said because you don't have a good answer for how ridiculous you are."
Erich Reinhardt"You're right," Erich concedes, still laughing, "I really don't have a good answer. But it makes perfect sense to me. War: no big deal. Sex: TIME FOR HEALING."
He catches her hand, then. Presses her palm to his chest, his heartbeat against the center of her hand. Smiles.
"We can, though," he says, meaning it. "We can totally go get a room in town right now. If you want. I mean, if you're ready. Or we can stay here too. And I can sleep and heal up and maybe you'll even be nice and make me an omelette with lots of meat. Maybe."
Melantha Argyris"Phbbt," Melantha mutters. "If you can fight while you're all broken, you can fuck while you're all broken, and you can definitely make your own damn omelette when you're all broken."
She leans over and kisses him again, softer this time, even though last time was pretty soft. This time, however, it's on his lips. The corner of his mouth first, slipping gently to the full of his lips, pressing her own there for a lingering moment. She is so very good at this. She has had so much practice, though that practice is sometimes uncomfortable to think about. She kisses him differently, though. Skillful as it is, sweet as it is, there's no undercurrent of seduction, no hints of how easily she could wrap him around her finger.
Even though that's part of the point: no one is supposed to know they're being seduced, being wrapped, being manipulated. But he trusts her. She knows he does.
Her eyes open as she parts from that kiss, watching his eyes. "I don't want to use up one of Charlotte's talens just so you and I can go off alone and have sex," she says quietly, and she feels a little bad, because it's like well fighting is so much more important or something, or like onozCharlotte is becoming a running refrain for her, and she doesn't want him to think those things, but she can't control what he thinks. She lowers her head and nuzzles his jaw. "I really want you, and I really, really miss snuggling with you and making out and sleeping together."
Melantha sighs. "Why'd you have to go and let something punch a hole in your torso? Jesus."
Erich ReinhardtErich's eyes close to that kiss. He savors it, soft and slow, only turning his head to return it at the very end. Then she draws back. Then his eyes open.
He smiles. There's something sleepy and sweet and sleepily, sweetly wanting about it. Some flicker-flare of desire at the center of his eyes, a gentle burn that only barely illuminates the blue. She says she feels bad using up a talen just to have sex, and he raises his hand to her face.
Touches her cheek, strokes his thumb across the arch of it. Exhales, softly.
"It was worth it," he says quietly. His smile spreads; deepens. "It was pretty incredible. I think I was ... a billion light-years away. Avery-rhya saved some baby stars from this big black space-wyrm thing. And like. We talked about stuff. About that crap at the warmoot, but also about like... Garou, and the war, and ... me. Like. Me, being somebody.
"It was totally worth a hole in my side. Anyway, it'll heal. And then maybe later this week we can get a little room somewhere."
Melantha ArgyrisMelantha has no doubt, after that kiss, that Erich would rummage around until he found a spare talen, crush it on his side, and romp her into his truck in a heartbeat. But then, she had no doubt of it before that kiss, either. She feels how warm his hand is now on her cheek, and blinks slowly as he touches her, breathing quietly in the dim but ever-growing light. When they open again, a more twilit and shadowed blue than his, she is smiling softly at him. Again. Still?
The story he tells is not as glorious or enthralling or even as this-is-what-happened as a galliard might tell it, but it does sound -- as he says -- pretty incredible. A billion light years. Baby stars. A space-wyrm. But it's what he says after, about the conversations he had with this superior of his -- she knows what Rhya means -- that Melantha can really wrap her head around. She gets that damnable wrinkle between her brows, but it's not a pout or a stab of hurt this time. It's confusion, which does not erase so easily into fantasizing about getting their little room and finally getting naked together again for a while.
She backtracks. And let's get this straight, at least: Melantha knows what it means to feel like you're nobody, like you're a cog. It's what she's been struggling with for months now, since coming here, but she had it in reverse. She thought she was somebody. She thought she mattered. And then suddenly she saw that she was just another soldier, just another lost soul in the war, and there was no point for her if at the end of it all she she wasn't really a sister, wasn't as accepted as... well. As a packmate.
Like she is now.
"You don't think you're somebody?" she asks quietly, like thinking that -- thinking of him, feeling that -- hurts her somewhere deep, somewhere bruised, somewhere secret and hidden.
Erich ReinhardtThe ache in her voice makes him pull her closer. He clasps her against his side, which even now feels so solid and secure, all hard bone and hard muscle.
"Well, I know I'm somebody to you and Charlotte and stuff. But in the big picture? Like the grand scheme of things? I dunno, y'know? I don't think I've made enough of a difference to be ... somebody. And I'm okay with that.
"But now I'm thinking maybe I can. Maybe I can make enough of a difference. It's not like I want fame and fortune or something? It's really not that. But it'd be nice to have an impact."
Melantha ArgyrisProbably no one in Erich's life gets what he's saying right now more than Melantha does right now. There's that wrinkle in her brow, that ache in her voice, and one looks and one sounds like someone folding in their arm or bending forward to protect a wound.
Just like Melantha, right now, curves a little more around him from his side, tucking her leg over his leg, nodding when he says y'know? and when so much in his words sounds like a question and not a certainty. Yeah. She knows.
"You're definitely somebody to me," she tells him quietly, first. "And I think it's like what you told me a while ago. I went and looked it up, and it's thoughts become words, then words become actions, then actions become habits, habits become character, and your character is your destiny." She gives him a gentle squeeze; gentle, because he is injured, no matter how worth it that injury was. "I think you're already making a difference. Maybe for everyone it starts in just little things they think and say and do, day to day."
Erich ReinhardtThe topic is borderline painful. Borderline, because in a way they're both moving past the pain -- however slowly, however haltingly. Erich is gradually moving away from the rejection of his youth; the ensuing sense of inferiority that shadowed him from one seaboard to the other. And Melantha: well, in truth, Melantha is perhaps closer to her pain now than Erich is. Her rejection,
though not so overtly cruel,
was so very recent. So very -- cold and uncaring, the way that sisterhood she once thought her own, unbreakable, turned out merely to be a machine of which she was merely -- how did she put it?
A cog. A piece. Replaceable and replaced the moment she was no longer of use.
Ouch.
--
Erich laughs, though. Softly, and gratefully in a way. He's somebody to her. See: she even remembers what he said to her. He kisses her where he can reach her, his lips falling against her brow or her temple or her cheek.
"You're somebody to me, too. And ... you know you've made a difference, right? Not that I think you're done making a difference, past tense, over, but: you've already made a difference. Even if looking back right now you don't really feel it.
"You make a difference on me, too," softer this. "You change me for the better, a little bit every day."
Melantha ArgyrisTelling her to slow down, to take the rebuilding of her sense of self as it comes, to work on What She Does more than some great deep questions of who she is and where she fits in the grand scheme of things -- of course she remembers what he said to her. Because it helped. It has helped, is helping, immensely. And she tucks close as he kisses her, those full lips of his falling warmly and gently across her soft skin.
"I know," she says, because she does know she's somebody to him. Her eyes close, then open slowly as he goes on. There's a sad, but warm little smile on her face when he's done, her brow stitched.
"I really want to make fun of you for being a total sap right now, but thank you for saying that."
Erich Reinhardt"I am totally a total sap," Erich agrees, not the least bit threatened by the inglorious title. Not coming from Melantha, anyway. Who loves him. Which makes just about everything in the world Right And Good. "I am a badass berserker with a sweet sappy center. And I live in a tinyhouse with my tinypack and things are just,"
he breaks for a yawn here,
"yay and awesome and perfect."
He rolls on his side, then. Wraps his arms around Melantha, throws a leg over hers. Snuggles up close, closing his eyes, tugging her warm comforter up over their shoulders.
"Are you going to sleep a little more?" he wants to now. "You should. We should just zonk here for a while. When do you go to work?"
Melantha Argyris"You're a Tootsie Roll pop," she says, sighing it, closing her eyes as she curls with him. He glomps all over her, which makes her groan, pushing at him like she does, because he's always so glomp-y and hold-y and then she gets all hot and can't breathe and so on.
"Yeah," Melantha drowses. "Nap, at least," even though she's not opening her eyes. "I have Monday off."
Erich ReinhardtPushed at, Erich loosens his arms just a little bit. Melantha gets some air. Erich smiles, eyes closed. They both have their eyes closed now, even though dawn is creeping closer outside, little by little. Erich's hand strokes lazily, sleepily over Melantha's back, down and up again. Settles.
"I don't even know what day it is," he says. He sounds happy about this, too. "Living like this ... I mean, in a tinyhouse with you and Charlotte, up in a little town like this? It's like summer vacation as a kid. I lose track, and it's great."
He steals just a little closer again. Just a little. Doesn't glomp-hug-hold-squeeze: but does come close enough that the tips of their noses nearly touch. Takes a deep breath, lets it out.
And then, the first, very quiet verbal acknowledgment of that little break they took:
"I'm glad we're zonking together again. I missed this."
Melantha ArgyrisMelantha, gently and softly and snuggling-ly, wiggles her arm up between them and crosses his lips with her fingertips. "You are noisy," she whispers, and she can't help but smile a little as she says it, even with her eyes closed.
It's the first time they've slept together in a long, long time. It's the first time they've slept together when she could just let herself rest, and relax, and feel... calm like this. Safe and warm, comforted, without wanting to roll him over and pull his clothes off. She wonders if she likes this, even more than having sex with him. She decides it doesn't matter because they're totally different feelings. She thinks she should at least for-real answer him and say she missed it, too, and also correct him and tell him that 'this', what they're doing right now, isn't even really the same as what they were doing occasionally when she could barely keep her hands and mouth off of him. She wants to, but
she
falls asleep.
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