Several days ago, whenever Erich came back from duty at Cold Crescent or hunting down rabbits or whatever it was he was up to, he found lines strung between the eaves of the tinyhouse and a nearby tree, all of them flapping with clothes hung up to dry. That would be Melantha, with her bio-degradable soap bought at REI and her river water and her the-sun-is-the-best-dryer. By the time he got there the wet clothes were already nearly dry, because Colorado is dry and the sun in summer is hot and there has been a great breeze lately.
Melantha was happy to see him, and quiet. Melantha spent the night sleeping next to Charlotte in the downstairs bed, her nose pressed against the back of Charlotte's neck. And she was awake before anyone else the next day, already working on the house-next-door. Her new house. The other house. Tinyhouse 2.0.
And she's quiet for a while after that, and they don't see each other much. She works, he patrols, he fights, she builds, they all sometimes have sandwiches and go to get ice cream.
But one night, when she's nearing the end of her shift, she sends Erich a text:
Wanna come pick me up? We can go for a walk.
It'll be like a date. A very low-key, very cheap date.
ErichThey share chores around the house, the three of them. When Melantha washes their clothes, Erich tries to hang them up. If he's not around when they go up, he brings them in when they're dry. Sometimes he even folds them.
That's how it is, that day he comes back with a pair of hares slung over his shoulder, dirt under his nails from when he ran on four legs. He came in with his arms full of clean clothes, their dinner flopping against his leg. Melantha was quiet, which was unusual, but she was happy and he's happy when she's happy so it goes unremarked.
She shares a bed with Charlotte that night. Erich sleeps on the kitchen floor, four-legged again, his paws thumping against the cabinets now and then as he dreams.
--
Melantha gets a text back:
K!
--
Erich's bumblebee-yellow pickup truck is parked at the curb with the windows rolled down. Erich is lounging in the cab, the seat reclined, his forearm hanging out the window. Seeing her, he reaches across the seats, pushes the passenger's door open for her. Meaty nebraska boy picking up his pretty girlfriend after work: as americana as can be.
"Hey," he says, smiling. "Where do you wanna walk?"
MelanthaThey live farther from Evergreen these days, migrating like animals. They go higher and deeper into the wilderness when it's warm, descend closer to civilization when it grows cold and snow-blanketed. Melantha doesn't walk to work much, not if she has a closing shift, because by the time she gets out of there it's the middle of the night and she doesn't want to tempt fate every time she just tries to get home. Some days when it's a mid-shift or a morning shift she walks, though. She doesn't mind the heat, the distance. She says it's good exercise, and no one can really argue with that.
This was a mid-shift, showing up to work the lunch and dinner shifts but not dinner and bar, well into the night. It's dark when Erich picks her up, but not fully: the sky is a deep, rich twilight blue; you can see some stars but not all. There is a haze of sunlight that looks not unlike the fluff of a young chick near the mountaintops.
Melantha comes out of the saloon dressed in khaki shorts and her work t-shirt, carrying her waist-apron at her side. She has her hair up in a ponytail still, is wearing her comfy sneakers still, and hops up into the truck when Erich pops the door for her.
She exhales, clearly glad to be seated, and in a cushy seat no less. She looks worn out; she always does after a shift, though. It's not easy work, on your feet for eight hours, rushing and weaving the whole time, trying to hold math and orders in your head, avoiding pinching hands, fighting a headache from the night's band, keeping your balance, avoiding getting splashed with so. many. gross. things. Plus, it's summer. The Little Bear is busy even during the weeknights.
"Let's go out to that lake in Three Sisters. Go swimming," she says.
ErichI fucking love you, Erich thinks as Melantha settles into the truck. No rhyme, no reason. The thought just pops into mind, brilliant and searing.
He puts the truck into gear as she shuts the door. He reaches over, giving the back of her neck some absent, gentle kneads. "I read about amoeba that live in freshwater ponds that crawl in through your nose and eat your brain," he says, and you can just imagine ten-year-old Erich saying something like that with awed horror. Twenty-some-odd-year-old Erich says it in a more tongue-in-cheek spirit, though. It's not like he really expects to die by amoeba. "Hope you've got your Amoeba-B-Gone."
They pull away from the curb. He stops kneading her neck; he kinda drapes his arm over her shoulders instead. Pulls her against his side unless she protests, and nevermind the center divide.
"How was work?"
MelanthaMelantha closes her eyes when he touches her, her head dipping forward a bit, her ponytail swinging to the right. She exhales, sighing while he talks about
no, not the part where he loves her, or the part where he tries to explain that it's because she's so hardworking, or because she's so strong, or because she's so beautiful, or because he's so happy to see her after hours and HOURS and hours without her, or any of that. Nope, Erich massages her neck and starts talking about brain-eating amoebae. As you do.
"I'll hold my nose closed if we go underwater," she assures him, rolling her eyes a little, but it's half-hearted; his hand is so warm, and his fingers are so strong, and what he's doing feels so good. He stops, though, probably for doing something weird like Driving The Truck, or just to hold her. He starts pulling, forgetting that there's a divide between these seats, it's not a bench, and Melantha makes a little noise of whining protest. She leans into him for a second anyway, then draws back to sit up again.
"Normal," she says, with a shrug. She has her apron on her lap; she has already counted her tips, she is folding the apron into vertical quarters, where the pockets line up. She is using the straps to tie around it. It's a stiff, scotch-guarded cotton clutch in the end, with a couple of stains it's hard to see because the fabric is black. That's why.
She looks over at him. "What'd you do today?"
ErichSo the side-hug doesn't work out. Erich doesn't mind. Erich hugs Melantha, and Erich turns his face to kiss her wherever his lips may fall, but then Melantha goes back to being an upright Melantha and Erich goes back to being a driving Erich.
Well. For a while. Then he slides his hand back up to the back of her neck, kneading away. He's a pretty quick study. Doesn't take much for him to figure out: hey, she liked that.
"Slept til noon," he says, or maybe brags. "Did laundry. Finished up those stairs we were building last night. Got your text, took a nap, came here.
"It was a good day," he concludes: because it was. Simple, uncomplicated, good.
MelanthaThere's a bit of a drive between Melantha's job and the lake she's talking about. She relaxes into the touch as it renews, smiling across at him. Her eyes close again; she lets herself be tended to with an easy acceptance. In some ways all of this is still new, though they've known each other for a year and a half or so by now. Melantha doesn't have to overthink this, right now; she doesn't have to try and understand it, or explain it to herself, or explain herself to anyone. It's simply okay. He gives; she accepts. It feels good; she enjoys it.
She asks about the stairs: how they look, and so on. She'd wanted to finish them last night but it was very late and the bugs were eating her alive and they were starting to snap at each other from how tired they were getting. She does not tease him about sleeping til noon and then taking a nap on top of it; there are days and nights that go by without him shutting his eyes. They all work hard, in different ways.
Mostly, though, Melantha is quiet. If Erich couldn't tell her weariness by her body language, he could see it in the one-word answer she had regarding her day and feel it in the tension in her neck and shoulders. He can tell by the way she eventually re-situates herself in the passenger seat, leans over the center divide, and rests her head on his shoulder finally. They drive; the lights cut through the dark, taking them out to the middle of nowhere. The water there is still, and surprisingly high for summer, given the rain Denver has been getting regularly this year as opposed to last year's drought. It's dark, but for the moon, and for the stars, and they don't leave the car running and the headlights on to drain the battery.
Hopping out of the truck, Melantha heads to the water's edge and starts nudging off her sneakers, peeling off her socks. She looks almost like she's going to slip into a warm bubble bath at the end of a long day, complete with candles and wine, but that's not where they are. She's still quiet. But she looks at him, sees him. Looks at him like she knows him. And starts to unbutton her shorts.
ErichThey talk on the way to the lake. It's companionable. It's sparse, but not in a bad way. It's the way you talk when you've lived with someone for some time, know them, like them, love them.
When they get there, Erich parks without a word. Confirmation hardly seems necessary between the two of them. The engine shuts down, the lights go dark. Melantha gets out and Erich follows, locking his truck, following her toward the water.
While she slips off her shoes, steps out of them like she's coming home from a long day, he pulls his shirt over his head. While she lowers her shorts, he undoes his jeans.
He thinks to himself that he can imagine her a trial lawyer, an activist, a stateswoman. Something like that. Someone who argues for a living, who fights for a cause. He can imagine her coming home, stepping out of her heels, letting down her hair, sighing as she sinks onto a couch and against his side; sighing while he massages the tension from her shoulders.
Down to his boxers, he's no longer so pale as he was in winter. He's summer-tanned, golden-brown, his body hard and his musculature carven. Coming to her, he takes her waist in his warm hands and kisses her. It is a soft kiss, full of knowledge. It is a mature kiss; a grownup thing to do.
MelanthaWhen she went back to Oregon, this was one of the first things she did. Everyone was sniffing her and nuzzling her and touching her and kissing her and smiling. Not everyone, no, but the ones who mattered, the ones Melantha noticed. They ran out to the reservoir, enormous and deep, the water dark even in the moonlight. They swam in various forms, out as far as they would dare, down as deep as they would dare. Melantha remembers holding close to the pigeon-bead around her wrist, because it was made by Charlotte and held Charlotte's magic and Charlotte's magic was safe there among the sisters, safe there in the moonlight, safe in the water, safe against Melantha's skin because all of these things are, Melantha knows, part of Charlotte's magic. They share an essence. She remembers holding close to the pigeon-bead because the power it was imbued with was there for one purpose: not so Charlotte could find her.
So Erich could.
Melantha feels a pang go all through her body at that thought, as she's slipping her shorts down her legs and letting them fall, as she's reaching for the hem of her t-shirt, which smells like bar food and beer and sweat. The pang feels strangely like arousal, and also ache. It feels strongly of love, has that scent about it. In-love love and familial love and far-away love, all at once. It feels like pain, too. Plain, simple, unadorned pain.
She lifts her shirt and drops it on top of her shorts. Melantha, who looked so piercingly into Erich a moment ago, has gone away in her eyes, her thoughts drifting as she raises an arm, peeling the hairband off her ponytail, shaking it out a bit, ruffling her fingers through it though it makes no difference to the ponytail-dent that's there. About then, she senses movement, nearby, lifts her eyes quick but does not move her head from where it has gone still. It's not the lurching startle of a deer, a rabbit, prey. It's the awareness, motionless and patient, of another predator.
Erich is in his boxers. His hair has been sun-bleached again, his skin bronzed. Damn midwestern boys and their corn-fed muscles. Damn midwestern boy, this one in particular, with his broad hands and broader shoulders and the way he is so warm that it contrasts the chill that comes with nightfall in the mountains, and damn the thrill that sends through her. Melantha breathes in.
He kisses her and it's not really like any other kiss he's given her before. There is no rushing to it, no fierce need that will end with her back slamming against something, some surface to be pressed against. There's no gnawing hunger, like their lust is a starved thing clamoring for them to feed it, feed it. It is not many things. He does not kiss her in many ways. It is soft. Its way is unhurried. It tastes, it savors, but does not devour, does not demand.
Melantha's hand is touching his bicep before she quite means to touch him at all. Her bra is white and her panties are blue and in this light they both look shades of grey. She's kissing him back, drenchingly and slowly, running her hand up his shoulder, over his back, up his neck into his hair. She's not shy about her body against his; they have no reason to be shy. And right then it feels like she's going to be swept up in this, in him, even though she's tired and she's a little withdrawn and she is also sad and also afraid. But Melantha stops. She is kissing him, holding him, and if he has slipped his hands up her back to unclasp her bra or run his hands underneath her underwear she hasn't stopped him, and doesn't stop him now.
She just takes a breath, lifting her mouth from his and tipping her head back, looking up at the stars until she gets a little dizzy -- which doesn't take much, given the direction of her blood's flowing right now. She closes her eyes then, sinking against him, tucking her face to the crook of his neck, wrapping both of her arms around him, catching her breath.
ErichErich feels it: the way she is swept up in the kiss, swept over and under, borne along by the way their mouths meet and recognize and greet.
Erich feels it, too, when she stops. When she pauses and takes a breath and lifts her face to the stars. She sways in his arms. He bends to kiss her throat, but it wasn't an invitation; not quite. She puts her arms around him. She tucks her face to his neck. Her arms encircle him; all that well-muscled breadth, all that warmth and vitality.
He wraps his arms around her, too. He senses the slowing, the pausing. He squeezes her gently against his chest, his heavy pulse. A press of his lips to the top of her head, nevermind if her hair smells a little like booze and bar food. She always smells like herself in the end, anyway.
"Everything okay?" he murmurs.
MelanthaMelantha exhales, relaxing into it. He can kiss her neck if he likes; she doesn't resist that any more than she discourages his hands wherever they are. She just is slowed, and stopped, and feels safe there, even half-naked and pressed against him. That is how things have changed.
"Yeah," she says, half-true. Then all true: "I'm okay. I just want to talk to you about something and I'm not sure how to start. Or even what I want to say."
ErichThis is how things have changed: Erich doesn't screech to a stop. He doesn't grow alarmed, grow insecure, grow unsure. He keeps kissing her. He keeps hugging her, holding her, keeping her close to his body. They are both half-naked, most of the way naked. Neither of them seem to be in any particular hurry.
He kisses her hair; he kisses her temple; he kisses her earlobe and the side of her neck. He kisses her shoulder, the softness of her skin just to the side of her bra strap. He plays with the clasp a little. Thinks idly of undoing it, but doesn't. There are limits to what he can take without losing his mind, after all.
"Maybe you should just start from the first thing that pops into your mind," he suggests, "and then go from there."
MelanthaErich is cunning and fierce and many other things besides, but he's also a big dumb idiot, and Melantha knows it. She hears him say that and knows it, taking a deep breath and then huffing a little laugh. "How about we get in the water?" she says instead, lifting her head from his body, looking at him, feeling the way he's touching her underwear, the way he's restraining it. She has her hands on his arms; she smiles a little, soft to one side.
ErichHe likes it when she puts her hands on his biceps like that. He likes the subtle way her fingers play over his arms; he likes that he can tell she likes the way he feels. It makes him feel strong, and brave, and worthy of her, and very very manly.
Erich bends his neck, a quick dip, to drop a kiss across the bridge of her nose. "Okay," he says, agreeable Erich that he is. "Are you getting naked? I'm getting naked."
And so he does, losing his boxers in a quick swoop. No one could ever claim Erich doesn't do as he says.
Melantha"Why would I go swimming in my underwear?" she asks him, stepping back and unhooking her bra. He's whipped off his boxers already, but she goes more slowly, undresses casually, idly, dropping first the bra and then rolling down her panties, stepping out.
Then she is filled with a wild notion, sudden and stricken by darkness and lust and sadness and moonlight, and instead of walking slowly into the water she takes off running, splashes with high steps for the first several feet, jumps into the deeper water, lets it rise up and consume her, sundered and then restored over her head in a chaos of motion turning clear water to white froth for seconds, only seconds. It is cool enough that the water feels cold, but not icy. She is not chattering when she comes up. She is dripping, opening her mouth wide for air, treading water, hair saturated and hanging over her face.
ErichShe surprises him with that sudden bolt into the water. She stuns him, and then she thrills him: his openmouthed surprise turning into a whoop of delight. Erich races after her, his bare feet dashing over twigs and dirt and pebbles; his bare legs churning up great fanning splashes. He leaps after her, springing high into the air and tucking into a ball, detonating into the water like a depth charge.
He comes up inches from her, spraying out a mouthful of water, laughing. Erich whoops again, and then he kicks up to float on his back, arms spread to maximize surface area.
MelanthaThe surface of the water is amok, choppy as though from wind. Melantha watches him as it begins to still, and as he tips back to floating. She swims to the side, familiar with the water, like she was born to it. Which in a way she was: Melantha was born underwater, at home, with a midwife and a doula and her father attending. Her eldest brother was the one bored by the whole thing, informing the others that there was nothing at all to be so whiny and freaked-out about, seriously, it's just a big fuss and then there's the baby, whatever. Her eldest brother, who she barely remembers, because he took the brother born before Melantha and they left: the family, the town, the tribe.
Melantha was born in the water, and likes it more than fire, because fire took the house she was born in after her father and remaining brothers were slaughtered inside of it, and water is where she was taken by Damaris and the others, to wash clean and to feel protected even while very, very exposed.
She swims away from him, or around him, thoughtful strokes. She disappears under the water for a while, not to play a prank on him -- she ran into the water, sure, but there was no playfulness to it, and she is growing less and less apologetic for the fact that she is often just not as playful as Erich, not really. She is quite serious. She is quite thoughtful. Right now, especially.
"I talked to Charlotte about going up to Oregon when we finish my house," she says, and the water has grown more still, and her voice is easy to hear over the lapping at the shore, over the sluice of water over her body as she moves through it. "She was a little worried that I might want to stay with them."
ErichA great sweep of his arms tips Erich back upright. Beneath the surface, lost in darkness, his limbs weave a slow pattern to keep him afloat. He moves a little closer to Melantha, serious too now.
"That never occurred to me," he says quietly. "Do you think you might?"
MelanthaMelantha moves with the sway of water as Erich upends much of it again, mild waves under the surface. He comes closer, so she stays where she is.
And she nods. "I told Charlotte that maybe a part of me will want to. But that doesn't mean I will stay." Her brow is furrowed.
ErichSo he comes closer still -- until the motion of his legs brushes waves against hers. There's little light here. Perhaps she can just make out his expression, as he can make out hers: both of their brows furrowed.
"Don't stay," he whispers. "'Cause I can't follow you there."
MelanthaBut their furrowed brows mean different things.
Melantha lifts cool, water-covered hands to his face when he comes close. "Relax," she tells him, but it isn't dismissive. It's earnest. "You don't need to be so scared I'm just going to vanish on you."
Leaning to him, she kisses his cheek, and slides her arms around his shoulders. If he holds her, that's okay. If it's tight: that's okay.
"Charlotte was worried about the same thing," but he already knew that. "But Erich, that'd be like just... going backwards, for me. I've changed. I've changed a lot. It's easy to go back to what's familiar, and stop there. But I don't think that's why they wanted to let me go. I don't think that's why I didn't fight to stay the first time."
She comes fingertips through the ends of his wet hair, and kisses his jaw, a swift turn of her head and press of her lips. "And I can't imagine my life without Charlotte. And I'm --" there is a beat of hesitation here, barely barely barely heard or felt, but it's there, as though once before she did not know the full weight of these words but now she does, "-- in love with you. And neither of you would belong there."
Or, as he well knows is the case with him in particular: be permitted to set foot in that sept.
ErichThey embrace in the water. She slides her arms around his shoulders, and even Erich -- big dumb lout that he is -- can sense the inherent trust in this. Their legs slide past one another underwater. He doesn't wrap his arms around her, as he needs them to stay aloft, but he supports her weight along with his own tirelessly and uncomplainingly. Of course he does.
I'm in love with you, she says, which is somehow different from the I love yous they've exchanged in the past. Erich is still for a moment. Then he treads water again, bumping his brow to hers, nuzzling against her with silent, animal ferocity.
"Good," he whispers when she's finished. "Because if you decided you wanted to stay I think me and Charlotte would storm the keep or something to try to get you back."
A small pause. Then:
"So why do you kinda seem sad?"
MelanthaOf course they can't hug in the water, Melantha. They'd submerge. And maybe that's just something she doesn't care about. If she wrapped her arms around him and he wrapped his arms around her and they sank, she'd hold her breath and hold onto him for as long as she could before they had to come back up. That's not just her attachment to him; that's her comfort in the water. Like all things Gaia has created, this element of nature is fatal to them if not respected, if not approached cautiously, if not prepared for. But it is not malicious. The water is no more out to get them than a forest fire would be.
Erich chooses to go on breathing. He sacrifices arms around Melantha naked in the water to keep them afloat, and he does it without much effort and without any protest. Hearing her, unable to squeeze her, he rubs their brows together, heavy and close.
What he says makes her scoff lightly. In part because if she wanted to stay with the Black Furies, no storming on anyone's part would do much good. And in part because against a sept of crones, mothers and maidens defending one of their own -- particularly against a Silver Fang and a male -- Erich and Charlotte would get shredded. Melantha's scoff isn't amusement at the idea; just the fact that it's moot. If Melantha wanted to stay, no matter how it hurt Charlotte and Erich, she knows:
Charlotte, at least, would tell Erich that they had to let her go. And Erich would know she was right.
--
Melantha rubs her face against his cheek, his ear, his jaw. She loves him so. And she isn't going anywhere, anyway.
He asks her why she's sad. He can't see her, clinging to him as she is, but her face pulls in a pained expression. Sometimes pain is a dull ache; then suddenly it will sharpen in a single, burning pang that goes right through her.
"I said that to Charlotte, too. About why I'm not going back to the sisters to stay, and she sort of got really still and said 'You're in love with Erich?' like she was holding her breath a little?" Melantha says, and Melantha takes a breath in, shimmeringly. "And... she seemed really happy. She loves us and she made the pigeon-beads for us and all that. But I think it hurts her a little, too. Not like she feels excluded, I think, but... jealous, in a way? Only not, because she can't even quite want something like this for herself, but sort of wistful."
Melantha goes quiet for a moment. "It's hard to explain."
Wanting something, and also at the same time not wanting it at all, is something she knows is hard for someone like Erich to grasp. Though truth be told, after watching what she's gone through the last year, he might understand it better than she thinks.
"I'm sad because I love Charlotte, and because she can't really be in love with anyone like this, even if she wants to be. And because she knows it, too, and it makes her sad, and I love her and I don't want her to be hurt or sad."
Her arms tighten. She holds him close, even though surely it can't be that easy to keep swimming with her hanging onto him like that, but there you are. Then she sniffs, and she blinks a lot, and slides her arms away a bit, loosening, because if she keeps holding onto him that way,
she's going to cry.
ErichWanting something; not wanting it at all. No, that's not something Erich is personally familiar with. Except -- well, in a way, it is. They're pack, after all. They can share thoughts and sometimes emotions. They belong with and to one another as much as distinct individuals possibly can. He's never felt such a thing himself, but both his sister and his lover have, and
sometimes he thinks he does understand after all.
Melantha holds Erich close. And Erich holds her in turn the best he can, which is to say he rubs his cheek fiercely against hers, curves his underjaw over her shoulder. He keeps treading water. She sounds like maybe she's going to cry again, and for once Erich doesn't think oh no I made her cry; for once Erich understands that no one really makes Melantha do anything at all.
"I kinda... talked to her a little bit," he says quietly, like an admission. "I mean, about that. About not feeling that sort of love, that sort of wanting? Just to kinda try to let her know that I wished she could, and I wished I could help, and stuff. But it was really hard for her to even talk about it. And I don't know that there's anything I can possibly do to ... to help her.
"I don't know that I should do anything. I don't know that it'd really be helping her, you know?"
MelanthaMelantha reaches up, and water trails down her hand, along her wrist and forearm. With her other arm she sweeps the water, keeps afloat. She wipes her face, the water cooling her cheeks and brow. She sighs. She floats near him, treads water near him, legs and arms moving. Sometimes they brush against one another, as though their limbs keep one another company.
"Sometimes I think we all do such a good job of respecting each other's boundaries and privacy and whatever else that we don't reach out and push each other enough to get past our issues."
She glances aside, then finds him again. "I mean, I'm grateful that you gave me so much time. I'm glad that you both gave me a lot of room to start coping with... everything, the past year. The past forever. But that was a fresh wound. I needed a lot of time and patience and respect, but I also needed to push myself and be pushed by my friends. I needed all those conversations with you, and with Charlotte, just as much as I needed the time to be able to relax and not fight with myself all the time. It really, really sucked to cry all the time and feel like I was bringing you both down and being generally miserable, but I had to go through that to get to the other side.
"Charlotte's been messed up about --" 'that'. She is supposed to say 'that', and dance, and evade it, and because Melantha is contrary and defiant and because she is a child of Pegasus and now a child of Volcano, she says:
"-- her ex-mate, and her baby, and sex and love in general, for years now. If you talked to her, you know that when she was younger, she wanted it. The idea of sex wasn't something that would make her run away or fall apart. So all of that isn't natural to her. It's not part of who she is. Even with the Silver Fang crazy she has to deal with, that wanting-not-wanting isn't Charlotte. It's the festering of a wound.
"And you," just in case he thought this wasn't about all of them, "kinda fold in on yourself a little whenever we talk about your family. So maybe you've noticed that we never really talk about your family, or what happened to you, at all. Not like 'oh it's in the past it doesn't matter, we can all leave it behind us da da da', even. Just... 'Erich shuts down, so what's the point in talking about it', you know? And since it's literally the only thing I see you avoid like that, instead of diving in head-on, I know that's not natural to you, either. That's not part of who you are. It's the festering of a wound."
Melantha exhales, and water drips from her chin as she bobs in the water. She is watching him, fiercely, thought not angrily, not with accusation. With earnestness. "I don't know if there's anything either of us can do to help her, or anything Charlotte and I can do to help you. But that's such weak, helpless bullshit. It's an excuse. Just because we don't know what to do doesn't mean we don't try. Or at least: doesn't mean it's okay to just sit back and avert our eyes and try to avoid talking about it. We're not Victorians or something. And like that time we talked while camping -- just because we can't go back and undo the sucky things your family did to you doesn't mean we don't do anything at all, or just swallow the hurt."
Her arms move and sweep like wings, in front of her and to the sides, stroke down, propel her up, keep her steady. "I love you and I love Charlotte. And I'd rather you both be angry and crying and feeling kind of miserable to get through to the other side than keep doing this thing where we run into hard topics and pull back from them. It's like watching you both eat glass and it makes me feel seriously sick to my stomach and makes my heart clench up. I want to help you two like you've both helped me. Even if I don't know what to do and even if neither of you really want me to do anything. I don't really care if you don't want me to, because it seriously is like watching you drink poison and not doing anything because you might get mad if I try to stop you."
She has finished. She takes a deep breath, knowing full well he might just get all mad at her and yell or -- as she mentioned -- just shut down. Storm off. Or argue with her! Or something. But she knew that before she really got started. She said it anyway.
ErichSometimes Erich almost wishes he wasn't so transparent. Sometimes he wishes he was capable of maybe just a little bit of that subtlety and deception his tribe is famous for. Sometimes he wishes,
when she says something that he doesn't like to hear, or something that he doesn't want to think about, he could hide his reaction, if only a little. But he can't, because he's not capable of such things, because he is a child of Volcano and an Erich and he wears his heart on his sleeve, and even if he didn't, even if one day pigs flew and hell froze and he became some sort of master manipulator, Melantha would still see right through him like water.
She reminds him a little of water, too. Fire and water and maybe a little earth, just like Charlotte is air and water and maybe a little fire, and he is earth and fire and maybe a tiny bit of air and water too. His thoughts stray; he's avoiding the topic. He pulls himself back. Water trickles down her face, Melantha-who-he-loves. Erich's brow is furrowed and he looks deeply unhappy and then he wraps his arms around her, his legs still stirring the water. He gives her a brief, tight hug.
"I hate thinking about all that," he says: unhappily. "I just wanna leave all that crap in the past, because in the past I wasn't happy and I didn't feel like I belonged and sometimes I was really angry. But now I'm happy and I belong and I'm not angry anymore, and... that's easier. It's easier if I just leave all that as before and all this can be now, or after, or something.
"I don't think that's swallowing the hurt." He looks at her. "Is it? I don't know. Maybe it is. But it's a way for me to just ... be in the moment and be happy."
MelanthaIt does not please her that she has made Erich feel unhappy. Deeply, bone-wrenchingly unhappy. It pulls at her brow, but her crest doesn't fall. She doesn't rush to him, hold him, tell him sorrysorrysorry. He comes to her, and he holds her for a moment, and they sink a bit, but not very far. They bob upwards again just as easily. She wants to hold him back, but their feet aren't touching the ground, and they would drown just to hug each other.
"I know you do, Erich," she murmurs, when he says he hates thinking about it, he just wants to leave it, because it's Not Happy and he didn't belong and he was angry. She waits for his arms to flow outward, to keep them aloft, and then she hugs him back. See. She can be so patient.
"I'm not going to dig around in your heart until we find all the bad, sad, angry stuff out of nowhere just so we can say we did," she says softly, while she's holding him, before she slips away to swim, working her legs, spreading her arms across the surface. "But when it does come up, and you shut down and fold in on yourself like I mean? That's... I think that's swallowing it. It's pretending it doesn't still hurt sometimes."
Her brow is still furrowed. She looks sad. Or pitying? Which doesn't have to be gross. It can be gentle. Like it is on her face, right now. Merciful but firm.
"But I'm also mostly talking about Charlotte, too. She's --"
Melantha's brow tightens. "Erich, I think Charlotte's... in love with me, a little."
ErichThat sort of stuns Erich. Erich knows Charlotte loves Melantha. They all love Melantha. They all love Charlotte too, and Erich besides. But in love, that means something a little different, just like it meant something a little different and made his heart skip a little just to hear Melantha say that she told Charlotte that she was in love with Erich and this thought is going on forever.
His train of thought skips back to the present. Charlotte; in love with Melantha. Erich is surprised and Erich doesn't know what to say and Erich didn't even know Charlotte was capable of being in love when she couldn't even think about sex, but then that's probably just Erich being brainwashed by shitty modern culture and tying love and sex together when they don't really have to go hand in hand.
"Really?" is what he comes up with in the end. It's a dumb thing to say, and it kinda just hangs there a second. "I mean... why do you think that?"
MelanthaThat was the difference that made Charlotte go still, too.
Erich loves Melantha. Erich has been in love with Melantha for a good long time, even if he wasn't calling it that. It was obvious enough that Charlotte made a talen to lead him back to Melantha, when it was time.
And then there is Melantha loving Erich and Erich loving Charlotte and Charlotte loving Melantha and Charlotte loving Erich and... then there is Melantha. In love with Erich.
And Charlotte.
In love with Melantha.
There's a difference.
--
It's not that dumb of a thing for him to say. He's stunned, and it is basically, if not exactly, the same thing Charlotte said to her when she said she's in love with Erich. Melantha comes closer to him again, as before, sliding her arms around his neck and shoulders even though that puts her weight on him to keep them floating. Occasionally, being close to him is more important than not drowning.
"I just know," she says quietly, like they have to keep a secret from the trees that ring the grass that rings the pond. "I know that you and I being together makes her happy and I know that she is... sort of lonely, but that's not the right word. And I know that somewhere deep down, she also feels jealous and can't admit it to herself or anyone else.
"And I know that somewhere in there, even though she's burdened by her tribe's curse and it's complicated and she's traumatized and she's also very, very happy that you love me and I love you, she's in love with me, too."
Melantha is quiet there for a second, and she looks sad, as she has seemed to look sad for days now. "And I know that ...I'm a little in love with her, back."
ErichThat makes Erich feel a little bad. Maybe Melantha knew it would, and maybe that's why she came closer. Maybe she just came closer because she wanted to. Because Erich and Melantha close together is a good thing.
"I kinda feel like maybe I'm in the way now," he admits. "I know that's a stupid way to feel but... a part of me feels like maybe if I wasn't here and all in love with you and galumphing over everything with my in-love-with-you-ness, then maybe you and Charlotte could be together and happy and maybe you could help her and maybe she could help you."
He thinks a minute. And this is new, see: this is a level of insight Erich may not have been capable of even six months ago. Certainly not a year ago:
"But maybe that's just my I-don't-belong complex acting up again. Or something."
MelanthaTheir bodies are naked and the water is cool but not cold and they've acclimated, enough that she feels a little warmer when she touches him. When their legs brush together and her body is nearly flush against his, when her breasts touch his chest which may very well be her most favorite sensation on the planet. She came closer because she wanted to. Because it's good. And because she knew it would make him feel bad to hear all of that.
All the same, what he says startles her. He's close up, he can see it even in the darkness, in the nothing-but-moonlight, the way she seems so surprised to hear him say maybe I'm in the way. And it hits her like a knife, too. No, like an arrow: faster, concussive, going through her and not just into her. Her arms tighten around him, even though they sink a bit and possibly sputter on pond water. She hugs him tight, burying her face against his neck and shoulder as he's talking about galumphing over everything with his in-love-with-her-ness.
She eases, a bit, when he pauses and says, realistically: maybe that's just old wounds re-opening.
"Maybe," she says softly, which is the only way you touch such a wound. Very gently. "But Erich, you're not in the way of anything. You're not galumphing over everything. I'm in love with you," she tells him, earnest and fervent and close. "I'm happy with you and you help me and I really hope that I help you, too. And if Charlotte loves me in a way she can't really deal with or admit and if I love her back then... that's complicated and sad. But you're not in the way of me showing her that I love her, and being happy with her, and helping her. You're not in the way of her showing me that she loves me, and being happy with me, and helping me. We do all of that. We have from the start. Me and her and me and you and you two with each other and all of us together. I don't want you to feel, like... guilty or something for being in love with me, any more than I want to feel guilty that there's stuff between Charlotte and I that we may not be able to talk about openly with each other, much less resolve. And I really don't want this to mess anything up with you and Charlotte, either."
She looks, suddenly, very worried about that. Sort of afraid.
"Please don't be mad at Charlotte. If you are then I'm just in the way. I don't want that. I don't want anyone to be in the way of anything or go away, or --"
Tears. Thick, heavy tears welling up in her eyes, sudden and overwhelming, flooding her. She sniffs and she blinks and she tries but she's really, really worried. "I don't want anyone to go away."
ErichThere was a time when tears springing to Melantha's eyes launched Erich into a mild state of emergency. He wouldn't know what to do. He wouldn't know what to say. He wouldn't even know where to look or where to put his hands or or or --
okay; so truth be told, there are still times now that he reacts the same way. But not right now-now. Right now, he just wraps his arms around her, tight, and they kind of sink a bit again for a little while, enough that those tears welling up in her eyes become indistinguishable from lakewater, and then he lets go and they float back up and he kisses her fiercely on the arch of her cheekbone.
"I'm not going away. Neither is Charlotte. And I'm not going to be mad at her or you or anyone. No way. I love Charlotte and I love you and ... I totally understand why she might be a little in love with you. I even kinda understand why you might be a little in love with her, even if I can't imagine feeling that way about her 'cause she's Charlotte and I'm Erich and ew that would be like kissing your cousin.
"But I could totally see why someone would be in love with her. Which is why I think it's even more sad that she can't really ... deal with stuff like that? 'Cause it's not just her that's missing out, it's the imaginary other party too."
There he goes digressing again.
"But my point is," he gets back to it, "we're not going anywhere. I guess just ... I dunno. I guess if you felt like maybe the two of your were about to like... have a love affair or something? Maybe you could let me know? 'Cause I'm not totally sure how I'd feel about that. Or something."
MelanthaMelantha gulps on a sob and there's a bit of a gurgle as she gets some water in there too. She sputters and turns her head away, coughing, panting, but it does stay the flow of tears a bit. She sniffles and puts out an arm, sweeping the water to stay afloat without entirely letting him go. There's still traces of fear in her eyes: an old panic, and one she has never named, nor really thought of naming. Or acknowledged, at all.
Yet all she can think of, holding onto him in the water, is don't leave me don't leave me don'tleavemedon'tleavemedon'tleaveme.
Erich holds her, and kisses her cheek, and he tells her he's not. He's not leaving. Charlotte's not going away either. They love each other. They all love each other very, very much. And Melantha wipes her face with the heel of her hand, which is wetter than her face is, but at least the pond water is cool compared to those hot, ferocious tears. He is telling her that he understands, and then he's telling her the thought she has herself: it's sad that Charlotte can't deal with in-love, and with sex, and with all of those things. 'Stuff Like That'. She misses out.
Whomever might be blessed to receive her love is missing out, too. Which makes Melantha huff-laugh-cry a little, because in some ways, she is the 'imaginary' other party here. And she knows she's missing out a little,
but not as much as someone who could be a true mate to Charlotte. After all, Melantha is doubly blessed: she has Erich, too.
She shakes her head. "We're not. I wouldn't." She looks vaguely miserable. "I'll talk to you if I think something's going to happen," she says quietly, after a moment. "I'll talk to you if something happens that I didn't think was going to happen. I'll talk to you about whatever. I'm talking to you now." For the same reasons: because she wasn't sure how he'd feel. Because she loves him. She is in love with him. And because she doesn't want everything, all these things that are complicated and painful, to keep being buried under the surface with all three of them.
Melantha sniffs again. "But that's why I'm sad. Because it's sad, and it makes me feel better for you to know that I'm sad and why."
Erich"It makes me feel better too," Erich says, "which probably sounds a little weird but it does. 'Cause even if I can't make you feel better, then at least you're not just being sad alone. At least I know why you're sad, and then we can be together. Not like sad together, but just -- together."
Erich sort of backpaddles a bit. Slowly, so Melantha can follow him and not feel like he's just leaving. He wouldn't leave. He told her he wouldn't, and that's as good as a promise. But he does get out of the depths a little, far enough that his feet can touch bottom, because there
he can hug her for real. Which is what he does: he puts his arms around her and pulls her against his body and they are both naked and her boobs on his chest is just about his favorite thing ever too, but right now it's not really about that. Right now it's just him holding her, and her holding him, and they are both in the water and neither of them are worrying about brain-eating amoebae, and both of them are just
together. Seeing her sadness and spreading it out and understanding it and making it better.
MelanthaWhen Melantha is with Charlotte, many things are not said but they are felt. They are there, as real and present as anything, but never given shape in word or tangible form.
When Melantha is with Erich, they are either talking or they're not. If they are talking, they are talking directly. And if they are not talking out loud, they are acting, and those actions are clear as day.
Erich does not tell her that he is going to swim back a bit with her holding onto him so that he can put his feet down and hold her for real without threat of drowning, and Erich does not need to tell her this aloud. He starts to backpaddle and she moves a bit, swims with him but not away from him, and when his feet drop to muddy earth beneath them she winds herself around him more completely than she could in the middle of the pond, all arms and legs and nakedness in the water, pillowing her head on his shoulder again.
And Melantha does not tell him that she understands, or that it's not weird, that she can be sad and he can be in her sadness with her even if they aren't Sad Together and they can both feel better about the together part if not the sad part. But she doesn't need to tell him this aloud, because she makes a sound, a sigh, and she holds him like that, close and tight and dear, because he is.
And resting her head on him, because she also feels very fragile right now, very scared, very afraid of things like Alone or Left Behind or Gone Away, and she cannot put any of that into words without making them all that much more real, bringing up a terror that is very very old and not well understood, even by Melantha herself.
She sniffs a little. She holds onto him, and is held by him, as she starts to feel better. As it starts to spread out more, thinning, becoming something she can see and not drown in. After a while the sniffing slows and stops. And after a while she shivers, of course, because they aren't swimming around and the night air is only growing colder.
"Can we go home?" she asks him, softly. And because her mind also goes in tangents sometimes: "I can't wait til the new house is done. Because of the shower," which he may understand to mean the larger, more reasonably-sized shower they're building in her tinyhouse, one that can fit two people at once if they squish, as opposed to the current shower, which kinda can't. She rubs her face on his shoulder. "I just want to go home and get clean and go to bed with you."
Erich"Let's go home," Erich says, which is at once an answer and -- well, a sort of soothing, one supposes. His hand traces big, slow circles on her back. He says this like a fairytale, like a nice little bedtime story he's telling her, except it's true:
"We'll go home and take a hot shower and climb into bed and I'll hold you ever so tight and you won't have to worry about me going anywhere at all, because I won't. And neither will Charlotte. And then tomorrow we'll all work on your tinyhouse together, and we'll all feel better, I think."
He kisses her shoulder. It's easier to kiss her there right now; she's wrapped around him so. He kisses her and then he gives her a gentle squeeze and then he lets go, just enough so they can walk up onto the shore together.
"You're not gonna be alone again, you know," he adds, softly, as they pad through the shallows up to where their clothes are rumpled. "I don't think any of us will ever be alone again."
MelanthaMelantha is too clever by half, and she knows what he's doing, and she huffs a little laugh. It's not a bad story. It's just funny to her, achingly and sadly funny, that he rubs her back and tells it to her at all. It's hard for her to trust it. Not because it's hard for her to trust Erich.
But look at how she's lived.
He is right about this much: they'll work on the house and feel better. It'll be okay. No one is going to abandon her tonight, or tomorrow, not because of love growing so wildly it can't even find the light. Not because anyone is in anyone else's way. Not because anyone doesn't belong. They belong together: all three of them.
Erich tries to unwind his arms but Melantha doesn't let go. She's cold but she's still not quite ready. He's telling her she won't be alone. He's telling her they won't be. Ever. And her heart feels like it's collapsing in on itself, that terror -- that panic -- edging every breath she takes in silver, as though silver could burn kin the way it burns Garou.
"You don't know," she whispers. "No one ever knows."
ErichSo he doesn't let go. He hugs her very tightly when she says no one ever knows, because she's right. No one knows if someone's going to go away, not really; not when they're thinking about things like death and dying and the sort of lives they all live.
"Okay," he whispers back. "That's true. But none of us will ever let each other be alone if we can help it. And that's something, isn't it?"
Melantha"Yeah," she says, and it's very small. It's a concession to the truth. It is not an acceptance, not the sort that would sink into her bones and soothe the hurt or smooth away the fear.
Some say that the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, is the most potent and intolerable fears that humans are capable of feeling. To be alone is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to await death but not be able to see it coming.
To suffer abandonment, to suffer profound loss, is a back-breaking sort of wound. To endure it while very young, to endure it over and over, makes that fear more than just a shadow. It's not a phantom. It's a real enemy, bigger than you, stronger than you, haunting your footsteps from your earliest memories to your latest.
Melantha cannot let him go. But neither does she put on a brave face, and smile, and walk herself up out of the water with him to go make everything okay. She clings to him, and it is clinging, right now. Something very frightening that feels much more powerful than she is has been awoken in the depths of her body, the far reaches of her soul, and the night is very dark. She does not let go of one of the only things she trusts right now,
not just to keep her safe. But just to be there, with her, in it. Together.
--
It takes time, and then more shivering, before Melantha can unlock herself. Before she can be eased out of the water and towards shore, trembling and chilled, wrapping up in a blanket from the back of the truck that is actually sort of musty and has a leaf or two on it that needs to be shaken off. The blanket gets at least most of the heavy water off their bodies before they hop back into their clothes and get in the truck; Melantha's hair soaks the collar and shoulders and back of the shirt. Melantha's hair soaks Erich's shoulder, too,
where she leans against him, tucked to his side. Center divide be damned.
ErichIn truth, most times Erich thinks his role is to keep Melantha safe. He thinks that's what he ought to do, and what makes him manly and garou-ly and Ahroun-ly, or something. He doesn't think that's all he's good for, of course not, but -- he does think that's part of his Job as an Erich.
More and more, though, he's starting to understand that it's also nice just to be there. That sometimes he doesn't have to protect, or heal, or snap his fingers and make everything right again. Sometimes all he has to do is listen when she speaks. Hold her when she cries. Keep close when she feels alone. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that's the best thing he can do.
--
Up on the shore, dirt and leaves cling to their feet as they come out of the water. Erich runs back to the truck to get the blanket, and together they shake it out and wrap it around themselves. They huddle close, and they dry off, and then they climb back into their clothes that still smell like the days they've had. The truck seems small and warm and quiet after the night and the lake and the water. Erich turns the heater on a little, even though it's summer. Melantha's hair is heavy and wet, and it leaves their shirts a little wet. He puts his arm around her. She tucks herself against his side.
The drive home is quiet. They're both tired, Melantha more so than Erich. Erich is thoughtful, too. He thinks about Charlotte and he thinks about Melantha and he thinks about being alone or not-being-alone and he tries to think of a way to make sure none of them are ever, ever alone again but there just isn't one. No one can know for sure, just like she said.
He's here now, though. And none of them will leave if they can help it. That's true, too, and it brings him some small measure of comfort. He hopes it brought her a little comfort too.
--
It is quite late by the time they roll back into that highland clearing where they've made their camp these days. The tinyhouse is dark, and the new-tinyhouse seems ancient and mysterious in the starlight. Erich and Melantha are very quiet, unlocking the door and going inside, but when the shower starts up they'll probably wake Charlotte anyway.
Maybe Melantha goes to sit with Charlotte a while when Erich's in the shower. Maybe Erich goes hang out in Charlotte's room while Melantha's in the shower. Maybe they have a midnight snack together, or maybe not, but
in the end they settle down again for the night. They turn the lights out again. Erich pulls himself up into his loft, and then he drops back down because he remembers Melantha doesn't do that, she climbs the ladder, so he moves the ladder over and she climbs it and he climbs after her. His bed is the biggest of all their beds, and even though the mattress is thin it is soft and it is comfortable and all his bedding smells like him, comforting and familiar.
He wraps Melantha up in his arms. Midwestern boys, beefy arms, warm chest, beating heart. They don't make love -- they don't do that, not with Charlotte so near, not after everything they talked about -- but they stay close. They sleep together. They keep near, and they do not leave each other, and when morning comes it'll still be the two of them,
the three of them,
together.
No comments:
Post a Comment