wake.

wake

He is sleeping. He is sleeping in a room. He is sleeping in a nascent, idealized memory-of-a-room, an idea-of-things. Clapboard, windowglazing. Sun washing through trim lace curtains. The threadbare quilt beneath his fingertips, tangled in the curve of a fist. Morning always comes like this, a gullet full of light. His face slack against the pillow. Never any case, just the ticking that has the peculiar and intermediate taste of dust suspended in sunlight.

The fire’s died down. There’s a chill in the air. His first and second and third instincts are to burrow back into the cocoon of warmth trapped between mattress and quilt, but like clockwork -

- like clockwork he can hear the front door swinging open. Slamming closed after, the slap of the warped frame of the screen against the solid wood of the jam. It is morning. It is always morning.

--

The furnishings are solid and solidly plain. Hand-hewn, by clever though not fine hands. Only the ornate stand in the corner - rich, mahoghany, intricately carved - in anything more than serviceable. Dust has settled over everything; even his skin. He can taste it in the back of his mouth, on his tongue. The air is parched and dry. Everything is thirsty.

Everyone is thirsty.

Solid footsteps on solid stairs, with a beat as rapid as a rabbit's heart headed toward his room. He knows they're coming. He knows before the door swings open the face he'll see. The boy with a quick-laced grin and cheeks red from the cold -

"Ma says get up!"

- who launches himself toward the bed and the threadbare comforter and the wash of light through the half-remembered lace curtain, toward the middle of that room.

Erich

Wakefulness, sudden-slow, the way it always is on these brilliant mornings when summer's warmth is just beginning to shade into autumn. Morning is when you feel that bite in the air most. That nip, that snip, that everpresent reminder that nothing, nothing, nothing is forever,

not even those summer days stretching into summer nights, the cicadas in the trees, the stars overhead.

He is awakening. He opens his eyes and the room is so familiar and warm and it's his room, isn't it, and this is his life and that is his -- what? brother? (he doesn't have a brother.) such things are loose and liquid in the mind right now, hard to hold. He rolls onto his back and then the boy is barreling into his chest, knocking a breath loose from his ribs. Ma says get up.

"Too early," Erich mumbles. It is too early. Look how bright the light is.

wake

Too early, Erich says.

And Erich wakes up, and he's saying those words aloud and feeling the solid thud of the boy against his chest. The scent of hay in the air, the bite of something that is not winter and is perhaps spring. Or autumn; when the earth wakes, or it goes to sleep.

--

Then, again.

--

Then, again.

--

Then,

He is sleeping. He is sleeping in a room. He is sleeping in a nascent, idealized memory-of-a-room, an idea-of-things. Clapboard, windowglazing. Sun washing through trim lace curtains. The threadbare quilt beneath his fingertips, tangled in the curve of a fist. Morning always comes like this, a gullet full of light. His face slack against the pillow. Never any case, just the ticking that has the peculiar and intermediate taste of dust suspended in sunlight -

all of it. All of it.

He doesn't have a brother. He has this brother, a boy with blue eyes and blond hair who smells of hay and woodsmoke, those solid scents wrapped up into his hair, still damp from where someone tried to smooth down a cowlick.

"Lazybones."

- returns the boy, with a grin, sitting back on his haunches, ready to wrestle or something, grinning ear to ear.

"Ma says you're always sleepin'. Me, I've been up for hours. Hours and hours. You don't hurry [ ]" the name slews strange; goes warped behind his ears, somehow, " - 'll eat up all the biscuits and all you'll get is porridge."

Erich

[int+enig! IS THIS REAL LIFE.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Erich

Time skips. Backwards, like a needle over a scratched record. He's sleeping again and it is a golden, gold-sifted room and it is morning, it is always morning, it is always the cusp of a season,

spring or fall,

beginnings or endings or beginning again,

and he is waking up because his brother-who-does-not-exist is pouncing onto him and telling him --

"I can't eat porridge," Erich says automatically. "I can't eat biscuits either. I can maybe try the gravy if there's a ton of sausage in it. Otherwise I'm gonna have to eat eggs or ... "

Like Ariadne's thread, that. Shining and golden in the murk. Murk doesn't have to be dark, see, it just means you can't see clearly. He's in a sort of murk here: it's a dream-murk because he can't see clearly through it, can't see the truth, but there's the thread and he picks it up: I can't eat biscuits and porridge, and he follows it backbackback up winding staircases and endless halls, up through the layers of his unconscious and his subconscious and his almost-conscious to remember:

hey, yeah. He can't eat anything but meat because he is a werewolf, and he is a werewolf who no longer has a home like this, he has a different home now, he has sisters, he has spirit-sisters and he has one blood-sister and nowhere does he have any brothers so, so,

so this is not real life. No. Erich sits up, he scrubs his face with his hands. "You're not my brother," he says to the boy, which is sort of a mean thing to say except well it's his dream so that's really him, right? "Are you me?"

wake

This is what he says now. This is what he will always say.

You're not my brother - - and the boy, who does resemble him in the way that all blonde-haired and blue-eyed boys must resemble Erich, when they are still young; when they are still open-featured and unfinished - sits sharply back as if he has been backhanded. Swallows hard and frowns at Erich, something

troubled

etched between his brows. As if he were momentarily unsure of where he is. As if he himself were on the verge of waking. As if there were, beyond and behind the curtains of the room, some other room, some greater room, knife edged and even more real than the room they inhabit, but -

like a dog emerging from some body of water the boy shakes it off.

"I'm not you. Jerk."

He's leaning back, unwinding his legs, jumping down to the sunstained floor, a rag-rug the only protection for bare feet against the cold. And Erich knows - somehow knows, with a deep and abiding conviction - that is is often very cold here.

"You can eat biscuits. You eat them all the time. I don't care. I hope [name-slew] gets them all." Mumbling as he backs away and grabs a hat out of the back pocket of his overalls and turns to run back the way he came."

For all that bravado, beneath it the boy still looks like he has something caught in his throat.

Like a knife, perhaps.

Something bladed.

Erich

[what is up with boyo!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

wake

The boy's real. Erich can feel the warmth of his skin and smell the sourness of his morning breath; can see the bits of sleep in the inner corners of his eyes. The boy's real; Erich can see his own reflection in the surfaces of the boy's irises, can see the brief and sharp contraction of the pupils as the boy absorbs Erich's question and blinks and reels. Erich does not believe that the boy is evil, nor does he seem to be a piece of Erich's mind. That flash was like the flash of another dreamer, briefly brought to consciousness that this may be a dream. A sort of subliminal panick outlined in the flash of light across his eyes.

Erich

Something there -- some shred, some grass-leaf, some tiny edge of awareness. Like a sleep awakening himself, the boy, though: that's the thing, isn't it? Erich isn't really awake. Neither of them are awake.

Erich's words are caught in his throat. Like a knife, yes. Something bladed. Or just something beating. Like his heart. Yes, his heart, a great thud of WHOA and HEY I THINK I GET IT and

just past that, doubt, doubt, doubt washing over him. He's not smart like Charlotte or Melantha, not intuitive like them, maybe he's wrong. They boy is running off: Erich calls after him, suddenly feeling-bad, "Uh, tell Ma I'll be down in a sec, okay?"

Only, when the boy is gone, Erich doesn't get up and go downstairs. He gets up: he looks for clothes, or maybe he can just imagine clothes onto his body, and if so then god don't let this be the sort of dream where he gets to school and then realizes he's not wearing pants, but anyway the point is: he gets clothes on somehow and then he goes to the window and pushes it open and looks out and --

if he can, climbs out, drops down, starts jogging in ... some direction, any direction. Starts looking for Melantha, or Charlotte, or even Tamsin.

wake

- and then,

Erich wakes up.

sleep.

wake

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Some mornings you wake with a dream on your tongue. The memory of it thick, see?

but just beyond remembering.

He wakes with lightning on his tongue, forked and bright. All day. All day, the salt and mercury of it linger in his mouth. Something’s coming.

Or

perhaps

something’s here.

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Erich

He is sleeping. He is sleeping in a room. He is sleeping in a nascent, idealized memory-of-a-room, an idea-of-things. Clapboard, windowglazing. Sun washing through trim lace curtains. The threadbare quilt beneath his –

Erich wakes. He wakes, in his own bed. He wakes in his own home. He wakes.

eleusis

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Erich

He is sleeping. He is sleeping in a room. He is sleeping in a nascent, idealized memory-of-a-room, an idea-of-things. Clapboard, windowglazing. Sun washing through trim lace curtains. The threadbare quilt beneath his fingertips, tangled in the curve of a fist. Morning always comes like this, a gullet full of light. His face slack against the pillow. Never any case, just the ticking that has the peculiar and intermediate taste of dust suspended in sunlight.

The fire’s died down. There’s a chill in the air. His first and second and third instincts are to burrow back into the cocoon of warmth trapped between mattress and quilt, but like clockwork -

He rolls over in his own bed.

He finds himself listening for a familiar voice that he has never heard before all day long.

you had to let them get very, very close.

Melantha

Night comes, and Melantha is not home from work yet. Maybe Erich and Charlotte got ice cream after sailing her boat on the lake in City Park as frigid winds disrupted a day that would have otherwise been just pleasantly crisp. Maybe he and Charlotte watched Netflix in the parking lot of someplace or another. But they know Melantha doesn't always want them waiting for her after work, doesn't want it to be an obligation, doesn't want them to wait or worry if work goes long, so eventually, Charlotte and Erich went back to the tinyhouse, and Charlotte turned around three circles or whatever is is Theurges do before they bed down, and maybe Erich went to sleep, too.

But his phone does chime, or buzz, and Melantha is saying to him, when Melantha could very well just reach out to touch his mind instead:

Wanna go pretend-camping? I parked the Jeep a little ways outside of town.

Followed by another text, just in case, to make sure he understands:

Just you and me this time, okay?

Erich

Erich is fond of sleep. Honestly, he just sleeps all the time. When he's not fighting or eating or taking a shower or watching a movie or bugging Charlotte about something or bugging Melantha about something else -- when he's feeling safe and warm and loved and happy and quiet he'll sometimes

just

climb up into his loft and sleep. Sometimes he doesn't even climb up there. There have been days when Melantha came home to find him zonked out in the middle of the floor, wolf-shaped, his paws twitching as he dreams.

So, yes. They sailed a tinyboat and Charlotte chased ducks with it and Erich talked about his feelings and then he felt better and they stopped for ice cream on the way home and now, now he is in his loft, in his bed, sleeping all the sleeps, and

bzzt! says his phone to his pillow. Erich blinks awake. He fumbles his phone over and looks at it and she is asking him if he wants to go pretend-camping and instantly his ears perk. He climbs to the edge of his loft and lowers himself quietly, quietly down, not wanting to wake Charlotte.

He doesn't take the truck. That would be kind of rude, abandoning Charlotte like that, possibly waking her with the roar of an engine departing. He slips out the front door and locks it safe and sound, then jumps off the porch and hits the ground on all fours.

So it is that Melantha, sitting her Jeep, sees not Erich but Erich-wolf appearing out of the murk. He is standing in the shadow of the trees and the underbrush, his ears up and his eyes bright, looking this way and that inquisitively. Spotting her, his tail starts to wag. He gives a soft little bark.

Melantha

Erich has to follow his nose to find Melantha. Well: nose and spirit. He feels the pull of her, their bonds of pack, her purity of blood, the scent of kinfolk, and follows that sensation to a secluded spot well outside of town, off the road, past some trees. The Jeep is there, and it's idling, and that us where he gives that muffled bark to let her know he's arrived.

Melantha can sense him, too. Not by scent, not by blood, but she can feel his presence closer, nearer, and she's smiling. She rolls the window down and sees him there, a tail-wagging grey wolf. She grins at him, beckoning to him. The window goes up. The car gets turned off, and the glade goes quiet. Inside he can see her though the mostly-untinted windows, climbing into the back, opening the back door for him, regardless of what shape he's in.

The back seat is folded down, the back open. It's a lot bigger than the Mustang. There's two sleeping bags back there, both unzipped and open to make a bed and a comforter, of a sort. He'll discover soon that there's a foam pad under one of them to make it an even softer bed. There are two small pillows -- including the 3.99 one from Ikea. Well. They're both from Ikea. They both cost roughly the same amount. There's a bag of chips and also a bag from the restaurant, its contents still (mostly) warm, smelling of beef. There's a couple of cold sodas in sweating cans.

She's kneeling in the middle of all that, smiling at him. Just wearing her work clothes, but her hair is down. Her apron is in the passenger seat up front. Her sneakers are kicked off. She brushed her teeth, freshened up a bit so she doesn't smell quite like she's been working in a bar all night.

Erich

Instantly Erich-wolf is wagging his tail that much harder and faster at the sight of Melantha waving to him. He bounds across the remaining distance, joyous, hesitating only as she opens the back door because he sees the bedrolls, sees the pillows, thinks of his muddy paws and does not want to make everything dirty.The hesitation is only momentary, though. Then, with a push of his hindquarters and a tuck of his forepaws, he leaps -- sails in through the open door and snapshifts in midair, a burst of rage, a flash of change; twists so effortlessly and athletically in midair that his strength takes on a grace of its own. The car rocks on its springs as Erich lands on his back amidst sleeping bags and $7.98's worth of Ikea pillows, looking justifiably proud of his acrobatics."Hey," he says, and sits up, and pulls the back door shut. Now it really is quiet in the car, no music, no rumble of engine. "Charlotte's asleep and I didn't want her to wake up confused hearing the truck take off, so I ran."

He pauses. There's a scent in the air enticing him, and for once it's not (just) that wild-raw-night-black smell of Melantha's ancestry and purity. It's BEEF and it smells like it's still warm and even though he ate before he went to bed he is suddenly ravenous again.

"Did you bring that from the bar? Oh man. What is it? It smells so good."

Melantha

What Erich does to get into the Jeep without getting muddy paws all over everything is rather surprising, and kind of impressive. Melantha sees him out there, still in a wolf's shape, wagging furiously and contemplating in the darkness how to best get up there, and then she sees the prophecy of motion that comes before that leap. She scoots quickly out of the way, the sleeping bag on the top sliding around and shifting under her, then getting pushed quite a bit out of the way when Erich thumps down again as a boy. The Jeep bounces as he lands, looking terribly pleased with himself.

Sitting up, he has to lower his head a bit, hunch a bit, to fit. He does it naturally, most likely, given all that time in the Mustang, living out of it as he did. It's very dark inside. There's something in the air -- the lingering warmth from the heater, the smell of food, the quiet out here that in many ways seems such a part of Melantha herself, the silence of nature that is just as much a part of Melantha as the wildness, the savagery. There's her scent, ancient as their race, fragrant as spring, as dark and bittersweet as turned earth, signaling both the sowing of crops and the reaping of life.

And meat, of course.

But there is something else, too, in the slight tremor of nervousness in her smile, in the sensation of something aching and wanting and and longing in her, a desire that is somehow threaded through with sorrow, or something like it.

"Good," she says quietly. "I wouldn't want her to be sad. I mean, I know she understands that you and I need time alone together. But still."

Melantha shifts on the top sleeping bag, reaching for the bag from the store and handing it over to him. "I got a few burgers before we shut down the kitchen and kept them under the warmer til we had to clean that, too. I'm sorry, they aren't really fresh and won't be that great. I just thought you might be hungry."

Erich

He doesn't quite understand what he senses in her. That's sadly rather often the case with Erich. It's not that he's a completely insensate clod, or that he doesn't care. Just: sometimes he doesn't quite know what he's looking at. It's like reading Spanish. The letters are the same, but the words don't click.

Still. Whatever he sees makes him scoot over to her. He takes the bag, but then he ends up sitting next to her, his skin warm despite the short sleeves of his very very very well-loved and oft-worn Throwed Rolls shirt.

"Don't be sorry," he says, and leans over to kiss her temple. "I don't care if they're ice cold and halfway to rotting. It's not like I'll get sick from it. I'm just happy you thought of me. And stuff." He pulls the bag open and there are burgers in there, plural, and he pulls one out and gives it to her. The second one he eats himself, though not without first methodically stripping it of bun, pickle, lettuce and tomato.

"Yummm," he says, happy. "This is really good."

Melantha

Melantha has played a Maria once, she should have known Spanish, but other than a few choice phrases to rattle off she never learned. Italian she learned; Italian was often spoken among the Furies anyway. Greek, she's known since she was a baby. Both her parents were Greek. She spoke it among Damaris and the others of her tribe often enough. She doesn't speak anything but English with Erich and Charlotte, because they don't speak anything but English.

Erich scoots over, arm to arm, and she leans into that touch, leans into him. He's taken the bag and she's given it over and he's telling her all the nice parts. She shakes her head when he tries to hand her a burger, saying not hungry. She watches him strip it down to meat, devour it, delighted by it. Melantha just lays her head on his shoulder, leaning into his body, sighing as her eyes close.

Erich

Well, that's all right. He devours the burger he offered her, too -- the meat of it, anyway -- leaving maybe one or two more in the bag. He finds the sodas. He pops one open, guzzles, leans waaay forward to put it in one of the cupholders. Then, fed and watered and content, he leans back against whatever pile-of-soft-things they might have to lean against and wraps his arm around her shoulders.

She seems so tired. He doesn't blame her, of course: she's been working all day. But she closes her eyes and she's not hungry and this makes some animal part of him howl a little. He kisses her temple again; nuzzles here where her hair begins to grow, thick and black.

"Tired?" he asks her, quiet.

Melantha

It was a gesture, bringing the burgers and soda. She got the chips for herself and one of the sodas for herself but right now her stomach is in knots; she couldn't eat even if she was hungry, and she's really not. She's glad that it makes him so happy, though: the burgers, still at least a tiny bit warm, the sodas, still sort of cold. How as soon as he smelled it he got hungry and now he's satisfied-ish and that makes her feel glad.

He leans back into the pillows, and she breathes in as he wraps his arm around her. Her own arm slides across his chest, encircling him. Close. He turns his face to her hair and she, frankly, almost shivers. She restrains it. Her hand flexes, though.

"Not really," she says back, just as quiet.

Erich

Not satisfied-ish but well and truly satisfied by that humble little meal, Erich wraps his arm a little tighter around Melantha. She is hugging him back, so close and tight, and she was leaning into him like she was tired but then she says she's not so maybe it's something else, and she's all quiet, and --

"Is everything okay?" he asks her. Because maybe something's wrong and maybe it's something he can help fix. Like by throwing cinderblocks.

Melantha

She sighs. It's very quiet. "I just really want you," she whispers. "My skin aches."

Erich

Okay. So that makes him zero for two: wrong on the tiredness, wrong on the something-wrong. That's okay, though. It's not like he's keeping score. Instead he's keeping still: he's very very still and he's just sort of sitting there like a

completely insensate clod

and then he sort of clears his throat and turns to her and just -- very lightly, very gently, very tenderly kisses her on the mouth. It goes on for a little bit. Not very long. Then he bumps his brow to hers.

"Wanna get under the covers?" he whispers.

Melantha

Erich goes stock-still. Melantha opens her eyes, because the relaxed stillness of a moment ago is one thing, but the way he freezes makes her open her eyes, lifting her head a little but not letting go of him. He turns to her, and she can almost feel him vibrating with a sudden energy, a shift, an awareness that wasn't there before. Her nerves are pulled as tight as piano wire already, and they shiver from the increased tension inside of her, jangling and singing at once.

He kisses her and all the blood rushes out of her head. She does shudder this time, even as tender as the kiss is, breathing in as it goes on. Her eyes look glassy when he stops, bumping his brow to hers.

He asks if she wants to get under the covers and she is starting to feel the cold from outside sapping the heat of the Jeep but something about that idea, the thought of getting under the covers, makes her heart beat very quickly all of a sudden. Not the steady, transcendant thudding of arousal but something faster, lighter, more erratic, like the frantic beating of a rabbit's heart. She breathes in shallowly and gives a little shake of her head, a little on the quick side, without really thinking about it.

Erich

Something about that puts a tender little smile on Erich's face. "Well," he whispers, "let's at least wrap one of the covers around us, then. It's gonna get pretty cold."

Melantha

Melantha steadies her breath by choice, slowing it down, breathing in, then out. She gives a small pair of nods. "Okay," she says quietly. Her body clenches, aches; she feels a bit possessed.

Erich

So that's what they do. Erich grabs the top-sleeping bag and there's quite a bit of rustling and flapping, but eventually he gets it settled around them. Tucked around them, really, his arm encircling her shoulders again as they lean back again... a backpack stuffed with a sweatshirt, maybe. Padded with a pillow. And propped against the sloping sidewall of the Jeep.

"Don't be nervous," he whispers. "I know it kinda feels like there's an elephant in the Jeep now," ha, witty, " 'cause we're here and alone and we're both like unf but ... we don't have to make a big deal out of it. We can just chill and snuggle under covers and maybe watch some Netflix. Nothing has to happen."

Melantha

She huffs a laugh. He tells her not to feel nervous but she does anyway. She feels freaked out, too. And ashamed, suddenly, which doesn't look adorable in her eyes but a bit miserable. He tells her nothing has to happen and she wishes he didn't need to say that, she wishes it didn't help... but it does.

Melantha is still tucked in close to him. She presses her face against his upper arm, feeling suddenly on the verge of tears.

"We don't have the laptop," she reminds him, nevermind the fact that nobody's wifi in touch can reach out here. It's not like her voice conceals much of the conflict in her. She hugs him instead, tighter.

Erich

"Yeah but I've got a phone," he counters, play-arguing, because they are Melantha and Erich and that is what they do. "Ellie sent me a new one for Christmas, remember? It's an Android and it has Netflix now. The screen is tiny but if you hold it really close to your face it feels big."

It's not that he's unaware of the conflict in her. Or the nervousness, or the freaked-out-ness, or the shame. It's the shame that aches most in him. And it's because she's ashamed that he's just sort of ... pretending like he doesn't notice. And talking about netflix. And movies. And phones.

"Here," he says, digging it out of his back pocket and handing it to Melantha. "You can pick something."

Melantha

If you hold the screen really close to your face it feels big. Melantha wants to laugh but can't. She herself just uses some pay-by-the-month plan, so she got literally the cheapest phone they had available. It can text and it can call and there's some snake game on it but not much else. She thinks he's being silly about the phone; Erich acts like a big kid sometimes but he's not dumb. Still... she doesn't think he can see how freaked out she is. Erich's skill at pretending something isn't wrong is too well-honed.

He starts digging around for his phone to give it to her and she sighs. "Erich, I don't... wanna watch Netflix. I want to be with you." She's quiet for a second. "I want to be close to you and alone with you and talk and... I want to have sex with you," she finishes, in a tiny voice again. "That's why I wanted you to come out here and set all this up. It's just that everything between here and there freaks me out."

Erich

There's that little smile again; tiny, tender. He bumps his brow to her temple this time, a little headbump of quiet adoration.

"I know, Melantha," he says softly. "I figured all that out. I did. But I also figured ... well, that one time we got a hotel just for sex it was so weird and uncomfortable. But then that time up on the 43rd floor, neither of us was planning for it. It just happened. And it was natural and awesome and neither of us was weirded out or uncomfortable.

"So that's why I'm like... let's just get under the covers and snuggle and watch Netflix. And if something's gonna happen, it'll happen. Or if it doesn't and we fall asleep and zonk til dawn, that's cool too. It doesn't have to be stressful or like... a task. We can just see where the flow takes us."

Melantha

She squinches her forehead, a wince that lasts.

"Erich, it's not... just gonna happen again. It's been months. It's not just gonna happen like that. Not enough. Maybe not at all until I have a tinyhouse of my own." She sighs. "I miss you. I live with you and I still miss you all the time.

"And I'm not freaked out because it's a chore or something," she adds. "Just... I don't like this. I don't like how I can barely remember what it feels like because it's always so long. I don't like feeling so tense any time we're alone together. Erich..."

Melantha winces again, embarrassed, maybe ashamed, or just raw. "I need to be with you," she whispers, looking down at some vague point on his shirt. "I don't feel as close to you. I don't know if we had enough time to fall in love in D.C. last year. I don't think I'm the same person I was there, either." She looks up at his face again. "Erich, every time I think about sex with you, just... actually having sex, thinking about you and I like that, I feel like I'm going to die if I don't get it. But everything that comes before that, getting under the covers and kissing and touching and undressing, it just freaks me out for some reason."

Erich

Just to even the playing field a little, Erich's a little embarrassed now too. A little red in the cheeks from talking about sex so frankly. She looks at his shirt and he kinda looks out the window, ears warm. She looks back at him and he meets her eyes, clear-eyed but a little bashful, lacing his fingers together.

"Well," he says, "is there anything we could do that'd make you feel less-freaked-out?"

Melantha

Melantha shrugs. It's a tight little thing, shifting the sleeping back around her, even though it's mostly hanging from Erich's shoulders. "I don't know," she admits softly.

And she is silent for a moment after that, before quietly asking him, looking up at him:

"I know this sounds sort of cliche, but... could you talk to me about how you feel? Cuz I said all that and I know you just want to help, but... I really don't have any idea how you feel about all this, other than trying really hard not to make me feel pressured." A beat. "Which still isn't really telling me how you feel or what you want."

Erich

"I wanna get under the covers with you," Erich says, which maybe isn't quite exactly what Melantha meant. It's what comes instantly to mind, though, and coming instantly to mind so often means popping instantly out of his mouth to Erich. "I wanna strip buck naked and cuddle under the covers and it's okay if nothing happens. I just wanna be close.

"I love you. I totally miss you. You know that, right? I mean not miss you-miss you the way Charlotte and I both missed you while you were half a country away. I mean: I miss us and I miss, like, getting a less-than-three on my phone and driving over and then clothes would just fly off and we'd land in bed laughing. I miss being able to do that, like that kind of spontaneity and also just having a place we could Melantha

Something about what she wants has made Erich very, very turned on -- Melantha can sense that quite clearly. She can feel it vibrating off of him a bit, especially when he starts nuzzling her, seeking contact like that while she finishes her whispered confessions. They lean into each other, and he kisses her in a spot that makes her breath catch in her throat. She moves her hand over his chest, leaning up to him, kissing under his jaw quickly, hotly, before she pulls back.

Melantha actually scoots away from him, even though that takes her out of the warm cover of the sleeping bag. She turns her back to him, too, as though shy, or something, but maybe this is just what she needs now. It's what feels right, or right enough, to turn away from him and get out of her socks and then to unfasten and lift her hips and lower her jeans. She pulls her shirt off then, crossing her arms and unfolding them as the cotton lifts and lowering her shirt as her hair falls over her back.

She reaches behind herself to unclasp her bra, sliding its straps down her arms and letting it drop on top of her other clothes in a neat little pile. By then she's nearly naked, her back bare and only half-veiled by all that long, dark hair of hers. She shifts her legs under her, hooking her thumbs under her waistband, taking off her panties. She doesn't go quickly. She doesn't go as slowly as she would if she were doing this for him. She's just undressing, thinking as she goes,

feeling her way through this.

When she turns to look at him, she is looking past her shoulder to see if the top sleeping bag is like a blanket again, ready for them both to get under. And if it is,

she does.

Erich

There's something strangely innocent about this undressing. Strangely tender about their modesty -- the way she turns away, and the way he, apart from perhaps a lingering glance or two at her back as it is reveal, turns his eyes the opposite direction.

Erich undresses too. He is a little quicker about it, because having run here in wolf-shape he is lacking quite a few items of clothing. Really, it's just a matter of kicking his shoes off, of peeling his Throwed Rolls t-shirt off, and of shucking his jeans. When he's finished he bundles all his clothes up into a rolled-up little package, which he sets aside.

The top sleeping bag rustles behind Melantha as she's finishing up. When she turns, it is indeed all spread out like a blanket again, the soft inner lining facing down, just as the lining of the bottom bag faces up. They could probably figure out a way to zip the two bags together to make it an extra-warm bed, but right now they leave it as it is.

Erich slides under the covers, arranging a pillow under his head as he does. He holds the topbag back for Melantha to get in, and after her does, he settles an arm around her. The top of the jeep is within arms-reach, but then both Erich and Melantha are used to sleeping under low ceilings. He does reach up with his free hand, brushing his fingertips aimlessly across the upholstery.

"Maybe it would be nice if you had your own tinyhouse," he whispers, "so we could do this more often."

Melantha

She slips in like a mermaid entering water. Flows up against him, sliding her arms around his waist, holding her the front of her body to the front of his body. She sighs, as though with relief, her breath exhaled across his chest.

"Yeah," she says back to him, also quiet, tucking her feet to his calves. She holds him, bodies aligned, giving his torso a squeeze. "Lots more."

Erich

Their bare skin sliding together. Their arms winding around each other. Erich's heart gives a little leap-skip in his chest. She feels so soft and smooth, he thinks, but the truth is: his skin is nearly flawless, too. It's a side effect of shifting so frequently and easily, of quite literally changing one's skin time and again.

"What kind of tinyhouse do you want?" he asks. It's the first time, really, that he's willingly brought this topic up to her since she first proposed it. "Do you want one just like the one we've got, or do you want it a little smaller or bigger? I saw some plans that didn't have the bedroom downstairs, either, so there's a bit more room."

Melantha

"I don't know yet," she tells him. "I looked at some --"

Her voice breaks there, becomes a sigh, as she slides her thighs against his, eyes closing for a moment. She leans over, kissing his neck, feeling his pulse beating against her lips. Her hand spreads over his lower back, pressing him closer to her. As if they could get closer.

"I haven't really decided."

Erich

"Well; you have time."

He turns toward her a little more. On his side now, his other arm sliding over her waist. He closes his eyes as she kisses his neck. That pulse in his throat jumps again, skips faster. He takes a breath and lets it out.

"We'll make it nice," he promises. "We'll build it sturdy and put in anything you want, as long as it fits and... stuff. It'll be your own little tinyhouse and I'll visit there and we can just ... hang out. And be together."

Melantha

She has time. A few months, maybe. A new tinyhouse by summer, even though happier, sunnier days are already on the horizon. They both have some time, most of all for Erich to get a little more used to this whole idea: Melantha being next door and not across the space between their lofts. Then again: Melantha with a bed of her own, a whole tinyhouse of her own, and he'd be welcome in that bed and fit in that bed and it wouldn't be three, four months in between every time.

Erich is going slower than Melantha now; she can barely stand how close he is, how hot, how he feels. She keeps kissing him, running her hands over his back and his side, feeling his arm, panting softly at the simple pleasure of his musculature.

She's been with a few men, but always bad guys. Always older than her, and grotesque in some way, no matter how well-kept they were. She's never been with a male who was pure of heart. Not one her own age, someone youthful and strong and vibrant like Erich is. The feel of his body is intoxicating to her. She keeps exploring it, sliding her leg against his own, rubbing their calves together.

"Yeah," she sighs, a repeat, and she really does want to say more and contribute more to this conversation and tell him how it's okay and comfort him and thank him for talking to her but she can barely think. She can't string words together. She just holds him, sinking against him, until some actual words hit her brain:

"And kiss," Melantha says, that leg of hers hooking over his thigh. "And make out. And... stuff."

Erich

Pure of heart. Erich would be so happy if he knew that's how Melantha thinks of him, though come to think of it Avery might have said something similar about him. And Charlotte probably thinks something of the sort, and everyone else -- well, they might think him a bit simple and a bit silly and sometimes not very good at being patient but no one, no one would think he was devious or manipulative or corrupt or evil.

And that's all very good. It makes him happy. Gives him hope. Gives him, also, something to live up to -- a heroic self to strive toward. Which is also very important.

But Melantha isn't telling Erich about his pure heart right now. Melantha is talking about kissing, and making out, and stuff, and for once she sounds about as not-good-at-word-things as he is. Erich bursts out laughing. It's a happy, joyous sound; not at all mocking or derisive. He muffles it a moment later when he wraps his hand behind Melantha's head, in that thick thick hair of hers, and kisses her.

Like for-real kisses her. His mouth on hers, slow and sweet.

Melantha

Melantha startles a bit when he laughs. She would never compare herself to a prey animal, but in that moment, she feels like one. She wavers, faltering, even if he's not mocking her, not making fun of her. She just looks caught off guard, looking into his eyes.

Maybe there is a moment then. A moment of softening, of slowing, the way you go very still and wait while the thing you are hunting gets over its own freeze and starts grazing again. Only it's not Melantha who is frozen. Melantha is hunting right alongside Erich, but what they're hunting it something far more elusive than a deer or a rabbit. They are looking for something that has been wounded but doesn't know it, something fragile that doesn't know how to survive its own fragility because once,

oh once,

it was so certain of its strength.

She hesitates, as he's holding her, and then her eyes close, and she lets him draw her nearer, opens her mouth to kiss him back. Slowly, yes, and sweetly. She thinks she might cry. Her hands run over his body again, after a moment, seeking the way they were before; she smooths her palm around his hip and touches him then, slides her hand across the fervent erection she feels in the darkness. Melantha looses a soft groan into his mouth, wrapping her leg around him, pulling him nearer until the hard length of him is stroking against her, feeling her wetness.

Erich

They are hunting together. And something about that makes Erich happy, too, makes him feel fulfilled and full-circle. They hunted together that first night. That first time they went camping. They hunted wildness and savagery and lunacy and at one point Melantha actually hunted something down and killed it and it was shocking, it was astounding, he feared her a little the way men have always feared Furies,

but he is not one of those men and so he did not resent her. He would never seek to tame her or destroy her.

Later that night her Mother came to him; not her real mom but some powerful, long-ago spirit-mother out of antiquity. An aspect of Gaia herself, perhaps, for of all the tribes the Furies claim perhaps the closest association with their source. That spirit-mother came to him and sniffed him over very carefully and felt his bones and his face and looked into his heart and was satisfied.

Found him pure of heart.

--

They are hunting together again. They are moving very stealthily and gently, and a moment ago they were talking of the den they will build for her together. Now they are kissing, and she was hesitating but now she is not, and then they are drawing nearer and she is running her hands over his body as though to trace him from the night. She touches her and his lips part, he gasps a quiet little sound that she returns. Her leg wraps around him. He shifts a little closer on their sussurating little makeshift bed; stroking her wetness, he pants an exhale, kisses her again.

Deeper this time. Wantingly and adoringly and hungrily.

Melantha

She hasn't done that since that night together. She hasn't purified herself in the wild. She hasn't drunk herself on red wine, hunted something small to slaughter it, to savage it. She hasn't given herself over to all that wildness in some time because she doesn't quite know how to reach it anymore. It lives in her scent still; it always will. But she just isn't sure how to connect with it anymore.

Even this, connecting with her body and cleaving it to another's, seems almost impossible at times. Melantha can feel herself: how deeply she wants, how much longing is in her skin, making her ache. She wants him so badly she can barely breathe.

He kisses her and she kisses him back, though. He gasps and she moans softly. He moves closer to her, rubbing himself, his cock, against her. She whimpers, wrapping her arms around him. "Now," she whispers to him, before she thinks of something else to be scared of. "Erich, please, now."

Erich

Now.

As though their lovemaking, or at least the mood, the wanting that supercedes the fear, were prey. As though they must pounce now, now, now, grab the moment before it passes them by.

He doesn't pounce, though. He isn't like that. He is sometimes rambunctious and noisy and all sound-and-fury, but he is not vicious and he is not brutal and he would never make this something -- he doesn't even want to think it -- violent. Now, she whispers, and his hand on her thigh is secure and anchoring, is drawing her leg just a little farther around him. He takes her shoulder in his teeth, bites her ever so gently just to hold her,

enters her, moans against her skin, runs his hand up and around and opens it over her lower back.

do that. Not that I don't love living in the tinyhouse with Charlotte, 'cause I do. But you know what I mean. Now we kinda have to think ahead and ... it does feel a little weird.

"But even if it feels weird," he adds, or circles back, "I still totally wanna get under the covers naked. But only if you want to."

Melantha

She doesn't say anything for a while. She listens, to all of it. She takes a breath near the end, exhales, takes another breath before she admits softly: "I don't really miss that right now. Throwing off clothes and falling into bed laughing. I can't really explain why. It's not bad. Just... right now, thinking about doing that is one of the things that freaks me out.

"I want to go slow," Melantha whispers. "I don't want clothes to just fly off and romp around in bed. I want to go slow," she repeats, still so quiet. "I want to feel everything." It is dawning in her mind, in her eyes, which right now are thin bands of pale blue around widely-blown pupils. "I don't know how I feel about any of it anymore. And when we're going fast I can't think about anything we're doing, I can't figure it out, I don't even know how I feel, and it's all just rushing around me and past me and I panic."

For a moment she's silent, closing her eyes and leaning against his arm, into his touch, aching. Saying softly: "But I think getting naked under the covers and cuddling sounds really, really good."

Erich

She wants to go slow. She wants to feel everything.

Erich swallows. His throat suddenly feels dry. His arm is still around her, and his phone has been forgotten; might've dropped out of his hand and rolled somewhere. They might have to look for it later. She might have to call him, and they might have to hunt through covers and $3.99 pillows to find that tiny, jangling thing.

Right now, he nuzzles Melantha. Gently-roughly, rubbing his face against the side of hers. She goes on: talks about how she feels when it's too fast, it's all rushing by, she can't even process, she panics. He gets it. It makes sense to him. She leans against him and she says

that his idea was a good one, that getting naked under the covers and cuddling sounds really, really good, and against her cheek his lips curl. He smiles. He kisses her just beneath her ear, and then he draws back, unwinding his arm from around her to start tugging his shirt off.

"Okay," he whispers. "Let's do it."

Melantha

[empathy! specifically on pre-nuzzling.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Erich

[that was a whole lot of UNF. UNFs all the way down, four layers. wal, and also a bit of "awww, melanfa :[" and jus... feelbadfor her. not really pity! jus feelbadfor.]

Melantha

She wants to feel everything. She wants to go slow. But in a way, this isn't really slow. It can't be too slow, because she's been wanting him so badly, for so long. There have been nights when it was hard not to climb into his loft and have him then and there. There have been days when she ached so badly upon waking that she could scarcely move.

And now he's naked. Now she's alone with him, curled up between sleeping bags just like the first time, and he's kissing her, warm against her. Melantha can't wait for him anymore. She touches him, getting him rubbing against her, but then she's moaning for him, telling him now just like that, and

now,

he presses the head of his cock against her opening, soft and wet as she is, pushing slowly inside of her, holding her in place. Melantha does not let him hold her in his teeth, though: there's reasons for that, but there is also the simple fact that he can't kiss her like that, and she wants to kiss him.

Is kissing him, folding her legs around him, moaning into his mouth as he sinks into her.

Sighing

his name.

Erich

Erich doesn't mind that she doesn't want him to hold her in his teeth. He doesn't mind because it just means she wants to kiss him, and she does, holding his face in her hands or wrapping her arms around his neck and either way, either way is good, is perfect, is beautiful, because she's so close and she's so soft and she's so warm and

sometimes he isn't sure how his spirit has survived so long without knowing hers.

She sighs as he enters her. It's his name, or at least he thinks it is, but he isn't sure because he can't really remember his name right now. The human name he was given, anyway. They still haven't come up with a second Garou name for him, but that's okay too because

really, at the end of the day,

what does it matter except that he is a son of Gaia, a grandson of Thunder, a boy with a pure heart and a wolf's soul, who is right now making love to the girl he adores.

And her legs fold around him. And his arms fold around her, and he rolls with her a little; moves atop her so he isn't squashing her thigh; wraps his forearms under her arms, his hands curled over her shoulders from beneath. The sleeping bag slides a little. His shoulders and his upper back are exposed to the cold night, but that's all right, it's nice, it's a pleasant contrast to the unbelievable warmth and wetness of her body. He kisses her through all this, holds and explores that kiss, eyes closed, body moving in rhythm to hers. It is a slow, gentle sort of lovemaking.

Melantha

Her hands on his face. Because she had to. Because he was lowering his head to shoulder and she began sighing his name, moaning softly as her body enfolded him, reaching for his skin to draw his mouth,

that wonderful rough curving shockingly soft mouth,

to her own. Her hands turn out to be terribly, achingly light on his cheeks and his jaw, as though she might worry about hurting him. Even when kissing him and feeling him overtakes her, pulls her down like an undertow, Melantha wraps her arms around him rather than press too firmly, pull too hard, push too far. She keeps moaning, every time he flexes, every time he moves, everything she feels him. They're soft sounds, quiet, but they are still steaming the windows of her Jeep, fogging over, obscuring them from the night and the night from them.

They shift, and so do their covers. Erich covers her like he does sometimes, and this must be part instinct, because his spirit knows that it's winter just as surely as his body feels the cold.

And it's in him to protect her, it's in him and it's in Charlotte so fiercely, so passionately. The truth is: Melantha would be the first to tell Erich that she doesn't need him to protect her like, constantly, and that she doesn't want his feelings for her to be all Rar I Am Your Garou Guardian Chest-Thumpy without regard for who she is versus what she is, and to please just back off and trust her to take care of herself. Melantha would pick a fight over not needing or wanting Erich to be her big strong protector.

But the truth is also: she actually does need protecting right now. After what's happened over the past year, after leaving one kind of life and being able to look back on it and suddenly feeling deeply disconcerted by what lives there, after D.C. and the Furies and the Beloved Horror and asking herself why she felt like her body belonged to her only when it was being used as a tool to destroy other people and why, why, why can't she connect again to herself, why doesn't she know who she is,

Melantha needs very much to feel safe. To be sheltered, to be held gingerly, to be loved dearly but so gently, as though she were made of bruises that cannot be touched roughly. Melantha would be the last to admit it: but here she is. And she is aching, whimpering a little, holding Erich that much tighter when he rolls slowly and cradles her in his arms, covers her with his body, kisses her mouth and moves, just like he does, into her body. She feels like crying, feels hot tears springing to her eyes as her calves stroke gently against his flank, her hands spread over his back.

It's a very soft weeping, silent, and does not steal her breath. It will take him a while to notice, to breathe between kisses, to see the way she tips her head back, opening her mouth, her back arching and her voice gasping in the darkness. Her fingernails curl against his back.

Erich

Erich, lost in the darkness, the moment, and the sensation, doesn't notice at first that Melantha is crying. He doesn't notice, in all truthfulness, for quite some time -- not until she tips her head back. Not until she gasps into the darkness and there's just a little subtle difference to that sound. Not until he's kissing her under her chin, and then at the corners of her mouth, and then on her cheek --

not until he's tasting salt that is not sweat does he understand, finally, that she is crying. Or at least: shedding tears.

He doesn't stop. He does slow, though, and gentle, and nuzzle her questioningly-tenderingly-imploringly. What's the matter? is what he would like to ask her, but instead what comes out is merely --

"Melantha?"

-- her name, which has become a question, which attempts to encompass what he wants to know. What's the matter. Is she okay. Did he do something wrong. Should they stop. He doesn't think it's the last; he doesn't think that at all. Or maybe that's just a hope.

Melantha

She's not really crying-crying. She's weeping. Artful and silent and soft, beautiful, all of that. And she wavers with her breath and he notices, kissing her,

mouth, throat, breasts, wherever his mouth is falling now, or maybe he's just kissing her mouth over and over again, as dedicated and loyal to her mouth as he is to anything he loves. Like her, like their pack, like Gaia, Mother of Rage, who needs him to fight and die and be good.

Melantha, not a mother at all, but possessed of something like rage, who needs him and cannot say how or why or for what as clearly as, perhaps, a goddess might.

--

Erich slows and she gasps, her fingernails pressing. He says her name and she looks for him, opening her eyes and finding him with her gaze, then her hands, drawing him closer again to kiss him again, which means not to stop and it means he didn't do anything wrong and it also means that she loves him, even if, maybe

she's not altogether okay, and something is the matter, something hurts, but even all of that can be beautiful.

Lovely.

Loving.

Beloved.

Erich

Momentarily their eyes meet. For all their disparate heritages and tribes, all three of the Republik have in common that blueness of eye. Erich's are perhaps the palest in hue, the clearest in quality; here in the darkness they are crisp as glass. Melantha's eyes, in contrast, are perhaps the deepest and richest blue, and here in the darkness their color can scarcely be seen. Her eyes seem dark. Darker still for the largeness of her pupils; the way he shadows her when

she draws him down to kiss her again.

Which he does. Which he sinks into with a low groan, even as his arms wrap closer around her. He covers her and he moves into her and he doesn't stop; that momentary slowing passes and he is loving her again, rhythmic and steady and deep and pure, those kisses occasionally falling apart so he can gasp for breath, breathe, suck air and exchange exhale for inhale.

"I love you," he tells her, but surely she already knew. Surely she always knows.

Melantha

She nods, holding him there, kissing him not just one long deep slow wet kiss but over and over, urgent, as her legs fold ever tighter around him, hold him closer. Her hands run down his neck and over his shoulderblades, caress the small of his back firmly, pull at his body even though her reach is extended, can't go much farther.

"I love you, too," she whispers back, because in the end, one word at the end can't negate the fact that it's true. He knows her better than that: she doesn't say things to him that she doesn't mean. She doesn't say anything just to make him happy.

Erich

He knows that, too. Just as she must know what he speaks is the truth, he knows that too doesn't make what she says any less profound or real. Any more a platitude or an automatism.

He smiles. She is kissing him, and there are still tears glimmering on her cheeks, but he smiles because -- well; because she loves him, and she is loving him, and he is happy and quiet and whole and

he kisses her again, closing his eyes. Shifting his weight onto his forearms as she pulls him into her. Kissing her as his body flexes and strains and surges over hers; kissing her as he slides his fingers through her hair; kissing her until that kiss starts to disintegrate more and more into breaths snatched and stolen from the tiny spaces between them. She can tell by the way he moves and breathes, by the way air catches in his throat and transduces into groans that sound

(because he is a wolf, her boy)

a little like growls that he is close, he is closing in on that thing they hunt together even as they hunt this sort of fearless intimacy together. He's close but he's holding back, and he's holding back because, quite simply, he wants to wait for her.

Melantha

Maybe later she will need to explain this to him.

No: later she will want to explain to him, as best she can. She'll want to talk to him because he's her best friend. He cares. He doesn't always understand, he doesn't always know what to say, but he cares. But she won't have to explain, because he won't demand it. He won't abandon her. He won't -- she hopes -- berate her with his frustration with her. But it says something that this is only a hope, that she is so wary, even of him, sometimes.

Melantha isn't close. She wanted him so badly she could barely breathe. She was growing wet just from talking to him, long before he kissed her that first time. When they got naked and under the covers she thought she was going to die if he didn't have sex with her right then. Now they are, now he's inside of her, he's telling her he loves her and she's feeling something painful and afraid and lost and yet nothing she wants to run away from right now, even if she doesn't understand it, and... she's not close. She might have come if he'd breathed on her a certain way not ten minutes ago but now she's not close, and it's not because he's going too fast or it's too rough or because the opposite, it's too slow and she's bored, it's not because she doesn't feel safe, it's not because of him at all.

He's panting a little, and flashes of need ripple across his features every so often, his movements hitching a little, his voice is letting out groans that turn into snarls, it's so wanting and it's so arousing and she kisses him again.

She doesn't urge him on. She doesn't hold him back. She just goes on making love to him, like she wants to. This is how she wants to.

Erich

Which leaves Erich in a bit of a conundrum, really. Which leaves him quite literally grasping for purchase -- grabbing handfuls of those rumpled sleeping bags; dragging his mouth from hers to kiss her neck, her jaw, her breasts, every part of her that he can reach even while he tries to slow,

slows,

is shuddering in the tangle of her arms and legs; is barely moving at all when he mutters a ragged mutter:

"Baby I don't know how much long I can hold on," all the words a rush, a single breath. He nuzzles her: he's at the bend of her neck where neck joins shoulder; where earlier he tried to grip her in his teeth and was drawn to kiss her instead. That is where he nuzzles her now, heavily and instinctually, his breath hot against her skin, her upper chest. "It's just -- I've just -- "

it's been so long. Maybe that's what he's trying to say.

Erich

[not baby. melantha!]

Melantha

"Why are you holding on?" she asks him, her words tumbling softly, breathily over his. The Jeep is well and truly steamed up now, the covers rumpled and warmed all around them, her arms and legs still wrapped around him. He's telling her doesn't know and he's nuzzling her and as he's telling her it's just I've just she's asking him this, like she really doesn't know, kissing his jaw and his neck and moving with him still. "Why?" again, gasped, her thighs holding him to her.

Erich

"Because,"

he's gasping the words by now, panting them; his back is sweat-damp under her hands and his heart is thundering, thundering, thundering against hers.

"Because,"

he tries again, and of course his answer is something silly that will make her laugh, possibly, and more likely make her lecture him about Silly Gender Roles and Misconceptions and Why Chivalry Is Dead And Should Be and --

he doesn't get to the answer, though. He doesn't get to the answer because she asks him again: why?, gasping it, her thighs pulling him closer, deeper, and suddenly his mind blanks out and he can't think of a single damned reason to answer her with, or to hold back with, and so:

so that is how Erich comes, clutching at bedrolls and sleepingbags, groaning against Melantha's skin; bucking between her legs, shuddering into her, a heavy, drenching, thorough climax that comes through like a thunderclap or a summer storm; sudden and ferocious and then subsiding.

Leaving him panting for breath, his arms trembling slightly where he tries to hold his weight off her chest. Maybe he should be embarrassed by his performance, or lack thereof.

Melantha

Because because. Because he is, because he's sweating in the heat they've made and he's panting and his heart is slamming, aching, his body tightening up just before he can't anymore, there is no because anymore, there's just her, there's just him, and it's going all the way through him like a storm, like a wave, drowning and drenching him before

dissipating, evaporating, leaving him washed up and worn out against her. Melantha was moving with him all through that, holding him, kissing his mouth if he could bear it, his face and his neck and his shoulder if he couldn't, and she's nuzzling him as he comes down, caressing his back and holding him, holding him still. She doesn't say a word about his performance or lack thereof. She's not a stage. She's not an audience.

She strokes his back. She rests her cheek against his temple. She whispers: "Thank you, Erich."

Erich

She thanks him.

He: slumps slowly to the side, sort of sprawled-collapsed, one arm heavy still over her middle. He just lays there for a while, catching breath, catching heartbeat.

When he moves, it is gradual and slow. He nuzzles her shoulder. He kisses her upper arm. He opens his eyes, clear-blue now dazed-blue. He looks at her and the corner of his mouth moves, rueful, sheepish.

"I'm sorry that sucked," he whispers.

Melantha

"Don't be dumb," Melantha says to him, still caught up in that closeness, that warmth, that wetness between them. She can feel everything. She can feel every part of her body. Every part of his. She can feel the sex they had, could still be said to be having in some weird way. She shivers a little, kissing him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "This doesn't suck, Erich. Nothing about this sucks."

Erich

"But you didn't even come," Erich whispers back, Captain Obvious that he is. "And it's been so long and ... I made you cry, and ... "

he tapers off. Quiet a moment. Eyes closing again; can't help it. Can't help that despite his embarrassment, despite his poor performance because so far no one's pointed out to him that Melantha is neither a stage nor an audience, despite it all his bones are liquid and his heart is full and he

is just

going to close his eyes for a second.

Just a second. Then he opens them again, kisses her shoulder once more. "I'll make it up to you," he promises, quite earnest. "We've got hours 'til dawn."

Melantha

Oh, that. Melantha's forehead furrows, and her eyebrows tug together. He is drowsy and languid and cuddling her, breathing like he's going to fall asleep, and she decides not to argue with him right now. She just wants to feel this. Him inside of her, wrapped around her and wrapped up in her arms. Him all sweaty and warm and liquid, heavy with relaxation. She hugs him. She nuzzles him. She kisses his cheek and doesn't begin to explain to him in many, many words what is wrong with all the things he just said.

So he ends up falling asleep on her, or beside her, slumped a bit to one side but still pillowed on her breasts, which makes her smile. While he sleeps, maybe for five minutes, maybe ten, she just thinks about how it all feels. How he feels right now in her arms, under her stroking hands. How he feels softening inside of her, how his breath moves him. How helplessly he was dragged under, how hard he fought not to be so he could talk to her and promise her to be better and how he's still so obsessed with 'making her cry'.

She feels very at peace, trying to stay where she is, just as she is, as long as she can. She's in her whole body. And her body is warm and a little crushed where Erich's weight is and she's still so aroused and she can feel his cum, too, and the humid exhale of his breath across her skin, her hair stuck to her hairline from sweat, her skin aching for some of the winter's chill. She shifts part of the top sleeping bag so she can get some air on her skin, but then it's cold, so she pulls it back up and kisses the top of Erich's head, feeling the buzz of his hair across her lips not like a hedgehog's quills but the sort of hairbrush you use on babies. It's similarly soft, and it tickles her lips, and it comforts her.

--

Erich does wake, a little while later. Dredging himself up from the warm, languid dimness he slipped into after his orgasm. She smiles at him when he looks at her again, looking a little sleepy and fond, herself.

"Hey," she murmurs to him, stroking his scalp with her fingertips.

Erich

He doesn't sleep long. He does sleep, though, even though he's worried about Performance (tm) and Making Her Cry Again (tm) and all these things are absurd things to worry about but then sometimes Erich is a little bit absurd.

She is smiling at him when he wakes. Her fingertips stroke his scalp. His hair is quite short, a constant ebb and flow between almost-nothing and almost-something. It is noticeably, brightly, haloingly blond, though, what little light that comes into the jeep now is still enough to reveal its color.

He catches her hand in his; he kisses her fingertips. "Hi," he whispers back. And then a deep rousing breath. He rises, props his head on his fist.

"So we're going to go again, right?"

Melantha

Melantha is quite welcoming when Erich wakes up. That smile, her fingertips on his hair, the way he has to realize that she was snuggling him to her breasts while he dozed off. She lets him have that kiss, that quick grab at her hand, that nuzzling happy kiss. Then!

He rouses. He rises up on his elbows a bit, or one of them, propping his head up. What he says makes her eyebrows quirk up.

"What, like it's a given?" she teases him, and it is teasing: there's no edge of anger there.

Erich

"Well," he replies, grinning, "someone's gotta get you off."

Melantha

She's quiet for a moment. Not smiling, not teasing or quirking, but not frowning. There is a momentary pull between her brows, a faint wrinkle the likes of which he used to want to scrub out of her face with a thumb, but it doesn't last. She's more thoughtful. Melantha takes her hand back from where he kissed it and strokes his scalp again.

"Why?"

Erich

He still wants to scrub it off with his thumb. He always wants to, and not because girls are "supposed" to be quiet and pretty and always smiling and never upset. Girls aren't "supposed" to be anything; that's a lesson he's managed to learn.

Still hasn't managed to learn that girls aren't "supposed" to always come during sex either, though. Obviously. Because now he scrunches up his own brow and thinks about it for a second, and then sinks back down on his side. Face to face with her now, he lays his arm over her side and exhales a little.

"Because... I don't know. Because I want you to feel good. Especially if we only do this like once every three months. I don't wanna be like W00T I GOT MINE and then just skip on out of here while you're like, wait what?"

Melantha

Melantha turns a bit with him as he moves onto his side. They part, or they mostly do, but they stay entangled under the covers. She adjusts it over her shoulder, laying her head on one of those 3.99 Ikea pillows just like he does.

"Thanks," she says quietly, her hand seeking his under the sleeping bag. It's the first thing she says. "You could treat me like that even if I did come. In a way it'd almost be worse like that. But you wouldn't skip out like that either way."

Her fingers lace through his lightly, gently. "I do feel good," she tells him quietly. "Everything felt good. And I felt everything."

Erich

"I know but, you didn't -- "

and then, just like that, a penny drops. Or maybe an entire half dollar. Something lights up behind Erich's eyes.

"Well," he says, "I guess ... I guess it'd only be important if we both got off if we were only having sex to get off. I mean in that case then yeah, what would be the point otherwise. But ... I guess that's not why we're having sex, right? So I guess then it's not as important."

Melantha

She wanted to feel everything. To go slow so she could. And she did. They did. And it was good.

"Well, I really like having an orgasm when we have sex," Melantha points out. "And it... sometimes is important. But it's not the point. It's not why I want to have sex with you." She strokes her fingers between his, soft and slow.

"You didn't do anything bad," she says quietly. "Or not-good. And I'd be really angry with you if you basically made my orgasm all about you and whether you gave me one or not and got all possessive or weird if you do or morose and weird if you don't and then I'm having to counsel and console you if I don't get off or find a way to like... explain it to you as though there's always some reason and make sure that reason isn't really your fault or something and it's just...

"I don't want you to be exhausting like that," Melantha finishes, soft. "I just want you to be Erich, and me be Melantha, and we love each other and try to make each other feel good and there's lots of ways to feel good and we can talk about it if something feels bad, but."

She pauses there. She's talking so much. She looses her hand from his, wrapping her arm around his waist, drawing their bodies close under the covers again to be right up against him. She snuggles under his jaw, nuzzling his chest, cradling herself there. "What I really wanted to say," she whispers, "is that somewhere in there I just... felt like I was looking at all these feelings of being lost and confused and sad and hurt, but I was looking at them from a safe place. And I could feel my whole body, and everything, and I was in myself in a way I haven't been in... I guess a long time."

Melantha slips her foot between his shins, tucking it there to keep herself warm. And to be close. Mostly the second one.

"Honestly I think having an orgasm would have weirdly taken away from feeling everything like that, right then. Y'know?"

Erich

In some ways, what she says to him echoes what Gaia said. Be yourself. Be good. She doesn't say Go die for me, of course, but then Melantha wouldn't. Only Gaia can make that demand, and sometimes it seems cruel and cold and almost unfair, but --

if Gaia dies, everything dies. And Gaia gave him life so that he could give it back to her. So it's not unfair at all. It's very fair. It's the only fairness in an otherwise unfair war.

He isn't thinking about that, though. Not when she moves closer to him, wraps her arm around him as he wraps his around her. They are sort of tangled-close like that, snuggling, nuzzling, cradling. He can't see her face now but that's okay. He closes his eyes. Feeling her like that, so close and warm and sweet, he doesn't need to see her, or anything at all.

"That makes me really happy," he whispers back. His feet shift a little: gives her room to slide hers between his shins, tucked and warm under their covers. "That you could start to look at ... y'know. At the clutter. I think that's probably the first step to putting it all back into place again."

Melantha

She strokes his back as she holds him. That's not quite it, really: looking at the clutter to pick it up again. She's been doing nothing but looking at all the clutter for almost a year now. Looking at it, living surrounded by it. It's different than what made her cry, and what made her not come and not really need to come, and what made her feel happy and good and safe and herself. It's more complicated than clutter or messes or metaphors of any kind.

At the moment, though, it's not so important that Erich understand. She wishes he did. It makes her a little sad. But she isn't grieved. She isn't broken-hearted. And that may be what starts to matter, what is really going on inside, what lets her not be too sad that he doesn't entirely one hundred percent know what she's saying (after all: she isn't sure how to put it to words, anyway) and lets her feel herself and feel okay.

So Melantha is quiet a bit, stroking his back, and then shakes her head gently. "Not... that's not really it, Erich," she whispers. "I've been looking at the clutter for almost a year trying to figure out how to sort through it. And maybe that metaphor isn't... really the way to look at it." She quiets again, holding him, lost in how good it feels just to rest here, naked and warm and close to him, without having to get up and get cleaned up and hide somehow.

"I'm not really ready to try and put it all into words," she admits. "I know you want to understand." She knows this because this thing he does where he hears her out, then rephrases what he heard to check and see if it's what she meant, is called Listening and it is a shockingly rare thing and the point of it isn't to prove how smart you are or how much you understand but really just to show that you care enough to try, that you want to understand, that you love. "I want you to, too."

Melantha turns a bit, lifting her head up, looking at him. "It's just really tender still. And... maybe right now I just need you to know that I'm feeling better, and a little more okay, and that makes me happy, and even though I still don't feel a hundred percent and it'll probably take more time and work before I do, I feel... stronger than I have in a long time."

She pauses. She sighs, just breathing, looking at him.

"And will you kiss me?"

Erich

She's right. He does want to understand. He does try very hard to understand her, because trying to understand is just another aspect of caring, and caring is just another aspect of loving.

His crest falls a little when she says that's not really it. But not too much. Because she acknowledges it: he wants to understand. And she acknowledges it: it's okay that he doesn't. It's okay because all she really needs is for him to know that somehow, she feels a little better. And somehow, he's involved in that. He has a part in it, a place in it, a piece in it. It's not that Erich sexed Melantha so good that she feels better, just like it's not Erich made Melantha cry. She is her own cause and effect, but he --

he is there, too. He has a role to play. A part in her life.

He smiles; he doesn't answer her with words. He answers her with his warm palm sliding over her shoulder, drawing the blankets up over her. He answers her with his mouth on hers, gentle and sweet and soft, and the answer is:

of course. of course. of course.

Melantha

Yes, Erich. You sexed Melantha so good that all her psychological pain is taken care of. You go, Erich. You rule. You are the best at sexing.

He knows better. He knows it has nothing to do with orgasm or lack thereof, nothing really to do with whether or not it was good, if she came, if she threw a pillow that maybe didn't need to get thrown. But it is to do with him, and it is to do with making love with him. He's a part of it. He's part of this life that she is starting to come back into, starting to feel out again. Just like sometimes, he's a part of why she cries. That's different, even if only someone of Melantha's insistent complexity would delineate the differences.

He pulls the blankets up around them both. 'Blankets'. One big sleeping bag, thick and fluffy, soft on the inside and rustly on the outside. Come summer they wouldn't be able to stand this. Right now it feels like summer and spring are ages and ages away, even if they're right around the corner.

They kiss. They kiss, because even though she asked him to kiss her she leaned into it before their lips fully touched. She opened her mouth and sighed and slid her leg up around him, hooking him to her, her arms around his shoulders. It's gentle and sweet and soft and there is nothing really chaste about it at all.

So your answer, Erich, to what you asked when you woke up from your little post-coital nap, is apparently yes.

Erich

Let it be known that Erich is quite okay with this arrangement. He is quite okay with Melantha's arms wrapping around his shoulders. He is quite okay with her leg sliding up around him, quite okay with that kiss unwinding so slow and soft and wet and not chaste at all. He's more than okay with it. He loses himself in it, joyfully, uninhibitedly, his hands running up her back and delving into her hair, his body pressing against hers as if he might somehow seal himself to her more fully.

There is a moment there, a breath drawn and a tiny little laugh loosed. And then his mouth -- his warm, still-smiling mouth -- is on hers again.

This isn't the first time in three months anymore. It's the second time in three months, but also the second time within the hour. Erich has it in him to be a little more patient. Maybe even a little bit playful. He wraps his arms around Melantha and rolls, rolls, flops onto his back, bringing her over him in a soft armful of mmph. Her hair falls over him. His hands trace their way back down her spine; he rubs his palms over her rear.

When he lowers his head, their mouths part lingeringly. He smiles up at her. "So that was a yes, right?" he whispers. "Y'know. About the go-again."

Melantha

Oh, she likes that. The long slow wet deep kiss and the way his body flows against her, the way his hands move over her back. Their flesh sealing together, her breasts pressing to his chest and oh, oh, she loves that, she whimpers softly. Melantha starts to move onto her back again, starts to show him yes again, ready again, an ache building in her like a banked flame being brought back to life, hungry for more.

Erich, smiling and happy, wraps her up and rolls her atop him, shifting under her again to keep their bodies close, close, close. Melantha doesn't slow down. She shivers as he touches her, opens her legs as he caresses her, her mouth going to his neck to kiss him there, lick him. She's

so

turned on. She wants so much, so badly, because it's not the first time in three and a half months but it's still been three and a half months and she loves him, she does, it's surging through her now like it hasn't -- and it hasn't, and that has hurt and that has scared her -- for a very, very long time. She winds her body atop his and he's smile-whispering that this is a yes, right?

Melantha lifts her head from his throat, her lips reddened in the dark, looking moist, her eyes shining. She nods. "Yes," comes the word, breathy, as she decides to rub herself against him. "Yes," she repeats, lowering her mouth again, scraping her teeth gently, softly down his chest with longing. "I want to fuck. And be close. And come on you."

Erich

In some ways, Erich is far from the first male to have seen Melantha like this. Hair unbound, mouth red from kissing, eyes limpid. He's far from the first to have found her beautiful and charming and interesting and intriguing. Far from the first to have fallen for her, head over heels, loved her so deeply and utterly he hardly knew what to do with himself. In fact, there were probably other men who loved her more desperately, more suddenly and completely and instantly. There were probably other men who were more instantly hooked by her, and other men who -- let's admit it -- perhaps had sex with her more frequently and more often than he has.

And in other ways, he's the only one. He's the only one to have really seen her like this, because all those other men were seeing someone else. Celia or Maria or Estelle or Peyton. Someone not real at all, a dirty fantasy quite literally designed to appeal to their sickened minds. Of course they fell for her instantly. Of course they were fascinated by her, obsessed with her, couldn't help loving her. That was the whole point.

It hardly matters, anyway. Those other men, and those other pretend-women whose faces she used to wear, are not here. Here, in the back of the SUV that she bought with money she earned herself with her own two hands,

here, with the windows steamed and their body heat trapped under that fluffy warm sleeping bag,

there's only them. There's only Erich and Melantha. No Jack, no Frank, no Mikey, no Rudolph. No Celia, no Maria, no Estelle, no Peyton.

Just them.

--

The two of them: laughing. At least he laughs, softly and happily, at least until she scrapes her teeth over his skin. Then he gasps, and his eyes close, and his hands massage through her hair for a moment before he pulls her back up to him. Mouth to mouth. Chest to chest. Their eyes flare together, a comet's-tail of heat through their irises. He lifts his head to kiss her, lifts her gently a few inches up his back to align to him,

lifts her hips so he can fit himself to her,

drops away from that kiss to look at her face. He's smiling a little, sort of lopsided and wanting-playing-earnest.

"Well," he whispers, "what are you waiting for?"

Melantha

When they were camping, she couldn't help but tell him her real name. Not Celia. Not any of the others. Nothing he'd known her by. She'd lied to him not just out of habit but because he very clearly was a horrible liar. Look at what he did, introducing himself with his real name to Jack back in D.C., barely recovered when she found something quickly that sounded almost identical. He's a horrible liar, he's so honest and forthright and sometimes he thinks it makes him not a very good Shadow Lord but maybe he doesn't wanna be that type of Shadow Lord anyway and it's something that Melantha once felt she had to protect him from, because she was such a good liar and he was like a babe in the woods in this world,

but it's also something she's come to love, and rely on, and curl up against like something soft and warm when the world is cold and brutal. She doesn't tell him that he's soft. Maybe he knows that in this way, he sort of is. She's not sure he wouldn't be shamed by hearing it, though.

They're both young. And immature. There is tip-toeing.

--

Melantha kisses him over and over. She's not laughing, note that. He laughs with his breathing but she just wants, she aches, she tells him what she wants and he moves against her but asks her this question and she just lifts her head to look at him. Raises her eyebrows.

"That's such a weird line," she tells him, which is honestly what she thinks of it. And not A Line as in a pickup line, something he's saying coyly or playfully or ironically or even genuinely, it's just, to her, a weird thing to say at all. What is she waiting for? "I'm not waiting for anything," Melantha whispers. "I'm just enjoying you."

Erich

Erich is soft in some ways. There is a softness to him, and a warmth, which actually used to be pretty rarely glimpsed because he kept it under a scabbed-over armor of bitterness and fear and rejection-scars. These days those scabs are finally, finally started to dry up and flake off. These days the skin underneath is smooth and new and soft and warm.

He doesn't know how to lie. He doesn't really want to know how to lie, or how to be deceitful, or how to be cunning and coldhearted and to always think about what he could get from something, anything, anyone. He doesn't want to be that kind of Shadow Lord. That much is obvious.

Just look at his heroes. His inspirations and his role models. Just look at the story he told when he could tell any story at all to encapsulate how he thought about his tribe and his heritage and his place in the world. He is not hard and cold, and would never want to be.

--

And well. Now he's abashed. Now he's embarrassed, laughing with it, one hand pawing loosely at his face in that universal gesture of shame. Not retreat, though. He's not retreating from this. And it passes, and his hand comes down, and he wraps his arms loosely around her lower back again.

"I just meant," he says, "if you wanna fuck then we should totally fuck. I mean. We don't have to rush. I was just trying to be funny. Just ignore me. Nevermind."

Melantha

Melantha kisses the back of his pawing hand. It's a tender thing, despite the teeth from just a moment ago. She nuzzles it away, rubs their faces gently together. Maybe that's better. Maybe that's right, right now: without the teeth, without the mindless eagerness. Because she does want to fuck and she wants to come but really, mostly, it's that other one: she just wants to be close. And she is tender, and he is scarred, and they are both healing from things that take more than a few weeks,

maybe even a few years,

to be at peace with.

--

She is wrapped. She looks at him. "I don't wanna ignore you," she murmurs. "It's okay."

Erich

"Okay," Erich says -- agreeable, happy, quiet. "Good."

He is smiling again. Still. Something. The back of his hand tingles where she kissed him. He suspects she doesn't know how deeply his skin and bones remember her. They are so close together. Her every breath imprints itself against his skin; her every heartbeat. For a while he's just...

soaking it in. Enjoying her, as she might put it.

And then he lifts his head to hers again. He kisses her, as slowly and tastingly as he ever has; patient and gradual and gradually deepening.

Melantha

No, she doesn't know that his hand tingles where she kissed him and nuzzled it away. She doesn't think about his skin remembering her, his body soaking her in like that. Except sometimes she does. Sometimes she'd understand intrinsically. Right now she's thinking maybe she doesn't want to fuck. She wants something else, a little more like before, like the first-time-in-three-months. Erich will probably always be more playful than her, a little more energetic, and -- let's be honest -- a little less cerebral. He feels and trusts his body the way she feels and trusts her mind. She trusts it even when it hurts, just as he trusts his body even when it's in pain. They trust these things, their strengths, even when they lose control of them.

--

They end up kissing for a long time. He threw her a little with that thing he said; neither of them can help what certain phrases or actions trigger in her. Maybe he doesn't know that being with her is like walking through an otherwise dormant field full of still-active land mines; sometimes Melantha doesn't know that, either. Not until the boy she loves says something that is identical to something someone else said, maybe multiple someones, and her skin is suddenly crawling, her desire is recoiling. It doesn't matter whether she knows he's different or not. It doesn't change what her body does, where her mind goes. It's not something she can turn off. If she could avoid feeling that way, why wouldn't she just decide not to?

The sad truth is that Melantha already is wary of letting him know this. The sad truth is that just now, just a moment ago, before she started kissing him again, she decided not to tell him where her thoughts went. What he made her think of. She doesn't want to open that can of worms. She doesn't want to fight with him over whether or not she's comparing him to those other men, when in her mind, there's no comparison to be made, no comparison being made. But logic is a fragile, rusted weapon against any mind trying to protect itself from more pain. Those shields are made of tempered steel, and they push back.

She doesn't want to talk about it. It's bad enough to have to fight not to let her mind go back through every strange and uncomfortable thing that's ever happened to her, every twisted thing she's ever done, every word ever whispered in her ear. She doesn't want to have to try to explain, and comfort, and reassure, when it's already so hard just to stay where she is, where she was just a couple of minutes ago, in her body and in herself. She's clinging to it, fighting for it, because she doesn't want to let go, but something else won't let her go.

There's already a war going on. She doesn't want to try and fight a new one on another front. Not with Erich, most of all.

--

They kiss for a very long time. Melantha isn't reaching for him to fit him inside of her. She isn't opening her legs and urging him in, either. She's kissing him, though, running her hands over him and, yes, enjoying him. She's enjoying kissing him, enjoying touching him like this, enjoying the wetness and heat between her legs and the firmness of his form underneath her. She wants, and the wanting feels good, even if it aches. Her thighs close around him, and she shivers, holding him there and rubbing her cunt gently against his shaft, moaning into his mouth. It feels good.

Well and truly, this feels good to her. It's not what she was specifically asking for a few minutes ago, but... things change. Minute to minute. Heartbeat to heartbeat.

Erich

[i... declare... EMPAFEEEEEE!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Erich

[WP!! i forgot!!!]

Melantha

[I think he can tell that she's struggling. She's not gone away or withdrawn, but she's having some kind of hard time and it's making it difficult for her to take this (or allow it to go) further. A good metaphor is someone who is really, really trying to hold on to a rope or life preserver or climb up a ladder back onto the ship but keeps getting knocked around and pulled down by waves. The good is that she does want him and what they're doing feels good. The not-so-good is that she also seems afraid, and ashamed of being afraid.]

Erich

It's -- different. What this is, and what she'd asked for. It's not bad. It's good. It feels good. But it also feels --

Erich isn't quite sure what it feels like. Different, though. As though something was there beneath the surface; some soft tension, some uncertainty. So after a while, though they're still so close together and kissing and touching and making love in all but the most technical sense,

he lays his head down. He opens up enough space between his eyes and hers that he can see her. See her face, see her eyes; see her mouth and her brow and all of her. He looks at her a moment, his hand roughsoft on her face, combing through her hair gently and mindlessly and comfortingly.

"Do you want to tell me what's on your mind?" he whispers. It is a question: does she?

Melantha

They are close. And kissing and touching and his cock, if we're going to be very blunt about it, is being held warm and tender between her thighs, resting against her cunt when she's not rubbing their bodies together, and she's making noises that are soft and sweet and aching and sometimes she moans against his neck when she's kissing him there, especially when his big hands cup her breasts or stroke her ass. Melantha is, undoubtedly, enjoying this. Enjoying him. She's not pulling away, not inside or outside. And maybe he's worried about her, and maybe he knows how well she had to be able to fake enjoyment, but hopefully he doesn't think she is with him, but either way:

he looks, and he sees that she's struggling. Mostly with herself.

Melantha can follow his body language. She knows when he lays his head down that he wants to look at her, so she doesn't chase him, open his mouth with hers again. He looks at her and she opens her eyes and looks at him, both of them so bright blue even in the darkness, shining without tears or even much moonlight. He touches her face, which is a very different thing than the way he's touched the rest of her tonight.

It makes her ache in a different way, too. He strokes her hair and, sighing softly, she lays her head down on his chest. Tension, from both that internal war and her own arousal, dissipates a little in her shoulders. She stays right where she is, but lays her head on his chest, while his hand touches her hair.

"I'm afraid to," she whispers back, after a moment. "I don't want you to be upset."

Erich

For a moment he thinks she means: she's afraid to make love. Which is perhaps true to some degree too -- or at least, no so much afraid to make love as afraid of all the ways it can, and perhaps has, gone wrong. All the ways it can, and perhaps has, felt off, or unnatural, or just ... not the way it should.

It feels right, right now. They're not actually, actively having sex, but this feels right. Something warms in his chest when she lays her head there. He wraps his arms around her shoulders; he'll never get over how soft she feels to him. How slight, and yet how strong.

"I promise I won't be," he whispers. "Or at least," because, in truth, this is a promise he is better equipped to make, "I'll try very very very hard not to be."

Melantha

They can't do this. Ever. They can't do this in her alcove or his loft. It's not just sex they've cut out, it's the comfortable closeness, touching, cuddling naked under a blanket, kissing forever, touching without going anywhere, holding each other, not having penetrative-and-then-at-least-one-person-orgasms type of sex but making love all the same. Sex is so much broader, so much more, than ticking off check boxes: was there penetration? check. did someone have an orgasm? check. and sex and lovemaking and sexuality is so vast and incomprehensible and lovely, sweet, aching, friendly than that. It hasn't always been, it isn't taught as such. But they can't have sex of any kind, even this kind, when they're at 'home'.

And she doesn't want that 'can't' to be because Charlotte is awful or Charlotte is in the way, because she's not. If they kicked Charlotte out for the sake of sex she wouldn't then have Charlotte touching her hair or breathing her scent in, Charlotte letting her help make Theurgey things, washing and painting gourds for Gaia, collecting Stuff in ways that won't attract bugs or mold. They won't have bizarre ice cream concoctions and she won't have her safe sweet sister to sleep beside when she needs that, and Melantha needs that in a way that Erich and maybe even Charlotte will never ever ever understand because they didn't grow up like that, they don't associate the ubiquitous scent and presence of women with feeling safe and feeling home and feeling healthy. Melantha does.

Charlotte isn't in the way. Sex with Erich isn't in the way. But there are sacrifices. There are always sacrifices. Like getting her own tinyhouse built: this involves sacrifice, and not just on her part. She knows that. But she also thinks it's necessary. Maybe she needs to start associating a certain silence and emptiness and solitude with being home, and being safe, and being healthy, and being herself.

--

He makes a promise it's not fair for him to make, because how does he know if he's gonna be upset or not? He's allowed to be upset even if she doesn't want him to be --

Erich realizes this before Melantha can pick a fight with him about it. He says he'll try. And she relaxes a little again, and tucks her hands beneath his back to keep them warm. She isn't looking at him, because she's resting her head on him, and she can still feel his pulse through his cock. She exhales softly.

"I felt weird when you said that thing about what-are-you-waiting-for," she whispers, but this isn't something he didn't know. "I didn't want to feel weird. And I'm trying really hard not to let it stick, but... it is. But then I'm afraid to tell you, because you're... you've always kind of been sensitive and defensive about feeling like you're being compared to those other men, even though I know you're not and I don't think you are and I'm not trying to say that. I just don't want you to get mad at me when you say or do something and it reminds me of something else. Cuz..."

her whispers hurt, coming out. She shrinks in on herself a little bit.

"It's like it unlocks a cabinet, and it's not just this one thing or this one man and what he said or did. It just starts unraveling. I start thinking about everything they've whispered in my ear or done and what they were like and... it's sort of like I'm not even here anymore, I'm back there. It's like I'm back in a dozen other places hearing a dozen other things all at once and I can't... deal with it. I can't even deal with it however I dealt with it then, I'm just drowning in whispers and memories.

"And I'm trying so hard not to think about them because it makes you upset, and it makes me feel angry and helpless that I can't just be authentic and honest about what's going through my head because it makes you upset at me and then I'm having to fight with you about how no, I don't think you're like them and it's not really about you but how you treat me and talk to me does matter, but... half or more of my brain is also trying to fight off thinking about them at all and another part of me is trying to figure out why I'm even having trouble, because I shouldn't be having trouble, why didn't I have trouble when I was doing all that, why is it only messing with me now when I don't want it to and when I'm finally with someone who knows me and really loves me and why am I so fucked up, but you don't want me to be fucked-up and a mess either so I'm trying so hard to just be. okay., and... I'm just..."

Melantha is shaking a little. She takes a deep breath, sudden, sucking it in, clinging a bit to him. She turns her face into his chest, the side of it, his arm, where she can smell him rather richly and where she can hide a little bit. "And I never know what's gonna set it off," she whispers. "I can't even give you a list or something of stuff to avoid because sometimes something bothers me and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes I can get over it easily and a lot of times I can't but I just never, never know."

Erich

Erich is quiet for a long time, listening. And afterward he's quiet for a long time, thinking. Turning the pieces over in his mind. Sifting through her words -- and there are a lot of them, especially for a simple boy like Erich -- and letting them turn in his mind.

In all that time he doesn't stop holding her. His arms are secure and warm around her, even when she shakes a little, even when she takes that deep breath and wraps her arms around him and tucks her hands under him and holds him tighttighttight. He just holds her a little tighter. He just strokes her back, strokes her spine and her shoulderblades and the gently curling ends of her hair.

That ardent hard-on on his has abated a little. His heart isn't pounding with such force now. He is quieter, and the night around them seems a little closer, a little more intimate. After quite some time Erich takes a breath and nuzzles Melantha's temple.

"It's okay, you know," he whispers. "It's okay that you have all this ... stuff in the cabinets and it comes out when you least want it to. I don't want you to be fucked up or a mess but it's okay if you've got a cabinet of fucked-up, messy things. It's okay if it topples all over the place sometimes and then we're both knee-deep in it. Maybe that's even a good thing.

"You took down a lot of bad guys. I think you should be proud of that, and you should always be proud of it. But I think... maybe... you should also let yourself accept that to take them down you had to let them get very, very close. You had to let them do things to you that you probably didn't want at all. I guess what I'm saying is you let them kinda make a mess, and because you had a job to do you stuffed that mess in those cabinets. But maybe now that it's in the past, keeping that mess in the cabinets isn't the best thing anymore. Maybe ... we should just open the doors and let it all flood out and then ... actually start cleaning it up. Y'know?

"I just don't know how to actually help you clean it up. So," a gentle touch of humor here, "I'm all ears."

A small pause. Then:

"I'll try to remember," he adds, "that you know and I know that I'm not like those guys that you took down. I'll try to remember that even if it's something I do that makes you have to stop and clean up a mess, it doesn't mean I'm the one that caused the mess in the first place. I'll try not to take it personally. And I'll try to help."

Melantha

Melantha feels a little bad that he's softened a bit. She wants him. She wants to have sex with him over and over and over and over and she wants to spend all night coming with him, feeling him, feeling everything. She feels a little bad because it just so happens that Erich's hard-on settling a bit coincides, timing-wise, with her being A Mess. Again. A year ago she might not have taken that as a rejection, but right now it's hard not to, for some reason. Lots of reasons.

She feels like whimpering when he nuzzles her. Whining, almost, like a wounded animal. She pushes her face into his skin a little more, her hair tumbling everywhere, filling the air with the scent of her. They may as well be underground, rich and full and verdant as that scent is. Waiting for spring.

He says it's okay. One, two, three, four times he says it. Not just repeating himself but telling her what is okay. Okay that it's there. Okay if she's messed up about it. Okay if she can't control it. And he says some things she hadn't really thought of, or allowed herself to see. You had to let them get very, very close. You had to let them do things to you that you probably didn't want at all.

A little spasm goes through her, hearing that. Like the way someone flinches when an injury is examined, when a wound is being cleaned out. Her nerves react, because he's touching a spot she's been tucked around, hiding, for a long time. Long enough to hide it from herself, even.

...actually start cleaning it up. Y'know?

Melantha gives a little nod against his bicep, still clinging to him.

I'm all ears.

She smiles, painfully, and her chest moves with a sharp little exhale through her nostrils that could be something like laughter.

I'll try not to take it personally. I'll try to help.

Melantha is still, but then Melantha is also crying now, warm and wet and quiet, holding onto him. They aren't heavy, agonized or agonizing sobs, but they are tears. Cathartic tears, like the ones that come when you've been pulled out of the water, even if you can't quite feel your toes, even if you're so bruised you can barely stand the blanket being wrapped around your shoulders, even though you're not quite sure you can deal with what you're feeling. She cries a little, but she's holding onto him. Just... standing in the mess with him, knee-deep in it. But she's not alone there anymore.

Erich

She's not.

She's not alone there. She was before, because even though her friends love her and want to be close to her and would quite literally kill or die to protect her, no one really knew she was there in the first place. Maybe Melantha didn't even really know until very, very recently.

Erich knows now too, though. And Erich, of course, being Erich: leapt down into the muck with her, second-thought-less, doubtless, almost joyful in his eagerness to dive headfirst into it, to stand with her in it, to hold her in it.

So there they are, then. Melantha weeping those quiet, cathartic tears. Erich holding her very close and quite tight, stroking her hair and her back and murmuring wordless little soothing-sounds,

thinking, oddly, of how he won his second rank; of angry-mother and peaceful-mother, of the mother-in-his-mind who poured bathwater over his head to wash the suds from his hair. That sort of devotion and care. That sort of unspoken, unwavering trust.

He opens his eyes again after a while. And he turns so that Melantha is not atop anymore. So that her back doesn't face the sky. He turns so that they are face to face, or as near to it as possible when she's actually hiding against his chest. He rearranges the sleeping bag around her, and then he closes his eyes, and he

decides that this, too, is kind of nice, actually. It's nice to be close to her like this.

Melantha

They turn, and Melantha is sniffling, is tucking into the warmth of the coverings and his body, both, because it's still really cold at night. She doesn't dare look up at him yet.

"Do you still want me?" she asks, small. Quiet.

Erich

"Yeah," Erich whispers: it is immediate. "If you still want me."

Melantha

That makes her ache. She lifts her head, her cheeks wet but her eyes not giving life to new tears right now. She sniffs. "Of course I want you," she whispers. "I like rolling around laughing with you and snuggling with you and just... touching each other and I like fucking and I like going slow. That's why it sucks so much when stuff like this happens. Because I want to be with you. I don't... want these thoughts messing it up."

Erich

Erich is quiet a little while, thinking. Then: "Y'know... I don't think it really messes it up. I mean I don't feel like tonight's messed up now because we had a serious talk about some serious things that needed to be talked about. I mean, I think it was good. I think we kinda needed to talk about it.

"Nothing's messed up, Melantha. Okay?" He bumps his brow to hers; rests there. "We're here and we're close and we're together and nothing's messed up between us."

Melantha

"No, I know," she says, while he's putting his brow on hers. "I mean... you know how before, when you rolled over, and what I said I wanted? That got messed up. I don't mean that talking about this is bad. It's just. I wanted to have sex like that. And it got totally derailed and now I just want to be held all night. But that means that tomorrow I'll wake up and I won't have had sex with you again the way I wanted to, and I don't know when I'll be able to again, and that kinda sucks."

She sniffs. "I wasn't saying it got messed up like I'm guilty over it. I mean: I want to be with you, and this stuff gets in my way, and it sucks, and I hate it. Even if it has to happen."

Erich

"Well," Erich says after thinking about it some more, "we can always have sex when we wake up tomorrow. Or like. Do this again tomorrow or the day after or something. Just spur of the moment, like tonight.

"It's okay if we got a little derailed tonight. It was still a good night, I think."

Melantha

She laughs softly against his chest, just because he's saying they can have sex tomorrow. Or do this again. Spur of the moment!

"It is," she says, quietly, changing the tense. They're still in tonight. She hugs him, tucking her feet to his legs as she has before, to keep herself warm. Well. To use him to keep warm. "And... it actually took me a while to get up the nerve to do this. But I'm glad I did. And... it's part of why I got the Jeep. And we should do it again. Just. Date."

Erich

Date.

He grins at that. Grins into the night, which can't see it and won't appreciate it. Grins for her, because she can hear it, can feel it, would appreciate it. He grins and he hugs her and it really is a hug: it's a squeeze and he's happy and, and, yay.

"Yeah. We should. But I wish you'd told me this counted as a date, because then I would've picked a flower or something on my way here. Or at least like. I dunno. A clump of pretty grass."

Melantha

He would have picked a flower or a clump of pretty grass.

She smiles. "As charming as that sounds, you don't need to do that." A pause. "I don't want you to bring me stuff like that. Flowers or candy or jewelry. Empty stuff." Wooing tokens. Gifts that have nothing to do with who she is, what she wants, who they are to each other. Proof of purchases: I did this for you. You have to be nice to me now. Smile and giggle and rub your tits on me while we hug. Soft, she says: "Just be Erich and be with me."

Erich

Well, technically, she is rubbing her tits on him as they hug. But it's different. It's always different, the two of them, Erich and Melantha, Melantha and Erich, Melerich if he was being extra silly and giving them dumb names in his head.

And he is hugging her still. He's hugging her and now he's kinda rolling on his back again and tucking her against the side of his chest, fitting her right there where she fits best. He nuzzles her hair.

"I'm always Erich," he says, smiling. "That's who I am. Erich Reinhardt. Erich Storm's-Teeth. Erich Loves-Melantha-and-Also-Charlotte-and-Also-Ice-Cream."

The smile settles. His humor, too. He gives her a little squeeze; takes a breath, lets it out.

"I love being with you."

Melantha

Yeah, Erich, 'if' you were giving them silly names in your head. 'If'.

"That's a very long deed name," she mentions, and then pulls him back, on his side, snuggling. "Stay like this," she tells him, which is a request even if the words themselves aren't. "It's cold. You're warm." She wraps his arm over her, in fact.

"Me too," she whispers to him, nuzzling his arm.

Erich

Me too. He thinks for a minute she means she's warm too. He's about to agree: yes, she is warm. That surprised him the first time they were close together, because back then he still thought of her sort of as Celia de Luca who was some rich guy's daughter and sort of dumb and sort of snitty and very very sensitive and obviously a girl like that would probably always have cold hands because she only ever did yoga and pilates and got mani-pedis and probably ate one cracker a day.

Those were mean thoughts. Now, looking back, he knows they were mean. Even if she really was Celia de Luca, they'd be mean, stereotyped, sexist thoughts to be having, and maybe it's a credit to Melantha that now Erich is able to see that and feel a little bad. But not terribly bad, because he's not really looking back on all that; he's just holding Melantha and thinking to himself yes, yes you are warm,

but then he realizes she means she loves being with him too.

And that makes him all warm inside. That makes him glomp her extra-close, and wrap the top sleeping bag around them, which are both things he's been doing all night but he keeps doing it because he wants to keep her warm. And close. And safe. And this is how he does it.

"It's okay if you just want to be held all night and sleep," he whispers. "I'd like that, too."

Melantha

The sleeping bags were purchased by Melantha, which means they stretched her current month's 'budget' a little thin because she refused to buy things that weren't decent. That couldn't help her survive in freezing temperatures. After she washes them she's going to end up storing them -- with the rolled-up cushioned mats underneath them -- in the back of the Jeep. Erich still has the camping kit she gave him, even though Melantha no longer has any of her own gear that she bought while 'Jack' was supplying her with a steady stream of cash and a line of credit. But all the same, she got sleeping bags that are rated for ridiculous temperatures, that are warm and cozy and safe, even if she didn't buy clamshell ones. Those would be warmer, but she couldn't make a bed like this.

They are going to be okay tonight, but Melantha would be pretty chilled if it weren't for the werewolf sleeping with her tonight. The werewolf who is wrapping her up in his arms. And he's whispering in her ear that it's okay if they just... cuddle. If he holds her and they sleep. He'd like it, too, which isn't the same as telling her that it's 'okay'. She nods, holding his arms around her torso, cuddling her body close to his.

Yeah, she whispers, and that is that.

--

That's all there is, for a while. They hold each other. They stroke each other's backs. She isn't crying, and they aren't making out, and they aren't talking. She discovers that she's emotionally just wrung out, she's exhausted, she just wants to be held and kept warm and safe and eventually she is half-asleep, rolling over with her back to his chest, holding his arms around her, unable to hear some whispered thing he says to her later because she's asleep, she's gone, she's buried in her own rest.

A while later she wakes. He's already fallen asleep, and she stirs him with her wiggling. It's well and truly cold outside now, and she's tugging on the first item of clothing she can find, trying to mumble an explanation in answer to his mumbled query, but she's naked and wearing his hoodie and then wearing her sneakers and slipping out of the car because she has to pee. Which she does. She goes off in the dark and comes back a while later, dropping sneakers and slipping out of hoodie and snuggling back under the covers with him. Her hair and skin are a bit chilled, but she warms quickly.

But doesn't sleep yet. She kisses him, softly, starting at his neck, letting him feel her body against his own. Finding his mouth turning to hers, and finding his hand, guiding it up her side to her breast, shivering as life comes into that hand, as he starts caressing her, squeezing softly, weighing her in his palm. They aren't talking much. Not but her whispering I'm wet, Erich to him, which makes him breathe in sharply, nudging her legs apart with his knee. Gently, of course, a press like a request, a parting like an invitation.

It's very cold by then; she whispers that to him, too, when he starts to roll her on top of him. She's cold; will he stay on top? And he relents, because his back bared to the night can take the chill more than she can, that's just... truth. She's not a werewolf. She could always change her name and her accent and her approach but never her shape. She could never destroy as forthrightly and bloodily as he can.

There's not much talking, after that. Just her hands on his lower back, holding him, her brow tight and her mouth open soundlessly, gaspingly, as they're working their bodies together, as he's finding her, checking on her, is she okay, is this okay, does she want this, or maybe just the once: the yes, the please, whatever form it takes. She lets him get very, very close. And he tries very, very hard not to make a mess. She moans when he slides into her, pushes, fills. They fog the windows all over again with their panting.

Melantha comes this time. For the first time in three and a half months, in fact. Well. She's had orgasms between then and now, but not with him. This time she does, her spine arching, her legs tightening, her body so taut and shivering and aching for it, needing it, before it lets her go and floods her system, floods around his body, makes her languid and loose and pulsing, groaning into his chest. It goes on for a long time, and she can barely take it. She's shaking by the end, shaking so much that Erich has to check with her, panting, gasping, needing to know if she's okay, can he, he's gonna,

but she is, and he can, and he does, and they should get up and clean up or she should go pee again or something but they just collapse, for she is now just as physically exhausted as she is emotionally, and sleep is wrapping her arms around Erich and drowning him, pulling him under and into the dark.

--

So they are stiff when they wake up. Stiff and a little smelly and her hair is a mess and sticking up oddly and their faces are bleary and she is so, so, so thirsty that she's just chugging water from a nearby bottle, sitting up half-naked in a pile of blankets and sleeping bag, her nipples at attention. He's looking at her. She finger-combs her hair, looks back at him blearily. They hold each other's eyes for a moment.

They go again.

Sleepily but quicker, a little more eager, a little more animal, casting off the top sleeping bag because the morning is surprisingly warm, and maybe it's boring or something but she wants him on top of her again, lazy thing, she just wants to have sex again, wants this quickie, this gentle-fierce coupling that leaves her languid but startlingly refreshed, like it's coffee or something, and she's all melty and relaxed but alert, letting him kiss her, stroking her fingers on the top of his head while they. Um. Cuddle.

--

It's a pretty good date. Every part of it, in the end. Even the joint cleaning-up later, dressing in dirty clothes and heading back to the tinyhouse and taking turns taking quick showers to not use up all the hot water and gathering up last night's and the week's laundry because Melantha says she's gonna go into Evergreen to the laundromat, so they get towels and Charlotte's laundry but it's their turn to do patrols in Cold Crescent, too, so that's happening and there's bacon and eggs in there somewhere, too.

Life exists outside of those rough moments, and also outside of the tender moments. Life just exists. And it goes on.