SATANVS

Reuven lifted himself up in bed with a deep groan, remembering the feeling of her sitting upon the base of his pelvis; feeling the remnants of her devilishly sweet touch; her arms encased around his skull as though she could protect him from all that threatened to undo him with her body alone. He felt intoxicated with it; confused and a bit dazed. Like the floodgates had opened up the moment she showed him such softness existed within her—even if, deep down, he had truly known of it since the day she’d clung on around his forearm at the clinic. It was something else entirely to be on the opposite end.

He thought her making him dinner and whisking around his home like some rapturous little dove was bad enough. Now what was he supposed to do? Now how was he meant to avoid that sickened part of him that wanted her to be everything to him? That wanted her to be his anchor, and he—hers?

All ruminated not in the conscious part of his mind, but its much less sentient counterpart. Somewhere physical—a panic with no name; a tension with no description. He carried it with him as he made himself decent again. Some metaphorical ritual that spoke everything of the dawn after the dark.

Somehow, despite having done virtually nothing but lay in bed for the past two days, he felt like he’d been run over by a truck. All of his muscles ached; the adrenaline of last night spent through, and in its wake left some low dither of pain infecting his every nerve.

The harsh slam of shame rolled through him twofold when he dragged out of bed, and noticed the scent of bacon lifting up through the living room.

She was cooking breakfast.

He knew Nara well enough that she’d have made him a plate along with hers. Something nauseous swam around in the pith of his abdomen thinking about how she might regard him now—the morning after—and if she would think of him differently, or be uncomfortable by him. What if he entered the kitchen and they danced in some awkward tango? Something worse and more dense than the one they’d trudged through in her first days here?

And then, too, came this feeling of… inadequacy. Whereas prior he held just a muted echo of protest, lingering somewhere deep beneath his fascia, now he felt totally and wholly unworthy of her acts of service. Had he not taken enough already? Had he not already roped her into being something entirely outside of the definition of ‘roommate’?

Reuven’s mind scrambled with exhausted, unregulated overthinking as he descended the steps. He could hear oil sizzling and metal clanging.

Immediately, a phrase came to him, wanting to be set free from the trap inside his chest.

I’m sorry. For what? For everything.

She did not become unveiled to him until he’d crossed the threshold from living room into kitchen, and stood there in the archway, bare feet on cooled wood, watching her briefly in the purgatory between him arriving and announcing his arrival.

She had her hair tied back, swooped up into half a ponytail with a soft pink ribbon. The rest of it lay down, hung low around her shoulders. It was getting long. Fluffy within its loosened curls. Something within Reuven ached. He couldn’t be sure what.

“Hey,” he murmured, his throat still dry from all of last night’s vomiting and spiraling. She was lifting onto the tips of her toes, also bare, to reach for a cup from the second shelf in the cupboard. He quickly strode over to help her, his hand capturing the mid of her back as he did so in some silent gesture of I got it .

Nara’s eyes canted up and over at him, drawing over his features with something objective and analyzing. As though she were trying to figure out if he was still that man she’d met last night in his bedroom, or if he’d returned to the one he’d been just a few days prior.

Their fingers brushed along one another as he handed the cup to her, and she murmured a soft thank you in the same moment he patted, casually, at her shoulder. As though doing so could level out the intimacy of holding her waist. Why he couldn’t keep his hands to himself was yet another thing to wallow internally in his shame about. Lately it had felt like trying to keep them to himself was like fighting the urge to drink water after a salted meal, or turning down some carb-laden nutrition after a long, strenuous day.

She was… relief.

He wanted to be connected to her physically more than he could admit to himself. More than was appropriate. More than she had already permitted him. And that was not an easy shame to contend with. What had happened last night only drew open the floodgates.

Though there was no palpable tension between them—to his surprise, things felt utterly and completely usual—he still felt off; tilted on his own axis, waiting for her to give him some signal that something very serious and very damning had changed between them.

“Do you want orange juice? Or apple juice?” she chimed, so casually, as though making him a fresh glass of juice was just the most natural thing in the world for her to do. That coiling ache in his chest tightened, suffocating him from somewhere deep within.

He cleared his throat, hesitating a moment, while he reached to open the fridge and look in it, just for something to do other than eyeing Nara like he was some lost puppy and she was his savior.

“Oh—um… orange is fine,” he obliged, though that shame within him quickly raged its fire up through his chest, snapping its embers at his unbroken skin. Weakening his confidence around her.

Why had he done it? Why had he allowed himself to be so vulnerable, so rapidly, so… so intensely?

“And your eggs?” she continued, her lilt unassuming, and so goddamn sweet. Sweeter than he deserved.

His hand found the back of his neck.

“Nara, you—you don’t have to make me meals,” he tried, some attempt at relieving her of whatever duty she felt obligated to. “You’re already doing a lot, with the garden, and cleaning.”

Some unexpected huff left her then. A half-humored one, with just enough tang to make Reuven perk up. “I want to. How do you want your eggs?” she insisted.

Reuven still protested, his gaze glued to her posterior, watching her hair sway as she moved, pushing eggs around the cast iron. “I’m bein’ serious. You-you’ve done a lot already and—"

“No! You don’t get to do that—” she suddenly rasped, emotionally. Frustrated breathless and stirring at the pan more forcefully. A tone she had never held with him before, but disarmed him all the same. He immediately stopped, rooted to the cabin beneath him in silence. “You don’t get to do that when you took care of me when you didn’t even know that I was raped. That they—they fucking chained me up and wouldn’t let me eat and—and hurt me every day for almost two years —so no , Reuven Aronov, you don’t get to do that. Sit down .”

He had forgotten about those final few words she had spoken to him as his consciousness drifted last night. He had forgotten that three-syllable response he’d slurred until just then.

A boiling-point anger exploded in his chest. A rage that licked up his throat, to the edges of his jawline. A heat, bounding with his heart, as realization struck fast and sunk its fangs in deep. A violent anger. A protective anger. A lethal anger.

Not aimed at her, but at that nameless ‘they’ in her proclamation.

“What?” he breathed. As if second guessing his own ears.  

“Sit down,” she repeated, more non-negotiably, huffing. 

“Who?” his voice came barreling from his chest, seething— dangerous .

“It doesn’t matter—”

That anger—misdirected. It boomed forth from his chest in a deep, demanding intonation before he could catch it. He raised his voice with her. He bellowed down at her with all of the violence barely contained just behind the prison of his flesh.

“Yes it does!” he suddenly bellowed, a surge of violence, borne from his need to protect her, forcing through his volume.

An argument of passion, exploded from nowhere.

Where the context clues of his tall, wide stature, and intense visage and throat full of decibels vitrified her immediately, something new came rushing forth through her veins. Not a fawning, succumbing countenance. Something deep within her understood that, despite his size and despite his full capability to harm her if he so desired, Reuven would never so desire.

Perhaps it was that safety that emboldened her.

Nara yelled back at him so instantaneously that the gravity of what she’d done couldn’t snatch back the words fast enough. She felt the error of her behavior before the last syllable even left her lips.

“It doesn’t matter right now—!"

She’d yelled at a man.

An older, much larger, much stronger man.

That fear her father had instilled within her sprung rapidly in the cavity of her chest, sinking down like ice over her spine, over her torso. The prickle of fast approaching tears spreading through her sinuses. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the neck up, and as she made her next demand—softened, fearing —her fingers trembled. “Sit down—” It croaked out almost as a beg. A pleading, cracked thing. Still nerved—how, or why, she couldn’t be sure.

And then the answer to that why or how was delivered to her just a moment later.

Reuven’s dark, brooding gaze had softened almost the second after he’d yelled at her. He stood, tall, and imposing, and perfectly capable of disciplining her for daring to raise her voice at him, and yet— he sat down.

The girl’s breath hitched as she set his plate down before him, shakily, avoiding his eyes, while his stared directly into her profile.

“Eat it,” she demanded again, though this time much softer. Her arms crossed over her chest, her curls long and curtained around her shoulders. She demanded, and though her heart did sing its frightful tune, she knew, somewhere deep within it, that he would never hurt her.

Her voice had been high; girlish, strung, trying to maintain all of that bravado she’d just had a second ago. Trying and failing.

Reuven did as she said anyway.

His large fingers dove for a piece of bacon, and he chewed off a bite.

Nara’s inner calamity, about not staying in her place , raged through her as she sunk back, away, trying to hide in plain sight like she had once done with her father in the room. A dense, masculine presence that demanded respect— or else.

Somehow, that presence became warped and attributed to Reuven in that split second with her back turned, as she began shakily plating her own breakfast.

A poignant silence bloomed between them.

Reuven, filled to the very brim with his shame, was the first to break it.

His voice carried to her with all of that gentleness she only knew of his voice producing. That same tender, protective baritone.

It melted down through all of her defenses like a warm knife over butter.

“I’m sorry.” He paused. She could hear the remorse amongst his tone. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

The shock of his apology, not only happening at all, but so immediately , clung to the goosebumps upon her skin. Her own voice was still a bit strained, as she fought back that lump in her throat, and kept her eyes focused on the eggs she was scooping. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine—”

“It is fine.”

“Nara—” he sighed.

“I said it’s fine!”

“Nara.” His voice fell back into that commanding boom, though rounded at its edges. Lifted only for emphasis. To make her stop .

Nara was shaking. She swallowed, quietly, at her own saliva before inhaling slowly, and conjuring up all of her bravery to look his way.

She turned to face him with her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes big, and glossy. Her pout trembling, ever so slightly, though she held onto her dignity, as she found his eyes and looked to him expectantly.

He was positioned towards her, his own limbs relaxed; his legs parted wide and sturdy. His presence commanding, but not like her father’s.  Commanding and… comforting.

Her resolve crumbled the second their eyes melded into one another.

“Come here, Elnara,” he offered, his voice much gentler.

Nara sniffled, still holding her posture tight and her chin high. She approached and stood before him with her hands fallen to toy with her fingers in some self-soothing gesture. Bravado fallen.

Was he angry at her?

She felt like a little girl again, about to get scolded.

Then—he reached forward and captured one of her wrists, to help tug her forward and into his arms.

“Come here ,” he murmured, and the second she found herself back in his lap, her final defenses slipped away. Any doubts about him hurting her, emotionally or physically, did too. She curled into the warmth—now so familiar , so safe —and took refuge there, pressing her face into his neck and finally giving up the fight against her tears.

She cried, shakily, against him, clinging on for dear life.

Reuven’s hands went coasting, gently, protectively , over her back, rubbing soothingly over the fabric of her— his —shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured again, after awhile. She felt the rumble of it lifting through his chest against her ear. Her fingers wound up tighter in the hair at the nape of his neck.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, lilted, much too sweet, much too forgiving.

It was not something she was privy to—how finding comfort in his lap was placating back his anger. That anger that threatened not her, but those three strangers who had abused her. She did not know how those homicidal thoughts he’d once had were now front and center, raging like an all-consuming fire within him. Trying to take his sanity. Trying to draw his worst evil out from where he’d kept it secured behind lock and key since they’d met.

The only indication Nara had of it was the pounding of his heart.

But she served well as an anchor.

And he was playing a dangerous game letting her be, Reuven was sure of it.

Behind the prison of his mind, he imagined slaughtering that nameless they in her story of violation and starvation. The most heinous imaginations of torture, playing like a clip-show in his mind. Not because he’d enjoy it. No—the origin of this desire was relief. Relief from his anger; from his need to enact revenge for hurting her, for hurting someone so sweet, so generous, so helpless . The thought of her—in that state he’d found her in—being defiled and abused rampaged through his mind in some intrusive image that hiked his heart rate with fury and devastation.

Nara had endured so much more than he had understood until just minutes ago, and now that she had revealed to him even just those few words—raped, chained, starved—the memories of their earlier interactions came flooding in to observe with new light.

That night he’d picked her up. When she had backed away from him. That look in her eyes.

She’d been terrified of him. Because she’d been raped, chained, starved.

Those first few days, when she’d barricaded herself in the guest room and wouldn’t leave even to eat, too afraid to even answer the door. Because she’d been raped, chained, starved.

That day she’d spent in the bathroom, sobbing herself hoarse.

That day she’d recoiled violently from that doctor’s hand, and launched herself into his own protective embrace like it was life or death.

That night she had opened the door, and crawled her way into his arms, and clung to him like a child, and fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.

Reuven inhaled a shaky breath, petting, almost roughly, at her hair. Trying to hold onto her; trying to protect her, from something that had already been through and finished. Trying to keep his sanity against the sudden wave of shock and fury.

He didn’t want to scare her. She didn’t need to witness his violence, especially not while she was already vulnerable, so he coached himself, silently, trying to ease back the crimson flames threatening to blind him.

It’s okay. She’s right here. She’s safe. Right now. Right here. With me. She’s safe.

A silence befell them, a brief one, lasting only long enough for Reuven to wrangle his worst instincts back in and become somewhat measured again. He didn’t show it—the way all of those heinous ideations rippled through his thoughts now. Much like he had once put aside his emotions in front of his children, so as to continue serving as their pillar of safety no matter what, he fell so quickly, so naturally into that role here, with Nara.

His affection was how he expelled his anger. Brought from a rapid boil to a simmer.  He couldn’t go back to change what had happened, but he could give her this, right now. An opportunity to vent about it. A safe, open domain for her to find her own catharsis. “Do you want to talk about it?” he whispered, gruffly, against her hair.

There was a long pause.

Nara was staring off towards the sink, her eyes wet with tears that had slowed and ceased, her cheek puffed up against the sturdiness of his chest. She felt safe there, with his heartbeat against her ear. Safer than she could remember feeling ever before in her life. Safe enough that the memory of Hunter, and Tyler, and Poppy couldn’t touch her, not fully. In some strange way, it was as though Reuven’s arms, as they encased her now, were also serving as a barrier to all of those hideous memories that lurked just beneath her surface.

She sniffled and shook her head slightly, releasing a nasally, ”Mm-nnt.”

“Okay…” he whispered, so carefully, so gentle with her. His palm came smoothing back her hair. Comforting her. He might not have been able to find the right words, to know how to make her feel better if she had shared, but he knew how to be gentle with her. He knew, now, that his gentleness was more vital to her than any recited empathy could offer. “Okay.”

Something in him had flipped a switch.

All of the shame he bore about last night had dissipated and been replaced by an anger that coursed energy through his musculature. Everything in him wanted to use his bare hands to choke her rapists to their suffocation. Faceless forms, committing evil towards this girl who had some way, somehow, found the strength to walk around his home and be kind and bubbly and worth all of the kindness the world could offer.

“Eat your food,” she whispered, almost in some whine, as she played with the curls at the nape of his neck. “Stupid…” she tacked on, playful and soft.

It was enough to center him. Ground him, back to her, back to now.

He’d been through this feeling a thousand times before.

He knew what to do with it.

His palm dragged down her hair one last time before he reached over and scooped a fork full of eggs and brought them to his mouth. “Thank you,” he murmured against his chewing. “For everything, Nara.”

She sighed, a content hum in her throat, while she closed her eyes and pressed her face into his shirt, where she mumbled back at him.

“You’re welcome. That’ll be ten dollars.”

A chuckle lifted through his chest, to his own surprise.

“Ah, shit… I owe you allowance now?”

“Damn straight,” she huffed out a nasally giggle. Reuven sighed, something relieved, at the sound of it.

“Alright,” he agreed, absentmindedly dragging his fingertips along her spine. “Ten dollars ain’t a bad deal for this meal.”

She pulled back, ever so slightly, to find his eyes, melting into them despite their resurrected banter. “That rhymed.”

A tired grin tugged up over his canines. He reached to gently tuck a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, and echoed: “Damn straight.”

        He didn’t want her to witness him. He didn’t want her to see this demented part of him, how it transformed him into someone even he, himself, didn’t recognize. Nara had been such a perfect distraction from it all; a perfect alleviant. But it was all bound to come crumbling down eventually, wasn’t it? And now, with his emotions already so high from the past week’s events, the older man had trouble thinking straight. Seeing anything but red.

He’d stopped seeing the axe and its swing hours ago. All that was left of its reality was the pound of force rippling through his lats every time its apex struck down through the next log. Helping to purge all of that pent up energy that he had no other outlet for; helping to placate that violence in him into exerting through chopping wood, rather than exerting it on something— someone —else.

It was a good thing she’d elected to spend most of the morning in the house, reading her new book and writing in her journal, because Reuven didn’t want to be seen. Not like this. Not with his pupils dilated and his expression pointed, speaking of all the lethality he nursed behind it all. Jaw tight. Brows furrowed.

For hours, he had tortured himself with his questions about it all, stoking that fire within him, quelling it with every new throw over his shoulder and down. Who? And how long? When he’d found her—how long had it been? And where were they now? What exactly had they done to her? And where? And how —how did she wind up in their prison? How did she find the strength to survive it? And when she met him… how did she find the strength to trust him?

His emotions went through revolutions, all tucked away and hidden from her sight, because she didn’t need to be exposed to this—this carnal part of him that wanted to rip throats from shoulders. Pain bloomed beneath all of the anger. Pain for her. Pain for the fact that, though irrational, he had not been able to stop it, and he had not been able to protect her before any of it had gone on at all.

All of it was mixed up in that dangerous echo of his own past—whispering to him about a time when he wasn’t able to protect someone else he loved cared about. Four someone else’s. Now it was all becoming real, you see? So very, very real—that this was not some precarious thing. This life he lived with Elnara was just as capable of coming to an end as every other that preceded it, and just as capable of reaching that demise through horrors that he could not prevent.

What if, somehow, some way, it happened again?

There was no doubt about it. He would kill them. He would kill them in broad daylight. He would kill them without a second thought.

Something devious and heinous within him wanted to march back into the house and demand that she give him the names of her rapists. What they looked like. What cars they drove, and where they lived, and as much goddamn detail as she could give him because he wanted to plan it.

He wanted to etch out every fine detail of how and when and where to hide the bodies and deliver her justice, in the way that the world was too cruel to deliver. But Reuven? Was it an act of affection, then?

Premeditated. Surely, a court would see only how it was premeditated , and nothing else.

His breath held some half-formed growl within it as each heave pulled through his lungs.

He kept himself put.

Whatever little sanity he was capable of keeping— only because of her —he used it like a lighthouse. He let it guide him. He focused on it for dear life, and didn’t act on his worst impulses, because if he did—if he went off and hunted these people down and slaughtered them like he wanted to… what would she think? And where would she go?

The threat of prison now hung closer than ever, looming over the back of his neck as a very real possibility that he, now, did not want to happen. Before, in his dissociated state, he had often had these daydreams that almost romanticized it all. Botching the clean-up just to be caught. Wanting someone else to put a stop to his madness, because he couldn’t.

Well, his someone came along.

And she was sitting in there, on his sofa, content, and at peace, and safe, and if he went off and fucking killed her rapists and got caught , how would he be able to keep her safe from a jail cell?

No . It couldn’t happen.

So he chopped wood.

He swung that axe over and over like its repetition could bring him salvation.

And he used thoughts of Nara, alone, without him, as fuel for doing that and only that.

It wasn’t until late past noon that his object of protection emerged from the cabin, taking careful steps along the warmed wood of the back deck with her bare feet to bring him gifts of nourishment.

A stark, bright and affectionate backdrop to contrast and compare his inner world to. To anchor to. To find something, in his physical exhaustion, to make him stop.

He was dripping sweat; his shirt was buttoned down deeply from its neckline, not entirely from his own doing. Droplets of salted sweat darted down the sides of his face and through his chest hair, straight down his torso. His breaths came in ragged and beastly.

A large mason jar filled with ice and water was brandished his way with big eyes, full of hope and admiration. “Reuven?” she chimed, just a bit uncertain. “Are you okay?”

A girl full of butterflies and worry. She tried not to ogle at his exposed abdomen as she interrupted his labor. Nara wasn’t fully sure why he was chopping wood, albeit so vigorously, since they rarely needed to get the fire going save for a cold night here and there. But she could see it in the nuances of his appearance—he was upset. Angry, she might have guessed. She also presumed his anger was borne from those nightmares that had plagued him through the night, at least until that final crescendo before they both fell asleep and stayed asleep.

Nara hadn’t the faintest, fleeting thought that he might be nursing ire about the torments of her past that she had revealed to him. It was such a stark improbability in her mind, for anyone to care so much about her pain and traumas, that the idea of it was almost laughable to her.

How humorless the reality truly was. The man before her was seething, in his own, quiet way. It simmered beneath his surface; dilated his pupils just a fraction more, though that was not so apparent. Unbeknownst to Nara, his pupils always dilated when they looked her way.

“It’s hot. You need to stay hydrated,” she scolded gently. No true malice or disappointment could be found, not for him. All of her scolding was done out of care. He briefly cradled the back of her head in his palm as he took the jar from her fingers, his brushing heavily along hers, and drank deeply from it, catching his breath.

“Hot?” he accused playfully, dragging his knuckles along his mouth. Droplets of water glistened against the gray of his beard. “What are you talking about, Arizona?” he teased. His head was feeling clearer again. His body ached, in a necessary way. In a way that was easier to give attention to over all of those homicidal ideas stewing in his head.

Nara grinned, the pout of her lips pulling up so effortlessly for him as she went sitting down on the top step of the deck stairs and rested her cheek on her bare knee, watching the bob of his adam’s apple as he finished off the glass. “I guess I got used to the cold…” she mused, and it was the truth. Her inadvertence to the temperature at the end of the winter season had shocked her. She’d even found herself sort of enjoying it.

The forest looked beautiful blanketed under snow. And there was something distinctly renewing about laying in silence on the sofa, next to a crackling, radiating fire.

“Uh, huh,” Reuven smirked, the banter of days and weeks previous finally seeping back into his present. It was perplexing just how easily she made him feel human again. Like, maybe… maybe he wasn’t such a monster after all. Maybe he could keep all of those gnashing, evil ideations away and turn a new leaf. For her. With her.

Nara chewed on the plush of her lower lip, looking up at him wide-eyed. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Whimsical, reckless worry. He would not tell her the truth, because he didn’t want her to worry about him. He would find his footing in reality again soon. He’d already started.

A shrug lifted Reuven’s shoulders before he used the bottom edge of his shirt to mop the sweat from his forehead. So automatically, Nara’s eyes flickered to his abdomen, where his musculature stood more defined from the exertion amongst the hairy, dark masculinity slicked over with sweat. Some horrendous, sinful thought flashed through her head, flushing her cheeks with a rosy hue that she quickly tried to hide by propping her face in her hands.

It only barely worked. The pinkened blush creeped up towards her eyes, across the bridge of her nose. Reuven swallowed, staring just a second too long at it; noting, mentally, that same, perpetual word he’d attributed to her: pretty .

A new flash of murderous anger ripped through him at the idea of her being tortured in the way she had been. It was so repulsive it was almost unbelievable. How could anyone hurt her? How could anyone see such a beautiful, innocent, kind woman and want to ruin her?

He inhaled slowly, and exhaled a sigh.

Calm down.

“Yeah. I just—need to get out of the house,” he offered, trying not to worry her. His jaw flexed.

Nara hummed for a moment, playing with the ends of her hair, before pitching, “Maybe we can go camping?” An uncommitted idea. There didn’t seem to be much else to do in terms of getting out of the house that didn’t require at least a forty-minute drive.

He paused, considering it. He hadn’t been camping for awhile. It  wasn’t entirely necessary when living in a cabin tucked away in the forest anyway, but it would be nice to have a slight change of scenery. Sleep on the ground. There was always something distinctly primal about it, in a good way.

“Yeah. Yeah, we could do that. You ever… been camping before?” he wondered, lifting a brow as he went to set the now empty mason jar down on the deck.

She shook her head, a giggle amongst her chest. Light and radiant. It brought a soft, adoring, automatic smile to his lips. The closest thing Nara had ever gotten to camping was her time spent in the desert. This, she imagined, would be much, much more comfortable.

“Alright,” he agreed, taking a heavy seat down on the steps beside her. He scanned her face for a moment, just to take in her features again. The sight of her had begun to leave him a bit breathless, and not from exertion. He groaned, stretching out one of his legs to relieve the pressure in his kneecap before reaching over to tuck a strand of her out of her face and back behind her ear.

Nara stared over at him wide eyed. Her own pupils drinking him in amongst the backdrop of dark brown irises.

“Alright. First time for everything.”

          Razor-tipped vines climbing pillars of centennial oak, reaching from the base of the forest floor—up, up, up—towards humidity; towards sunlight. How could something so beautiful be so parasitic? And, then, what was the difference between parasitism and symbiosis? And when the two met in overlap, were their defining lines as sharp as those vine leaves? Or were they dull and indistinguishable? Could parasitic coalescence be just as beautiful as symbiosis? Could parasitic coalescence nestle down, deep, around the atoms of a man and give him nourishment? Or was the very presence of that nourishment proof enough that what he held with Elnara was not so one-sided as he’d convinced himself it was? Could he reach out for her comfort in the same way she had—his, and the act not have any footing in selfishness or exploit?

Could he allow her to love him in the way that he had needed, for so long, and vice versa? Could he exist in symbiotic entanglement with her?

The question of it hung dense in the stagnancy of his still-booting-up mind. Like the humidity clinging to their throats and exposed shoulders, fluffing up their curls in a manner that drew faux resemblance to one another, as though they were relatives. As though she were his daughter, and he—her father.

Her fingers were curled so tightly in their vice that her knuckles had gone white.

They hadn’t gone over thirty miles per hour more than once in the twenty minutes she’d been sitting behind the wheel. Reuven was not proving the sentiments of the universe wrong, with how he lectured and praised, as though Elnara had indeed been cut from his own cloth.

“Alright, now… Nice and easy. You got it. You’re doing great,” he promised, and the flutter of excitement at his approval danced over her skin like the finest of electricity. Her cheeks flooded warm and pink. Nara chose to blame it on the heat when she caught a glimpse of her very bashful countenance in the rearview mirror, which had been canted down significantly to match her line of sight. Opposite to the driver’s seat, which had been raised and pushed forward to do the same.

Her driving lesson had been impromptu and near non-negotiable, only because her conscience wouldn’t allow her to tell Reuven no when he asked if she’d like to drive them up to the campsite.

A quick, anxious excuse was remedied with a follow-up agreement, on the condition that he would teach her everything .  “I’ve never driven before… If you show me everything, then I can do it.”

Reuven cited feeling exhausted as the reason why he wanted to pass off his typical driving duties to Nara. Her heart wouldn’t let her dare make him drive her around when he was already tired, and she knew he was still upset about something, even despite his reassurance. Though, as he taught her how to adjust her mirrors and use her turn signal, she did notice that he seemed a little less weighed-down. Exhausted, yes, but in a different way than before. The memory of his cradling hug from that morning drifted back to her when he had reached over her entire body to grab the owner’s manual from the glovebox, beneath a handgun that she hadn’t known was in there. The heat and weight of his presence sent a cool, blissful dither down her back, lighting her cheeks.

Luckily, he hadn’t noticed. Too engrossed in finding the section on vehicle operation with a lit cigarette propped between his lips. It was one of the very, very few cigarettes she’d ever witnessed him smoke. Another testament to her observation’s validity. He smoked when he was particularly stressed out. Unbeknownst to her, he smoked only when that particular stress was originated in thoughts of violence he’d better not entertain.

“Take a deep breath, Nara,” he commanded, gently, from the passenger seat. The pressure on his joints was slowly letting up, dulling out the screeching pain amongst them. It was only then that Nara realized she was holding her breath; choked up in the tension of her abdomen. Her lungs stung a bit as an exhale ploughed turbulently through her nostrils. “You’re doing amazing, sweetheart. I promise,” he reassured, his tone light and admiring and sending a sense of safety through all of that tension in her belly. After she took another breath, she felt the density of his large fingers meet the back of her skull. That lovely little scratch. That everything’s-going-to-be-okay scratch.

In the same moment dizzying goosebumps spread down her shoulders from her spine, her stature relaxed, as though his touch alone was enough to iron out all of her anxieties. Hyper-aware of how the truck felt beneath her shy reaching foot, Nara’s voice had drawn an octave higher. Fear, curdling in the center of her chest. She held on to the sound of Reuven’s voice for dear life, but didn’t dare take her eyes off the road before her, even though it was nothing but a long stretch of wet asphalt and trees for miles. Not a single other vehicle had come down or passed by. Her nerves were borne entirely from all of those core lessons her father taught her about her worth and ineptitude. Some strange, irrational insistence that women were naturally less capable of handling machines, especially the machines he “worked” on all day.

Reuven’s reassurance did more to placate her than either she or he realized.

“Okay, nice and easy. You’re gonna start slowing down and pull to the left here.”

A quarter of a mile down the road there was a patch of dirt cleared of trees; some makeshift parking lot, complete with a line of stones to serve as a bumper. Just enough space for one vehicle to rest while its inhabitants took the trek down a hidden hiking path.

Her cheeks grew hotter as she shifted her foot over onto the brake, and accidentally pressed down too quickly and too deeply, causing the truck, and the two of them, to lurch.

Almost immediately, Nara gasped, rescinding her boot from all of the pedals with quick, knee-jerk reaction. “Sorry!” she blurted, her fingers shaky. The error of her decision flooded panic through her body, sparking stressed tears in her eyes.

Reuven laughed softly again, and reached over to gently take hold of her wrist, and guide her into slowly turning the wheel, using what little inertia the truck had left to meander them over. “Hey—none of that. It’s okay ,” he promised. “You’re doing so good, ladybug.” A new nickname to coax her off the edge. It worked well. Whatever rushing had began its chorus against her eardrums was now just a hum, no longer pounding with her heart beat. With his reach came the sweetened musk of his sweat, lifting through the fragrance of the forest. Nara tried to ignore how it made her head feel dizzy. How she yearned to lean in, and tuck her face into the nook of his bicep and chest.

“Give ‘er a tiny bit of gas. Just to get up in this dirt patch right here,” he instructed gently, and she did as he said. “You got this, Nara.”

Very carefully, she tapped on the accelerator and then quickly braked again once they were in the clearing, pressing her foot fully down to the floor. The second the truck was stopped, she felt all the tension in her core dissipate, releasing it with a heavy sigh.

“Alright, now you don’t let go of the brake until you park, or else the truck will start moving again. Depending on the grade of the terrain, it could even start going backwards, so—” he prefaced, guiding her right hand off the steering wheel and over onto the joystick, “—just push the gear forward through all the letters till it hits P .” He helped her push the gear into park, his callouses curling around the delicate of her knuckles.

She ached to be entangled with him again. To be wrapped up in him, curled around him and clinging like a child. Somehow, even after last night, even after this morning, there was still a heavy pang of apprehension tacked on to every passing thought of wanting to encroach on his personal space. It felt like every muscle in her body was singing to be pressed into and coveted by his.

“Okay—I can let go of it now?” she asked, her tone high and uncertain; her foot still pressed to the floor on the brake.

“Yep. We can get out now.” Reuven nodded, passing her a prideful grin, and reaching for the back of her head again briefly, just to cup it. “Great job, kiddo,” he congratulated, the nickname recited only as some outward reminder to himself to stop looking over at her with such a softness amongst his eyes; to stop noticing the way her irises flickered light and amber against the passing sunlight.

It was difficult to police himself around her. It was difficult to remember that he had no right to gaze at her like she pinned the stars back up in the sky the moment he met her.

That nickname stuck a different landing for Nara. In her eyes, it was one more nail in the coffin of what she believed to rightfully be a clear and distinct show of how he perceived her. Not as someone he might one day want to touch in ways their current situation did not permit… but as a child. Kiddo. Her face fell just a fraction as she shimmied out of the driver’s seat, and took the short hop down to the ground from the height of the truck.

Her boots hit the earth in a stumble, of which he quickly caught her in before she could fall.

 A bashful thank you was muttered his way before they both took turns loading up supplies on their backs and in their arms. He did most of the lifting, even carrying one of her bags along with his own and the tent. The hike down was full of rocky, uneven terrain. On just a few occasions, she had nearly tripped again, but he had come to her rescue, letting her hang on by his forearm with their hands intertwined, so he could hoist her back up quickly if she did begin to fall.

Standing beside him like this drew an acute awareness into just how drastically different they were in terms of size. Reuven was twice her stature and then some, both in height and body composition. Enough to take her gently by the waist and physically pick her up and put her down on lower terrain when they came upon a short drop that he had managed easily, but she sized up and was certain she was going to tumble if she tried to jump.

The feeling of his grip, snug at her torso, his thumbs pressing into the softness of her belly… it did something strange to Nara. That same fluttery, sinful warmth from a few days ago came flooding back in where it should not have ever taken root in the first place.

The lingering baby fat in her cheeks was flushed red as all hell by the time they’d made it to their destination.

So similar to the cabin, the campsite was hidden amongst the forest; an enclave tucked deep within the trees, and hidden by them the same.

It was quite an intimate clearing. Enough space to fit a tent or two, a campfire, and a few chairs, before it all cut off into a wide, sparkling lake. Unlike the lake at the cabin, this one seemed to stretch on and on without boundary. It disappeared on either side of the campsite. It all was perfectly ordinary until she felt a light, cool mist caressing her face; and heard the soft, rushing hum of falling water.

Only once she’d walked right up to the edge of the lake, where dirt became stone, and stone became water, did the waterfall reveal itself.

Tucked off to the left, where trees erected from long formed boulders, a cascade of foamy, fresh water succumbed to gravity. It was the first time she’d ever seen one before.

The sight of it was so picturesque, it was like something out of a movie.

Elnara stopped, and stared, in awe.

The water sparkled with sunlight, its white noise comforting in the way a low chatter on the television was.

She did not see it—the way Reuven was looking over at her in much the same manner that she was looking into the waterfall. Her hands gripped loosely at the straps of her backpack, and she peered around, taking in the trees and the clouds and the lake before inhaling a deep breath and closing her eyes, feeling the presence of the moment.

After awhile, Reuven’s voice carried over to her. He had set down the various bagged items and approached, just a few feet away.

“Beautiful, ain’t it?”

Nara inhaled another soft, nourished breath, before blinking open her eyes. They were left hooded with peace.

“I’ve never seen one before.”

He chuckled, stepping closer, to watch the waterfall with her.

“First time for everything.”

        By the time he’d gotten the tent pitched and gathered stones and dry wood for the fire, the sun was beginning to set, lowering slowly along the lake’s horizon. He had sharpened up a makeshift spear with his pocket knife and fished in the shallow of the lake for dinner, while Nara had set up some bedding inside of the tent, and gotten utensils ready.

What she hadn’t anticipated was Reuven roping her into learning how to gut a fish, which she found thoroughly disgusting and slimy, and declared that she’d never do it again once the first one was finished. This earned her a hearty laugh from her camping partner, who excused her of her fish-gutting duties and let her go wash her hands in the lake.

Their marine bounty sat skewered over a crackling campfire. Its charring wood spit charcoal embers out here and there, floating along calm gusts of wind until ultimately finding demise amongst the grass and dirt. Amongst its smoke was the richening scent of slowly cooking proteins and carbs. The silence that had fallen between them was comfortable. Patient. It had become a quickly solidifying precedent between them that silence was not mandated to be filled. They were both perfectly content with just spending time around one another, even if they exchanged no conversation.

Though, after long, the confession Nara had made earlier, about her assault, about her kidnapping, it began to sink back into the forefront of her mind. This nagging, itching want to share it with him. Not only because she only was just now feeling brave enough to confront it, but because he was safe . Possibly the only safe man in the world, to her. She wanted to feel the depths of his safety beyond what she’d already known and had become addicted to. She wanted to feel his protection, even there, at the very bottom of her grief.

And some part of her knew, without a doubt, that he would nurture her there.

The memory of it all snaked up her throat, drawing a vice around it much like that metal she’d once worn every second of every day. It all, somehow, still felt like one really bad dream. Like the things that had happened to her, all of the violence inflicted upon her, surely couldn’t have truly happened, because now… now all she knew was softness, and warmth, and happiness, and comfort. How could such terrible things have occurred in her life when the past few months had been nothing but affection and peace?

It was all the more fuel for that candlelight within her, aching to be blown off into the wind and relieved of its burn. Nara rehearsed it, silently, in her head, trying to gain the courage. Trying to find the same bravery she’d had on that day she’d escaped. It was strange, wasn’t it? How the entirety of a life could hang in the balance of just one decision. Just one act of incredible bravery. One act of self-preservation.

Perhaps this was of that same nature.

In some soft, muted way. No death breathing down the back of her neck, drawing horrific panic into the center of her chest. No Hunter, spitting his violence down at her, his very presence accompanied by a heart-bounding density of danger.

Just Reuven.

Sweet, gentle, protective Reuven.

He was safe. The only safe man in the entire world.

Nara swallowed, softly, before she spoke up.

He was leaning forward, stoking the fire with the end of a stick. She stared into the invigorated and steadily glowing flames, if only to not have to stare into his eyes while she asked. Her voice left her so tiny, so tender, that he’d almost not heard her.

“Can I tell you about when I was homeless?”

Her voice hung in the air between them, with the poignancy of her metaphorically extended hand. The privilege of being allowed witness to her vulnerability.

Reuven stopped his rustling of the charring wood, and sat back on the log with a soft grunt, directing the entirety of his attention over to her. Only once she felt his gaze boring, observantly, into her profile, did she dare to look his way too.

Their eyes found one another, and held on tight.

“Yeah,” he murmured. Light. Gentle. Encouraging. “You can tell me anything.”

She swallowed again, her arms lifting so automatically in an effort to cradle herself. Some unconscious gesture at protecting herself, from the horrors that existed in her memory.

Something in her still buzzed with a panic that tried to convince her to abandon this. To let it be. Tried to whisper hateful rhetoric to her that he didn’t care, and why should he, and that she was bothering him.

Nara inhaled a shaky breath, her eyes still wide upon his. “Well… um…” she tried, though it suddenly struck her that she had… no idea where to start.

How does a girl tell of all the violence she was subjected to under the moonlight? How does she find the words, or the cadence, or the timeline? In her mind, sometimes, it was all just a big blur. A general feeling—of dry, scalding heat. Gritty sand. Fingers that sought along her body, where they did not belong. Other times, it was just a clip show. Moments, snapped off and gone dark just before the worst of them could resurface. An understanding, not a recollection. Nights where her body hurt so badly with bruises, and her stomach ached futilely for food, and her mind dreamed of death, if only to be free.

She supposed she would start at the beginning.

“I, um… I wasn’t supposed to be homeless. But I… I made a stupid decision,” she huffed, trying to draw a bit of self-depreciation in as something funny to soften the reality of it all. Reuven offered her a gentle, accepting grin, but did not say anything. He allowed her the stage, to tell her story to him.

Nara swallowed, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I ran away. When I was living with my dad, he.. he was just so violent. And he made me feel like I was…” she swallowed again, her eyes lifting, searching somewhere within for the right word. “Worthless.” She could hear that word, uttered in their native tongue, spit down at her like he was right beside her. “Like I couldn’t do anything right, and I wasn’t going to become anyone, and I wasn’t—important,” she whispered, her gaze falling finally, down to her fingers, where she toyed with them nervously in her lap.

With her gaze canted downward, she had not noticed the way Reuven’s jaw had tensed. The way his stature had become more solid. Subtle contractions of musculature, harboring unrealized violence.

She continued.

“And he used to hit me, a lot. Like… every night. So I just, I guess, I got tired of it. And I decided it was enough. So I left.”

The sound of her own blood was rushing loudly upon her eardrums.

“I had a friend, online. She was supposed to let me live with her. We planned it all out, for like a year. I was going to stay with her, and get a job somewhere, and just… never have to worry about it anymore. About Haneul hurting me.”

Her voice broke at the end. The memory of her naivete, all of her self-assurance, that bus ride from Arizona up to Nevada. It drew heat licking up the edges of her throat, threatening to close it entirely.

“But once I got to the place we were supposed to meet at, she just… ghosted me,” her tone fell flat with emotion. Something sarcastic, huffing, disbelieving rounded out its edges. “She blocked me.” Resentment. Because if Jaime hadn’t screwed her over, then maybe.. just maybe she wouldn’t have found herself lost in the living hell that she did. The dots had still not connected for her. That there was no Jaime. Jaime had never existed in the first place, and that person she’d grown so attached to behind a screen had been some serpent, lying through its cheshire teeth at her. Coaxing her into as vulnerable a spot she could be in, and only then pouncing.

Poppy’s bubbly, care-free tone. Sometimes Nara almost felt like she… missed her, in some strange way. In some horrible, self-harming way.

“And… at that point, it was just too late. I couldn’t just go back home. My dad would’ve killed me,” she inhaled slowly. “There was… this guy, who saw me crying, and he sat down and told me he and his friends were going to San Fran, and I could come with if I wanted.”

She snorted, feeling stupid, now that she was saying it all out loud. It sounded like it was too good to be true. How had she been so dumb to fall for it?

“And I believed them.”

Reuven was still staring, silently, over at her. Taking her in. Listening, intently.

Where Nara might have found herself feeling uncomfortably exposed with anyone else, she found comfort in his witness. Even from a few feet away, she could feel the density of his care for her. How it hurt him, to hear all of this. How it infuriated him.

“They kidnapped you.”

It wasn’t a question. Nara nodded anyway, her arms curling around herself again.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

Reuven swallowed, inhaling slowly and nodding. “Who?”

That same question from earlier. The one they’d had a spat about. Now, she lifted the delicate of her shoulder up towards her ear and finally answered it.

“It was three of them. Poppy was the one I trusted the most, but she wound up being just as bad as the guys. Tyler wasn’t as bad as Hunter, but… he still… raped me sometimes, too.”

That word—so vile, so razor sharp, fell through the air between them like an anvil. She spoke it so casually. A testament to how normal being abused and having her agency ripped from her had become for her.

Reuven took another deep breath, trying to level out his anger, trying to keep it all at bay. This wasn’t the time. She needed his comfort, not his ire.

“How long?” he murmured, almost afraid to know the answer. Afraid, because he knew, deep down, that it had not been just a one off thing. That it had gone on for much, much longer.

She went silent. Doing the math in her head. It briefly occurred to her, again, that he still believed she was twenty-four. The thought to confess to him the truth of her age only held merit for one second before she shied away from it entirely. What if it made a difference, to him? And he stopped holding her? And he stopped comforting her?

Perhaps that made her a terrible person, to hide it from him. Perhaps she was that awful, worthless person her father had always told her she was.

“Almost two years.”

She could hear the barely contained rage amongst his breath, how it trembled ever so slightly. His palms went grinding down the front of his jeans.

The stress, strangely, was not hitting her in remotely a similar fashion. Strangely, it only felt... good to finally talk about it. To finally allow it to be real. Like all of that panic inside her was being smoothed out and she was finally allowed to relax.

Timidly, she rose off of her log, and walked over to stand before him. His gaze followed her, looking up at her briefly before she crawled into the comfort of his lap again, apprehensive, as though even after all this time she still half-expected him to reject her. His arms curled around her easily, and she clung on tight around his neck, pressing her face in against his collarbone, and tucking her feet up onto his thighs.

There, she found sanctuary, breathing gently against his skin. Allowing herself to feel completely, and totally protected by him.

“Are you angry?” she whispered after awhile, reaching to intertwine her fingers with his. They held one another’s hand with an attachment better suited for lovers, not roommates.

He inhaled slowly, his jaw tense. His shoulders, too.

“Yes.”

Nara pressed her lips against his throat, softly, as if to placate him, before whispering against his skin:

“You saved me.”

The magnitude of her proclamation came barreling through him like the most potent of medicines. Something viscous and consuming. Nurturing the most fundamental parts of him—whispering adequacy where he had convinced himself he was not. That he had long, long ago become someone who could not protect, and could not save.

The sincerity of Nara’s breath, canting in, against his skin, as she told him of the rescue he’d performed without even fully understanding its extent… it drew goosebumps up his flesh.

Just like earlier, she placated him so easily. So effectively.

She grounded him back to the here and now, and off that edge of violence.

Instead, some sort of new chagrin came surging through him, and he cradled at the back of her head with his free hand as some means of protecting her, even here, even now.

Then, he dared to ask another question. A question he’d had for so long.

“When I found you, on the side of that road… was that when…?”

She fell quiet for a moment.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I was… walking for so long, I just… I don’t even know how long. I was just trying to get away. I don’t know how I was even still alive.”

His hold around her tightened. Then, the dam broke for both of them.

The severity of it all finally struck her, pulling through her chest. Suddenly, she was sobbing.

Her voice high and strained, gasping as it all came avalanching down. The reality of it. That it had all actually happened. Her face flushed, and her tears soaked into his shirt and his skin, and Reuven held her like she had always needed to be held. He held her like he would never let anyone, anyone , hurt her again.

His fingers found hold on her chin, as he gently brought her gaze out of the nook of his neck and back up to his. Tear-filled, reddened and wide. He pressed a kiss into her forehead, his own dark eyes glossed.

“You.. are a fuckin’ trooper—” he murmured, voice guttural. She huffed out some bittersweet laugh, her palms finding either side of his beard.

They stared into one another’s eyes, as windows into each other’s souls, and found belonging there, together.

“I’m so happy I met you,” she whispered, nuzzling her forehead into his. His strong nose brushed along her’s, button-like and much smaller. “When we first met, I was gonna kill you,” she confessed, a bit sheepishly.

The surprise of that information was enough to make Reuven laugh, stunned. “What? You were gonna kill me?”

She giggled, her face flushing even more crimson than it already was. “Yeah,” she chewed on the plush of her lower lip, remembering those first few days, when she hadn’t known just how much luck had finally fallen her way, or how important this strange man was going to become to her. “I thought you kidnapped me when I woke up. I had a knife, and I was gonna try to stab you.”

Reuven’s chest rumbled with laughter, something sad, something proud. “’Atta girl,” he praised, smoothing down her hair, before taking her face back into his hands to press another kiss to her forehead.

“You would’a let me?” she giggled, her nose stuffy.

He snorted, playfully. “I don’t know about killing me… I’d let you get a good couple of stabs in.”

She grinned, wide, something exploding within her that made her want to lean forward, and catch his lips with hers. Something she’d never felt before in her life. Her heart pounded wildly against her sternum at the thought; her cheeks blushing hard against the smile that pressed up into them.

Her lips, instead, pecked at his cheek. A satiating enough alternative. She could dissect why she wanted to kiss him in the first place later.

“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t. How else would I have learned to gut a fish?”

He chuckled, brushing his thumbs along her temples before his memory suddenly struck him.

“Oh, shit —the food—"

Only then did she clue in to the scent of their dinner, charring behind her.

Rather than pushing her off of him, he curled his arm tight around her back, and leaned forward, reaching to pluck the makeshift skewers off the fire and onto a pop-up table set up beside it with his bare hands.

She clung on, looking over her shoulder at the scene, with it canted up towards her ear.

“Ugh… Sorry. Did I ruin dinner?”

“No—” he asserted, firmly, protectively. “It just…” his eyebrows drew inward, as he scraped at the burnt scales to brush the charring off. “Needs to be cleaned.”

Then, in very Reuven fashion, he set the least burnt fish on her plate.

“Bone appetite, trooper.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

          The evening was beginning to taper. Now, with both of their stomachs full and the embers of the fire beginning to dwindle down into a calm smolder, the silence of the darkened forest was singing lullabies. Perhaps it was a gentleman’s gesture, or perhaps it was his way of trying to step back and get off her toes, and not be overbearing, but Reuven briefly reached into the bed of the truck to pull out the hammock as his choice of sanctuary for the night.

A frenzy of gnats lingered close to his tacky skin as he lifted up the smooth, durable fabric and began to secure a hefty knot around the sturdiness of one tree. When Nara climbed into the tent and Reuven did not follow shortly after, she went looking for him like a lost puppy. Her eyebrows drawn inward, the plush of her lips in a soft, involuntary pout.

She discovered him just a few feet away, messing with some rope. Her arms went cradling around the petite of her form, hugging at herself just to rub at the goosebumps lifting up her skin. “What are you doing?” she asked, innocently. Those big eyes of hers reflected the softening flames of the campfire, drawing some definition into her pupils from where they transitioned into chocolate brown irises. Always widened, for him. Unconsciously.

Reuven glanced over his shoulder at her, yanking one end of the rope hard with his fist. “Oh—uh, just settin’ up for sleep.” It left him so casually, she almost took insult, presuming that he didn’t want to spend the night with her in the tent.

“Oh…” she murmured, her voice faltering, her expression falling with disappointment. She watched for another long moment, toying with the ends of her hair before she got the courage to ask. “You don’t want to sleep in the tent?”

He stopped, regarding her as he inhaled a deep breath, his palm finding his beard and rubbing at it absentmindedly. “I… figured you didn’t want me to… you know.”

She gave a small, hopeful, but shy smile. “Please? I don’t wanna be in there all by myself,” she offered, before playfully continuing. “What if a bear comes? I don’t know how to fight a bear…”

A grin tugged up the corner of Reuven’s lips, cutting through his beard. “Oh, well in that case…” he enthused, abandoning the hammock. She gave an excited little squeal, and then grabbed his hand, and led him towards the tent’s entrance.

“How do you get in without, like… falling?” she wondered absentmindedly, since she’d just taken to full on crawling in.

A chuckle rumbled through Reuven as he did his own half-kneeling crouch to climb into the smooth, waterproof shelter. “No clue. We’ll have to figure that one out together, princess.”

The nickname shot a hot dither down her spine and through her chest. Nara excitedly crawled in after him, hands and knees and all, and found rest directly in his arms.

“Oh, hey—there you are—” he murmured playfully as she cuddled in, giggling and pressing her face into his chest, while his hands absentmindedly smoothed down her hair.

“Here I am!” she announced against the warmth of his chest, sighing and closing her eyes as her cheek puffed out against it. “I can’t believe you were just gonna let me get eaten by bears.”

He snorted, playing with her hair. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Mm-nnt,” she protested, shifting to pull herself up a bit higher on his chest. “I’m like prime rib for bears.”

“Prime rib?” he enthused, grinning softly. “Nah… Nah, you’re too sweet. More like birthday cake.”

She gasped softly, some sarcastic, huffing thing. “You would have let the bears eat me as their birthday cake?”

He rolled his eyes lightheartedly, snaking his fingers through her hair to grab a fistful at her scalp, and give a gentle tug. “Knock it off, dipshit.”

She giggled, though the feeling of his large fingers gripping so dominantly at her hair made something stir deep within her belly. She ignored it, and huffed, resting her chin on his chest to look up at him now, if only to give him her best, cutest pout. “Don’t call me that.”

He grinned softly, gazing down at her for a moment before he pressed his thumb along her pout. “Don’t call me that,” he mocked, playfully. She gasped, feigning disbelief, and slapped his chest slightly, before rolling off him and turning her back to him.

“Awh, come on…” he immediately protested, the warmth and pressure of her body still lingering upon his nerves. “I was just jokin’…” he promised, sincerely, as he pawed gently along her spine, as if to ask for permission to hold her again.

He wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here—how he’d become so used to her affection and giving her his own. How each other’s arms had begun to feel like home away from home, or how cuddling with her had begun to feel as natural as breathing. It was all incredibly inappropriate, for being her roommate, her landlord, whatever she’d like to perceive him as.

Formal. Civil. No strings attached.

At least, in theory.

Perhaps inappropriate could be subjective. Perhaps this didn’t need a name, or a label, and it could all just… be.

She hummed as she gave up the defiance, already missing his touch, and curled back into his side, where his arm was left open in waiting for her to do just that. She sighed happily, and he inhaled deeply, and they shifted ever so slightly together to get comfortable on top of the opened sleeping bag. And they fell into a comfortable silence. Her fingers tracing shapes along his sternum. His picking up strands of her hair and dropping them.

After awhile, he opened the field for them to discuss the cuddling, gently prompting, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Hm? About what?” she murmured, innocently. Her voice was softened, heavy. He didn’t realize she was falling asleep.

“’Bout this.” His fingers briefly dove to wipe strands of hair out of her face, and then he squeezed her a bit closer.

She shook her head softly. “Not really.” There was a long moment of silence, where Nara’s mind began to drum up hidden meanings within his words; wondering if he brought it up because he wanted to set some boundary with her. She felt those butterflies in her stomach knot up, gently, as she pulled back to look up at him again, her eyes big, a bit nervous. “Do you?”

The nervousness in her expression was clear as day. Reuven chuckled softly, his hand reaching to cup her face; his thumb brushing, lovingly, along her cheekbone. “Not really.” And it was the truth. It had been so long since he’d even felt comfortable enough with someone to give them more than a half-removed hug or pat on the back. There was something horribly and wonderfully addicting about all of this. Something that he didn’t want to acknowledge, out of fear that doing so would lead them both to the natural, inarguable conclusion that this was inappropriate and strange and not at all what two strangers choosing to coexist should be doing with one another. Much less two strangers of opposing gender, ages, and life experience.

Oh, but how blissful the purgatory was. Right here, with her face nuzzled into his chest, and their breaths lifting warm and patient in unconscious synchronization with one another. The forest sung its silence back at them, and the intimacy of it all was enough to draw that oh-so-familiar peace back into both of them. That peace that only the other could provide.

Where nothing in the world was wrong, because how could it be, when everything right here and right now was so perfect?

They were warmed in their shared body heat. Comfortable. He was playing with her hair. Lifting up dark strands here and there, just to let gravity take repossession of it, and fall back down into the sea of curls splayed out around her shoulders; around his chest.

“Thank you,” he murmured, after awhile. “For last night.”

Words could not truly articulate his gratitude with any eloquence. The effortlessness in which she had come to his nurture… it was entirely unfamiliar to him, and entirely, and hopelessly everything he had ever needed.

Not even in his marriage, so long ago, some lifetime ago, had Avigal ever treated him with such a gentle touch in the face of his grief. No backhanded comment to erode his masculinity for expressing it at all. No exasperation in the face of his faltering, no matter how infrequent.

No—Elnara had approached his sorrow with a softness unlike anything Reuven had ever experienced before, and he still wasn’t understanding what it had all stirred up within him. Not just last night—but all of this. The entirety of it. Her, and him, and what this force between them meant. Whether it was one-sided—the more optimistic side of him wanted to believe otherwise, but he accepted the reality of it that held more probability, which was that there was no force between them. There was just… a young woman who needed someone to treat her with dignity after a long bout of being denied it, and a much, much too old man finding inappropriate comfort in the way she turned to him to be held, and the way she seemed to exude an effortless and boundless light, rooted in something still able to cling to innocence, despite the torture inflicted upon her. And he did not know how to contend with that.

So, he played with her hair.

And he thanked her.

And he apologized, for everything.

“You don’t have to thank me, Reuven,” she assured, so easily, so softly. That softness melted down right through his own chest. He sighed against it, just as her fingers came up to grab at the gray of his beard, and give it a gentle, loving little tug.

His gaze fell into hers. Vulnerable. Widened, for her, only her.

“I’m really sorry I, um… That I grabbed you like that. I—” he inhaled, his jaw flexing. It had been eating away at him all day, like bacteria upon the flesh. Sitting there, in the back of his mind, like some stark reminder existing beneath every breath that he had, in the night, hurt her without meaning to do so. “It’s been botherin’ me all day.”

Still, that girl, so sweet, so forgiving, responded only with something as soft as her heart. She shook her head gently, and then shifted up, just slightly, to peck a kiss onto the bridge of his prominent, long-ago broken nose.  “It’s okay. I know you were just confused from your dream,” she answered so innocently. Those big eyes holding all the allowance and forgiveness he didn’t believe he deserved. Especially now… After learning…

They found one another’s eyes and didn’t look away. Not for awhile.

Even when he pursed his lips, for just a second, in hesitation, before finally offering an explanation.

“I thought you were my daughter,” he confessed, softly, as though the wind might hear and steal her away from him, too.

There was a moment of confusion that flashed across her features, only for a second, before a second emotion overtook it. Grief. Empathy. “Oh— Reuven…” she inhaled shakily, pulling her arms around his neck.

Like the most potent of drugs, Elnara’s touch washed comfort down through the rawest of his inner wounds. As though it were as natural as breathing, his arms curled around her, pilling her in, protecting her and discovering her protection. “It was rainin’ in my dream…” he explained, swallowing. She pulled back only to find his eyes, her gaze briefly flickering down to his lips and then back up to fall into those pools of onyx. She wanted to give him her full, undivided attention. She wanted him to know she was listening, and listening intently. She would witness his pain, just as he had witnessed hers.

As Nara sat up, and sat back on her haunches, her thighs upon her calves, she allowed this new information to sink down through her.  How he had clawed at her, panicked with something feral—the primitivity of a father’s love, trying to keep his child safe.

Something about that realization felt both haunting and softening. He held the protective, paternal masculinity that Nara had never witnessed before him. With time, it seemed, she was only to learn of how deep that valiance could reach.

“She used to love the rain. Would run up and try to open the sliding door, even when it was storming,” he offered after a long moment, his breath shaky; his baritone gruff and coarse, straining against its own emotion. The memory of his toddler and her chubby little legs, pattering her way over to the balcony door to try to let herself out and enjoy the elements sprung up in his minds eye. In his physical visage, the darkness of his gaze became glossy.

Nara searched his face, drinking in the juxtapose of his hardened, prominent features, against the broken, soft melancholy amongst his eyes. Somewhere deep within, her core ached—to banish his tears; to take away his pain.

She felt uncertain but determined. Uncertain about which words were the right words. Determined to facilitate his catharsis, no matter what.

“Was that her name? Kuna?” she whispered, recalling from the previous evening. When his hands were locked, so roughly, around her head, gripping like he’d never let go again.

Reuven nodded, then gave a bittersweet huff against the growing lump in his throat. He had to clear it twice before he could push words past the threshold of his lips.

“She was the funniest kid. Would want to go out and play in the puddles with her dollies,” he took in another shaky breath, his voice getting more emotional. “And she had this toy vacuum with a bunch of plastic balls in it, that she would help me clean with. Like her sister did when she was little.” He sniffed, his grin falling into a frown.  “Her mother always hated that damn thing.”

It was all so complicated, wasn’t it? All still so open-ended. A chapter without its final paragraph. A book with no binding. He felt hatred for his long gone wife. Hatred that was quickly snuffed out by guilt.

Nara felt the dejection emanating off him. So alike those days in her adolescence, when she would be picked up by her parents from Noona’s, and the depression effervesced off their bodies like parfum. Though, Reuven’s melancholy was so much different than her mother’s, or her father’s.

His was low and aching and withstanding. None of the violence or chaos of her parents’ depression could be found here. Nara was not aware of how intentional that had been on Reuven’s part.

Her hands, so tiny in comparison to his features, went reaching for a cradle of his face. Her fingers sifted through the thickness of his beard; her thumbs brushed along the wide prominence of his cheekbones. His gaze upon her’s was that of a lost puppy. Searching for someone else to rescue him from the storm in his head. Searching for her safety, and her security, and her protection.

 “What happened to them?” she prompted, voice barely a whisper.

There was a flicker of something harrowing amongst that glossed stare. Something deadened. His expression fell. His pupils grew, as his mind so automatically dissociated.

“They’re dead.”

A long, heavy silence.

Another shaky breath.

“So is their brother. And my wife, Avigal.” He paused. "Drowned. All of them."

That confession, set free after so many years of suppression… In one moment, it all became real again.

In one moment, he spoke it all back into existence. Dared to acknowledge the cruel game the universe had played on him.

That tightness in his chest coiled down, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

Nara swallowed, heat creeping up her throat and her cheeks, as her own impending tears threatened to spill over.

All this time, and she’d never known.

All this time, and he had treated her with such dignity and softness when he harbored something so very, very haunting in his own mind.

The shock of it stole her breath, and her words, for another long minute. And then, she threw her arms around his neck, tugging herself in close to comfort and be comforted.

“Oh my god, Reuven—” she gasped, choking around her own words. “I-I’m so sorry, I—I didn’t know—”

The numbness he had managed before her touch met his skin once more crumbled the moment she was back in his orbit. His heart pounded a mile a minute. The strong, rough grip he took at her ribcage, holding her close, would have shaken if he’d pulled his hand away.

He felt the words choke up in his throat; a pressure lifting through his sinuses, warning of impending tears. He cleared his throat, and persisted on anyway. Voice guttural, trembling at its edges. Nara pulled back, to find his eyes, her own long lashes wispy and wet.

“And, I just… I think about how—” he swallowed, his palm coming up to drag down his features, as though he might be able to grind the devastation from his expression. He hadn’t ever dared to speak their names again after the funeral, not willingly. Not to another. He hadn’t ever dared to articulate the agony of which he harbored in his chest, every day, every moment, over it all. As though doing so might finally cement it all as real. Tangible. His babies were gone, and they weren’t coming back. His babies died, sputtering and confused and trapped. While he was sitting at home, relaxing. Watching a tv show. Feeling renewed and clearer from his rest.

How does a man explain that sort of horror? How does a man find the courage to let his anguish be known, not only to himself, but to another?

In that moment, he knew that Elnara was the only person in the entire goddamn world he might ever feel safe enough to confess it to. To let that reality—that damning, harrowing reality—cross the barrier of his mind and heart and be allowed witness.

“I think about how scared they must have been…” he whispered, unable to keep his voice from breaking at the last syllable. He inhaled a shaky breath. A tear came involuntarily, silently darting down his cheek and into the darkness of his beard. “How confused, and—and—if they… if they…” his voice trembled, with fear —yes, it was fear . To finally confront it all. To let that pin drop amongst the silence.

He inhaled slowly, a tension coming to his jaw. A numbing, spreading through his chest, where the sparks of agony had been alight, raging and ravenous. He felt… far away. Like he was not here, with her. Like he was back in that living room, in New York. Back in that foyer, screaming into his hands, the shock of it all somehow both violently sobering and dazing. A calamity so loud, so deafening, in its highest crescendo, drowning out his thoughts. Suffocating his mind. How the denial exploded from his chest in gasps, involuntarily. An immediate switch into survival mode, because the reality that they were dead was enough to kill him, too.

“I think about while… while they were drowning. If they needed me. If… if Kuna did what I taught her, to turn around and float on her back, and… when that didn’t work and the—” his words broke as a breathlessness overcame him. “—and the water just kept rising, wha—what did— she must have been so scared —”

The downpour of his grief came torrentially forth. Tears wetting his eyes, dripping off his lips, nostrils clearing. Nara’s fingers came holding on to either side of his head; tiny hands, gripping to comfort, smoothing down against his temple and his beard, trying to whisper the right words at him. Trying to be his anchor.

“It’s not your fault—” she whispered, her high lilt choking around its own syllables, The agony she felt in witness of Reuven’s own was enough to constrict around her chest, like a viper, squeezing the air out of her lungs. She repeated it like a mantra, brushing her thumbs at the tears that kept tumbling down, before they could reach his stubble. “It’s not your fault, Reuven,” she uttered, so softly. A forgiveness that he could never afford himself. She gave it to him anyway, and the intensity of it broke through what little composure he had left.

Suddenly, he was right back to the faltering mess he’d been last night. Nara’s fingers winding up in his hair, while she crawled in closer, allowing him to take cover and take comfort in her lithe form. He pressed his face in, to her chest, to her abdomen, and let the grief overtake him. Emotion choking out of his throat as his catharsis demanded an exit. “What if they wanted me? What if they were trying to scream for me?” he sobbed, gutturally, into the muffle of her shirt.

Nara inhaled shakily, tears of her own dripping silently down, as she cradled around his head, cuddling down around him. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered again, more firmly, kissing down into his dark, disheveled curls. “You didn’t know—there was nothing you could have done, Reuven…”

“They needed me, and I didn’t protect them—”

“You would have if you’d known. They knew that. You know that—you were a good father—”

“I—I know what it feels like—when you’re drowning. They made us do it in BUD/S… I passed out underwater. It’s—It’s—to imagine my girls … my—my baby boy —”

His grip around her back was so tight it was starting to hurt, but Nara didn’t dare mention it, or even shift. She pressed her face down into his hair, clinging onto him for dear life, letting him cling onto her for the same. “I know… I know…” she whispered. There were no other words to be offered. No amount of carefully selected verbiage could touch that which tore down through her older object of affection. No amount of reassurance, or forgiveness, or sweet nothings could undo his trauma.

So she held him.

She held him like he had held her, so many moons ago, when her own unraveling came knocking at the door. A bailiff with an eviction notice. The sunshine and rainbows of the cabin and all of its comfort had been ripped away in an instant when reality came barreling back in.

He had protected her, then. She could protect him, now.

She could bear witness to his pain, and let him exist within it, without judging or shaming, without shying away.

And when his grief had completed its most dismantling of revolutions, and he was left just with the pound of its aftermath, acrid and painful, in the dead center of his chest, only then did Nara dare to offer something that may comfort him verbally. In the minefield that was his grief before this point, a grief she had grown so intimately familiar with when her own world had come crashing down with the realities of the past… she remembered how heightened it all was. Like there was some raging storm tearing through that thing between her ears. All thousand mile winds and darkness so black that it that hummed. In that state, she had been inconsolable, until it had finally torn through the last remnants of her happiness and ripped the ground in two before her eyes. She could remember it all so vividly now. How his words had carried through the solid of the bathroom door and reminded her of the here and now. How she was still safe, even if everything in her body and mind was bellowing otherwise. And she had crawled into his arms in complete resignation. Trusting him, in her exhaustion, to hold her, and keep her safe, where she hadn’t felt capable of doing so herself.

So now the roles were reversed, that was all. Whatever powerlessness had flushed her features at the witness of his pain had now begun dissipating, and she could think again, and he could, too.

They stayed wrapped up in one another’s arms until the crickets began to sing to them from the surrounding forest.

“What were they like?” she asked, after awhile; a whisper feather-like against his skin.

Somewhere deep within the cavity of his chest it ached to recall, and yet gnawed desperately to do so all the same. To not shy away from their memory anymore. To confront, fully, the life he had lived before all of this. Before he had met this forest. Before he had met this woman. Where three little humans, all bearing the same eyes and nose and hair as him, lit up his world even on the darkest of days. There had never been anything more important to him in his life.

Reuven swallowed against the lump in his throat, feeling exhausted, but needing to say it, finally. Needing to let them live on, even if it was only from his own psyche.

“They were… all so different, from each other. And the same. Somehow,” he tried, huffing out something bittersweet as memories of them flooded back in. Good memories, that both stung and nourished. He ached with nostalgia, rimmed with devastation.

“My oldest—Chedva—she was thirteen. Funny. Was always prankin’ someone…” he huffed again, a bit more invigorated as another memory flashed through. When she and her girlfriend had taken plastic wrap and blocked the hallway with it, and called him for help. The laughter they had erupted in when he’d walked right into their trap and ate hardwood when he’d tripped. What ensued was a very glee-filled goose hunt of both the girls, running around the house to try to catch them, and then intentionally tuckering out and telling them they “won this round”.

It was all double-edged. With that memory resurfaced the harrowing, nausea-inducing traumas that came after her death. Because it was never just that the kids had died. Life was not so generous to have let it end there.

It was also that he was the only living Aronov left. The only one to deliver the news.

That night he had stopped by after school on the Friday after their deaths and explained, quietly, to Tyra’s parents what had happened. How the walls had felt like they were fake. How the sound of his own footsteps had, too.

How does a man deliver the news to his child’s best friend and love interest that she was gone? She was gone and she wouldn’t be coming back.

The words had left his lips like they didn’t belong in his own throat. Like he couldn’t have possibly been the one to say it, because that was not his voice, and these were not his vocal chords.

Hey, sweetheart.

I… Me and your parents need to talk to you about somethin’. And… it’s not going to be something good.

I want to let you know that… you know, me and Chedva, we love you to death. You know that, right, kiddo? Cheddar she… she loved you to death….

“I used to call her Cheddar. She fuckin’ hated it,” he chuckled, sorrowfully, as a fresh set of tears blinked down from his eyes. “God, she was… she was getting so big. I couldn’t believe it. One minute she was just my little Cheddar Cheese, and the next… she was asking if she was allowed to date yet. Talkin’ about… ridin’ motorcycles. Joinin’ the soccer team. And she was good at it, too.” He paused, inhaling a deep breath, unconsciously closing his arms tighter around Nara. For safety. For protection. “When her mom died… she just… it just—it broke her heart. She was struggling so bad, at the end. With her depression.” He inhaled another shaky breath, eyes welling again. “She was… she was cuttin’ herself. And I—I don’t think I ever… I ever processed that. That she was hurting so much. Because… Because what kind of father was I? To let that happen? To let my baby girl hurt that badly?” he croaked, his eyelids falling closed. Silent, warm tears darted down again.

He did not see it, but he felt it, as Nara’s palm came reaching up, gently taking hold of his face. Only momentarily did she pivot her wrist, and swipe the tears away with the back of her knuckles. “Reuven,” she whispered, firmly, those doe eyes full of tears that nearly matched his own. His pain was her pain. Her pain was his pain. “You were a good father, that’s what kind of father you were. You loved her, and she got the privilege of being loved by her dad even while she was hurting.”

A perspective he had never considered; one that Nara knew so well of its opposite. Feeling unwanted, loathed , by her only parent, while her heart already ached with the sorrows of everything else.

She palmed at his face, at his beard, trying to get him to understand, trying to find him within his pupils, and speak directly to whoever lingered there. “She knew that. She knew that you loved her. A-And she enjoyed so much happiness before… before everything. You said it yourself, right?” she offered, gently. His hand came up to cradle around her wrist, as hers found stillness against his cheek again. A tiny palm and even tinier wrist. He inhaled a slow, shuddering breath. She exhaled one. “You said she loved to play pranks… and she had her girlfriend, and she liked sports. Right? That sounds like a happy kid to me.”

He swallowed again, and nodded. Somehow, some way, her words felt like truth to him where others’ hadn’t. All of the cliches delivered like well-refined scripts from family and friends after the funeral. All of the unopened gift baskets filled with snacks and dumb little cards professing their empathy, dropped off at his doorstep in some performative fulfilled obligation to be sorry for his loss. Always accompanied by a fresh set of bills. As if money could even touch his grief.

It was entirely their fault. After the funeral, he had shut everyone out. Slowly but surely. Stopped paying his bills. Drank until he was belligerent. Forgot to eat, to shower, to brush his teeth. Grew scruffy and unkempt and dead in the eyes and the soul, rotting away in that big empty apartment.

He remembered that last time he’d shown up to the university, after skipping out on all of his classes for an entire week prior. He’d been drinking since he’d woken up—unable to fathom even a single moment living without some buffer to brace himself against reality. The alcohol helped him not feel it all so deeply. It numbed it out at the edges, even if it still seared like a singing red branding iron beneath its salve.

Afterwards, he didn’t even remember it. Showing up to class at all. Trying to teach a group of twenty-year-olds about underwater excavation like any of it mattered anymore. Nothing mattered. Not his career, not his life’s dedication to the ocean, not the clothes on his back. Nothing.

A student had secretly recorded it with their new smartphone. A video he’d never had the opportunity to see but had circulated rampantly amongst the student population after he’d fallen off the face of the earth. He’d scribbled something illegible on the board and put up a powerpoint, full of grammatical mistakes. Some last ditch effort at hanging on to something normal and concrete. Making a powerpoint. Delivering a lecture. While the haunting knowledge of his empty home hovered right above his neck.

He had brought his bottle of whiskey with him. Kept returning back to it, even as he taught. Picked it up and took a swig as he wrote more on the board. Remembering, vaguely, facts about his chosen area of expertise. Until he was a slurring mess, not making any sense. A group of students sitting amongst lecture pews staring at each other and him and staying put purely out of shock and uncertainty.

Only after he’d suddenly keeled over and vomited violently in the small trash bin he kept under his desk did a group of students jump into action and dismiss the class on his behalf. What ensued afterwards was a disaster of them managing to help him walk to the nearest subway and get back home, where he’d spent the rest of the day and night vomiting, sobbing, and drunkenly talking about killing himself, in no particular order.

The stark difference between then and now was… palpable.

Even just in terms of his functionality; of his day-to-day ability to keep those dangerous thoughts from swimming around in his head. Something fundamentally had changed, drastically so, right beneath his nose.

“What were the others like?” she whispered—that angel in his arms. She had no clue just how monumental her arrival in his life had truly been.

He was starting to feel a little more grounded. A little more here, and now, and able to recall their faces, and their voices, even in the confines of his own mind, without as much of a throat-closing panic.

A sigh lifted through his chest, and Nara let her hand coast down it, nestling in overtop of his pec.

“Well… my toddler, Kuna, she was… she was the bubbliest little kid you could ever imagine. I mean, you could not get that kid to stop goofing around. After Avi died, things changed a little bit, but… she still made me smile. Every day. Playin’ with her food or babbling about whatever. She had this big fixation on paw prints. Like… it amazed her that animals had hands that made different shapes than ours.” He chuckled, feeling a bit of the warmth of her memory settle in, through the pain.

“And her brother, Ezra—he was my youngest. He was only, uh… a little over a year, when…” he trailed off, his jaw flexing momentarily, as another set of tears spiked. “That kid… Just as stubborn as his momma. You couldn’t get him to stop putting anything, and I mean everything, in his mouth. His sisters weren’t as bad. I mean, they still wanted to eat everything, that’s just what babies do at that age, but Ezra was something else,” he huffed, sniffing. “I remember this one time, Kuna had these pink, light-up shoes and she ran through a puddle and got her feet all dirty while we were walking home. So I went to get her in the bath, and I left him alone in his playpen for a few seconds while I started up the bath water, and I come back out to this fool chewing on her dirty sneaker,” he chuckled then. Really chuckled. A spring of laughter that cut through the melancholy and brought something bright back to his features.

Nara scratched lovingly at the back of his head, beneath the conglomerate of curls, so alike the comforting gesture he so often made towards her. She understood now, why he treated her with such dignity when he’d first found her. How his paternal instincts must have kicked in. How having her around meant just as much to him as it did to her. She understood now.

“You made such beautiful kids,” she commented, genuinely, feeling a strange warm something welling up in her chest for him. Something protective. Something loving. She wished she could steal away all of his hurt, and leave him only with this: those happy memories. The memories of them that made him laugh. Not the end. Not the horrific end.

Reuven hadn’t cried in front of another person in decades. Not since the kids died. He had locked it all away, filed back, in the deepest recesses of his mind, where he might never have to look its way again. There were no words to eloquently and accurately describe the full-bodied peace that came afterwards, for him. The heavy, consuming solace of Elnara’s cradle, and acceptance, and forgiveness, where he could offer himself none. It dried his tears. It drew the calamity out of his head. It relaxed his limbs.

“Thank you.”

They shifted only to lay down together, the earth hard and supportive beneath them. The measly pillow tucked beneath his head helped support his neck, and Nara shimmied her way down to take refuge between his long legs, resting her head against his abdomen. So naturally, as though it were like breathing, their hands intertwined with one another.

“Do you have anything left of them? To remember them by?” she asked, softly, after awhile.

Reuven was very nearly asleep; his body dense with the warmth of catharsis. He inhaled a deep breath, and sighed it out. “No… I threw it all away. I couldn’t stand looking at it.” He paused, swallowing. “Just kept a few small boxes, in the closet.”

A pair of shiny, black rainboots returned to her then. A bright yellow, juvenile t-shirt.

Realization dawned a whole new intensity of awe washing down through Nara.

In those first few days, when she had been provided those clothes to replace her own, tattered and dirty garments… A sickened possibility had crossed through her mind, as to why he had children’s clothing in the first place. Some strange, solitary man, with no child in sight.

Her chest ached now, and she pressed her face into the warmth of his abdomen, trying to get as close as physically possible, if only to comfort both him and herself. Because he had never been the monster she had assumed he would be.

Even before she’d known how much of a sweet, wonderful man Reuven was… he had set aside this—all of this pain, and all of this agony—to take care of her. He hadn’t even hesitated to allow her to wear his daughter’s old clothes, just so she would have something clean to wear.

The implication of it drew something soaring, and almost devastatingly grateful, lifting through her chest. And then it was her turn to cry. Her turn to press her tear-stricken face into the comfort of his form and feel the weight of it all.

Their combined pasts, and the complexity they both bore, to reach one another here, under the moonlight.

        Overnight, the depth of the forest sang to them. A chorus of crickets and frogs and owls. Nocturnal company while they found peace amongst one another’s arms.

Neither of them strung up terrors in their sleep. It was a quiet but pivotal change in their routine. Even when Nara had kept Reuven as her own personal mattress for that month after visiting the clinic, the rest they shared was not so… sedating. It did not hold such a renewal as this night did.

Though the forest barricaded them away from any and all things, the sun still peeked its light through branches and thicket, casting warm orange rays through the transparent mesh of the tent’s bug net. A new melody coaxed Nara from her sleep—twitting stellar jays and hooting mourning doves. The warmth of their shared body heat was so comfortable it was difficult to even open her eyes. They were heavy and Reuven’s body felt perfectly sturdy and safe, and their bare feet were wound up with one another. A yawn broke through her drowsiness against her will, and hummed softly from her chest before she inhaled a deep breath and blinked open her eyes.

Her vision still gritty with sleep, Nara’s knuckles ground into her eyes until it focused, and brought the sight of Reuven back in.

Her heart hiked in her chest. Perhaps not singing to a new tune, but the same tune, more refined. Because something had changed in these past few days. Something she couldn’t articulate, but felt underlain every moment shared with him. An intimacy unlike anything she had ever experienced before. An intoxicating intimacy.

His features were relaxed. His strong jawline slack, pulling ajar his lips ever so slightly. From his throat hummed a soft, sighing snore, and the rising sun cast across his slumbering countenance, drawing soft definition into the fine lines of aging and freckles of the same that littered across his skin.

Nara so rarely got to witness him like this: able to drink him in for as long as she desired; feasting her wanting gaze upon the familiarity of his placid, calm features. The longer she stared, the more he felt like home.

His hair was messy. Her’s was, too. Her’s was shuffled around her shoulders, curls gone wayward and wild, like a lion’s mane. His was less disheveled, but enough that Nara found it incredibly endearing. Timidly, she reached the tips of her fingers towards his slackened cheek, tracing feather-light parabolas along his skin.

To her, he was beautiful. Painfully, wretchedly beautiful.

The worn out, matured nuances of his face. The ever-growing and lightening gray stretching through his beard. That same devoid hue had begun licking its way heavily up his sideburns, and flickering through his hairline. The downward cant of his nose, and its strong bridge. Surely things he must have seen as flaws. Nara only saw them with reverence. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he suddenly inhaled deeply, sighing out a sleepy, not quite conscious groan.

Her fingers relaxed against his skin, cradling his cheek amongst her palm.

Something in her chest thudded to a dangerous tune.

He blinked open his eyes, his eyebrows pulling in ever so slightly against the brightness of the sunlight casting into them.

Nara’s face lit up; a soft, lazy smile pulled over the plush of her lips.

“Hey,” she greeted, her voice still gritty with sleep. Her eyes big and wide and happy —happy that he was awake finally.

He smiled back, lazily, his eyes falling closed again after he lifted his hand to cup her face, too. “Hey,” he echoed, though his voice was deepened into a bass pitch from his slumber. “Mornin’,” he murmured, brushing his thumb slowly along her cheekbone.

The excitement of being back awake to enjoy his company fluttered through Nara, and she giggled, leaning forward to peck at the bridge of his nose affectionately and snuggle into his arms with an excited squeeze around his torso. All of which earned her a still closed-eyed lift of his brows in mild but pleasant surprise.

“Good morning!” she chimed, before giving another blissful giggle, and crawling her way out of the tent to rise to her feet, and stretch her arms up towards the sky. Reuven joined her just as her soles were dropping back to the ground from the tips of her toes and he unexpectedly drew his arms around her, pulling her in close and snug to his chest. His palm fell against the back of her head, cradling her in, whiles hers fell against his abdomen, and her temple tipped in against his chest.

Nothing further needed to be said or acknowledged about it.

The intimacy of their shared physical affection was greatly welcomed by both parties. Just as Elnara’s slumber had been renewing, so had Reuven’s. They both felt like a weight had been lifted off their shoulders, and the chipper, bright mood they held was all due to one another’s care.

It was a dizzying, warm joy to wake up within.

The best kind.

Reuven wasn’t sure he’d felt anything similar since before Avigal’s passing. Mornings with the kids, where everything in the world felt right, even when it was stressful. Even when the baby was crying and the girls were fighting. It was a peace he had never found even an inkling of again, until this morning.

He could not help himself, then, from staring almost lovingly over at her as she went around the campsite in her bare feet, picking dandelions from their roots. He’d sat down on a log near the unlit fire, stretching out his legs, and watched her in content silence until she’d pranced up before him, and brandished her bounty. Five dewy green stems with a fro of puffy, white seeds at the top.

He plucked one from the bunch, and silently tucked it into her wayward hair. She smiled, eyes bright, before mischievously lifting one and blowing the dandelion’s puff towards his face.

“Hey!” he scolded playfully, and she went sprinting away, giggling before he could catch her. “You little shit,” he grinned, before a yawn overtook his features, and he stretched out his lats with raised arms.

“You… big jerk,” Nara tried, but the landing did not stick, and they both stared at one another in silence for a moment, before mutual laughter broke through the feigned seriousness.

“You’re so annoying!” she chimed, giggling, as she gathered up more dandelions. “Here! Put more in my hair!”

“Bossy…” he commented, as he took each dandelion carefully from her open palms and tucked them at random amongst her dark curls. Like drumming up a painting, adding a flower here, adding a flower there.

“I feel so pretty,” she hummed once the last of the dandelions was tucked securely amongst her mane, twirling a bit on the tips of her toes.

Reuven’s gaze fell back into that melted, loving stare. The honesty of the matter was that she looked beautiful. Radiant. Like something out of a fairytale. The words left his lips before he could catch them; before he could register their impropriety, and gulp them back down.

“You are pretty.”

It was a compliment heavy enough to stun.

Nara stopped in her twirl, her eyes wide and finding his, as though she expected there to be some sort of dishonesty waiting there for her. The concept that he could find her pretty had, up until now, been some pipe dream; some fantasy crafted up in the luminescence of her imagination. Thoughts of wearing a dress just like this one and being devoured by his eyes, and his eyes only.

Her smile fell just a fraction. Her heart pounded recklessly against her throat, before a huffing, deeply flattered giggle left her lips, her face exploding in warmth. A stammering apology was just on the tip of Reuven’s tongue when she tucked her hair behind her ears and cast her gaze down, away from his, if only to hide her blushing. “Thank you,” she chimed, and she meant it.

She couldn’t remember a single time in her life that a man had called her pretty. Or… anyone, really. Except Noona. Noona had always asserted that she was beautiful, but what grandmother didn’t think her grandchildren were the prettiest things the world had ever seen?

After everything they’d shared in the past few days, Reuven’s compliment held weight. It held something that uplifted her self esteem so quickly and so effectively that she felt that dither of confidence swirl around in her chest. Such a new feeling… she wasn’t sure what to do with it. All she knew was that she wanted more.

She wanted more of his gaze. More of him drinking her in and liking what he tasted.

The rest of the morning passed rather calmly. Whatever awkwardness Reuven was sure he’d created with his compliment had dissipated so quickly it felt strange, that she had allowed him to recognize her beauty and tell her of it. It wasn’t exactly like he hadn’t noticed before. He’d noticed from the day they met. Though, she looked infinitely healthier now, which was also a massive driving factor of her attractiveness. To him, she was like a Baroque painting. Romantic and soft and effortlessly beautiful in every intricacy and every nuance.

It did not help that she had been growing rapidly into her developing womanhood. Where just a few weeks ago she had only just noticed the beginning of fat laid across her hips and chest, now there was an unmistakable doughy flesh that spoke of fertility and youth.

It all did something strange and wicked to Reuven’s brain.

Breakfast was accomplished with small talk and playful banter and clear, bright skies.

Nara had sat down with her back against the log, looking out upon the lake as she pieced uncommittedly through a lesser known novel. As the sun began to rise higher against the blue of the sky, Reuven had commented that he was going to go shower. After a confused look from Nara, he’d chuckled and nodded towards the waterfall. “’Bout as clean as nature can get.” He’d taken that nameless hunk of brown soap he kept in the shower at home with him, and Nara was doing her best not to pry. Not to give in to her worst intrusive thoughts and peek over at him.

Her resolve was wavering, though, as her skin became tacky with sweat and humidity. She told herself she was just checking to see if he looked like he was finishing up, so she could have a turn under the cool spring water.

Her cheeks bloomed hot as the sight of his bare, nude posterior struck her vision.

Pupils dilated. Drinking him in. Devouring him .

He was running his fingers through his hair. Water poured down his body, tanned from the sun, running over all of the hardened musculature.

Nara’s lips fell ajar as she stared, transfixed on his body as though it were the most erotic thing she’d ever seen. Because it was.

She’d seen him shirtless countless times, but the lack of attire completely made her head swim with the implication. That dangerous, uncouth warmth swelled in between her legs as he shook out his hair, and shifted his weight on his legs. The ripple of muscle in his hamstrings tensed and relaxed. A sick thought of how powerful they must be flitted through that depraved thing she called a mind.

It was just as he was turning that she regained her wits about her, and quickly darted her eyes back down to her book’s pages. Unable to read the words that waited for her there. The image of Reuven’s nudity was burned, like hot steel upon clean flesh, in her mind.

Staring down at all of those undecipherable words, a realization came to her, about what she’d just witnessed. Amongst the sturdiness of his body, there had been a jagged splotch of mismatched complexion. A deep, long scar, pulling over his flank and down the mid to low of his back. She’d never noticed it before, but now she used her curiosity about where it came from to find refuge from her sick, lustful thoughts.

You should be ashamed, she scolded herself silently. Frowning, down at her pages, with all of that confused blush seeping throughout her complexion. What was wrong with her? He’d just disclosed his deepest traumas to her last night and now she was ogling at him like he was a piece of meat. Nara tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled her knees up to her chest, trying to read that same page over and over until the words stuck.

A few minutes later and Reuven was joining her, his hair still wet, though now he wore a pair of shorts to hide that which she had been so hungry to see. He was none the wiser, and Nara was much, much too aware of what she had done.

Enough to shyly avoid his eyes. Enough to excuse herself to go commit the same act of hygiene, if only to shock the warmth out of her body. It did not belong there. It did not have the right to grow from looking at Reuven.

Leave this poor man alone, she tried to reason with herself, as she shimmied out of her dress and lay it across an adjacent stone. The flowers washed out of her hair and floated along the meandering water; it was cold and refreshing against the heat of the sun. Before long, she was back over at the campsite, smoothing down the white, thin fabric of her dress while a gust of wind carried its bottom-most hem up her thighs.

Some strange, avoiding tango then began between them. Where Reuven had hiked back up to the truck to retrieve a kayak and was currently dragging it down to the edge of the lake, Nara was following the instructions he’d given to go get on her bathing suit. Or, more specifically, I’m teachin’ you how to fish. Put something on that you don’t mind getting wet in.

Sir, yes, sir, she’d retorted in her mind, so desperately wanting to flirt with him.

Nara had taken cover behind a large tree while she changed out of her dress and into a makeshift two-piece, complete with a tank top that flared out at her waist and a pair of white bikini bottoms. Both were adorned with light brown drawings of trees, and deer, and flowers. When she’d chosen it from the thrift store a few weeks ago, it had been because those little drawings spoke to her. It all felt so reminiscent of the type of softness and femininity she had grown into while living with Reuven in the cabin. Like a woodland creature, basking in the beauty and solace of nature.

Her fingers had quickly braided her hair into two braids, and tied them secure with silken white ribbons at the end. Though she had finished getting dressed for the occasion, Reuven was still down by the kayak, getting it and two fishing poles ready for their afternoon adventure.

So Nara went back to trying to read her book, and when that didn’t work, she  went back to picking flowers. It was as she went disturbing a few wild daisies that something thrilling happened.

A conglomerate of butterflies, soft and blue and white, flitted up and surrounded her. Nara did what any girl would naturally do. She giggled in elated surprise, and twirled amongst them. With little hops on her bare feet amongst the grass, she let her hair swing amongst the wind, a rush of childhood elation flooding through her.

Something pure, and innocent, and basking in the simplicity of something so wonderful and so whimsical.

Down by the lake, Reuven had straightened up his posture, and looked up to find that Nara was off enjoying herself; dancing some giggly little pirouette amongst fluttering butterflies. The edge of her top lifted up against the inertia, revealing the damning softness of her body.

There, against the backdrop of the forest, she was something ethereal.

The call of birds high above her head. The giggle amongst her throat and the perfect, bubbly smile to go with it. And all of that womanhood, on clear display to him.

It was disarming. In awe. In want.

Much like Nara had found herself vexed by the sight of him in the waterfall, Reuven found himself staring; studying her. Feeling her whimsicality nurture that dead, hardened part of his soul that had forgotten innocence like this could exist.

It was all only just a moment. The next, the butterflies were gone. But Nara—Nara was still beaming; something within her healed from the experience of it, and she came bounding down excitedly towards him while he still had not taken his eyes off her.

A bit breathless. A bit dizzied.

He offered out his opened palm. “Ladies first.”

Nara grinned and leaned up to peck him on the stubbly cheek before using his hand as assistance to climb into the kayak.

One second later and Reuven was setting a fishing pole amongst her arms, advising her to be careful of the hook. Then, he was pushing it off of the lake’s shore, and quickly climbing in to settle in on the other side of the kayak, his legs long and resting on either side of her thighs.  Nara tried to keep her eyes up. Up and away from his chest, and everything below it. She looked to him with big, expectant eyes.

And just as he’d done so many times before, he taught her patiently. Showing her how to put the bait on the hook, how to cast the line. After long, they were sitting amongst their shared silence, listening to the forest, and waiting for the fish to bite. She had only managed to catch one fish, and then accidentally lost it before she could reel it back in, but he assured her that it took time to get good at it. That was a solid enough excuse for her to stare, intently, at the water, to avoid staring at his bare chest, and wondering what it would be like to sit in his lap in a way that was not so innocent as every time before had been.

Their conversation was minimal. The silence was still comfortable, like it always had been between them. They didn’t need words to enjoy one another’s company. Existing near one another was just as fulfilling as talking each other’s ears off.

Though, as the morning was beginning to expire into afternoon, and the sun was reaching its highest point in the sky, all of the warmth and ambience was fostering another round of sleepiness for Nara. She had propped her elbow up against the edge of the kayak and her eyes had drooped closed. Reuven hadn’t noticed she was dozing off until her fishing rod suddenly went lurching into the water, with the fish that bit down on her hook.

The movement jolted her awake and she scrambled to try to catch it with no luck.

“Shit!” she cursed, going to look Reuven’s way but he was already moving to retrieve it.

“No worries…” he reassured, setting his fishing pole securely in the kayak and anchoring it before shifting and climbing over its edge to drop into the water.  The shock of the cold was short lived, with a quick exhaled whew, before he glided gently through the lake. The grace of which he swam with was surprising to Nara. She had seen people swim, of course, but never with such aptitude. It was almost… mesmerizing.

He moved against the water like it had no resistance at all. As fluid as it was.

The density of the fishing pole came hoisting back into the kayak as he threw it over the edge, careful not to hit her with the hook.

“Thank you,” she sighed, a bit embarrassed that she’d lost the fishing pole at all.

She’d expected that he would climb back into the kayak but when he didn’t, and instead folded his arms over on the edge where she sat, Nara tilted her head, a bit confused.

Amongst his expression grew something mischievous.

A small little smile toyed at his lips, those hunter eyes of his narrowing ever so slightly before he gave insight into what he was doing. Or, rather, what he wanted her to do.

“Get in the water.”

Almost immediately, Nara’s face lit up with a grin, both exhilarated and fearful. “No!” she squealed, trying to back herself deeper into the kayak with no luck.

Reuven’s grin widened as he tried to paw at her from the opposite side. “Get in the water, Nara,” he repeated, something akin to a warning beneath his tone.

Nara giggled, scrambling to crawl over to his side of the kayak.

“Ay!” he reprimanded, playfully. “Where you goin’? I said, get in the water!”

“No—” she protested, now in a fit of laughter, trying to fight him off as he reached over the kayak at her. He shook the water from his hair at her purposely, causing her to shield her face with her forearms and palms, before pouting and sinking down onto her shins and belly, leaning over the edge of the kayak. “No, I’m scared,” she whined, and Reuven gave her a knowing look. A look that said bullshit.

“What was all that about you being a mermaid?” he started, lifting a brow. The bottom edge of his beard was still sunk beneath the surface of the water. Small waves lifted and lowered both Reuven and the kayak. “Didn’t you say swimming was so easy you were sure you could do it? No trainin’?” he teased, his grin pulled up over defined canines.

Nara rolled her eyes and then huffed, her heart now pounding rapidly with anticipation. “Fine! But don’t let me die!” she announced, without fully realizing the magnitude of such a statement and how it might pierce him. Luckily, their playfulness was a strong enough barrier that he was able to take it for what it was.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, darlin’. Get in!”

Nara’s face lit up as she tried to push back against her fear. Now, with the lake right there, and her unable to see the bottom, the fear of its depth curled tight around her chest. Still, she kneeled at the edge, trying to convince herself to take the jump.

“Hey—” Reuven’s voice cut through the panic, melting down into her. He found her eyes, and held on tight. “Look at me. I’m right here. I ain’t gonna let you drown, Nara.”

Maybe she didn’t trust that the water would be navigable, but she did trust Reuven. She trusted Reuven more than she’d trusted anyone in her life.

So, with one wildly gasped in breath, Nara pushed off the edge of the kayak and into the water.

A thousand icy needles prickled through her entire body at the temperature of it, and just as quickly as she’d been engulfed, she was already clinging tightly around Reuven’s shoulders, shaking from both the cold and anxiety.  Beneath the water, as she instinctively but futilely tried to kick, their legs brushed along one another. If not for the fright brewed up in her chest, she might have been distracted by the touch. Instead, she hung tight to his shoulders, unintentionally digging her nails in.

Reuven was gentle as ever with her. Chuckling, he murmured, “Hey. Hey, I’ve got you.” He had one arm curled around her beneath the water. His free hand lifted up to wipe some of the water from her face and hair. “See? Not so bad, right?”

Teeth chattering, she clung on tighter around him. It was all instinct, and non-negotiably so. Her legs curled around his torso under the water, hanging on to his body like he was a life raft, as she tried to level out her tiny gasps against the water that lifted up her throat.

“You’re doing great,” he promised, though she was still panting, still infected with that stomach-dropping, primal fear. She stared, lashes and lips wet, into his eyes with widened pupils. “I’m not gon’ let you go. You’re okay,” he murmured, and slowly but surely her breathing came down, back to a normal pace, and she was able to take comfort in the warmth of his body beneath the cold, consuming lake.

“I feel like I can’t breathe,” she explained, trying to keep herself level; focusing on his eyes and only his eyes.

“It’s okay,” he reassured again. Beneath the water, she felt his palm rub up and down her back, against her swimsuit which now clung tight to all of her curves. “You wanna go back on land?” he offered, and she nodded, her lips slightly ajar, slightly trembling. “Alright. We’ll teach you how to properly swim some other day.”

Without question or pushback, Reuven glided them both back towards the shore. Nara tucked her face into his neck, and he slowly pulled them back to safety with just one arm, while the other cradled securely around her back.

Still dictated by her anxiety, Nara stayed clung around him with all four limbs until he had carried her fully out of the water. She was certain she’d be embarrassed about all of this later, but right now she was just finding comfort in the safety of his embrace. Only once he’d carried her back over by the tent did he rumble with a warm chuckle, rubbing her back. “Alright, spider monkey. You’re back on solid land.”

Reuven would be lying if he said it didn’t make his heart race—to be clung to by her. To feel like her protector.

But he understood. He had already toed the line of what was acceptable today. Hugged her without warning. Complimented her appearance.

What would it look like if he had cradled her in silence here, and let their breaths fall against one another and their hearts beat against one another and did nothing to put a stop to it?

Very slowly, Nara slid down against his body, back to her feet, still shaky. Both of them… confused, about what such closeness stirred up in their individual depravity for one another. Both of them unwilling to acknowledge it even the slightest. Both of them unable to even entertain the idea that the other might be wanting them just as much.

Reuven tried to ignore the pucker of her nipples against her swim suit’s top, now pulled taut and tight over her figure. Still shivering, she retrieved a blanket from the tent, and draped it around her shoulders, her wet hair clung to her throat.

“I’m sorry…” she tried, after awhile. They’d both taken a seat on that log. Reuven had kindled the fire again, only after heading back into the water to retrieve the kayak and their bucket of fish. Its warmth, combined with the heat of the day, helped bring Nara’s body back to a comfortable temperature. She leaned in against his flank, resting her head against his shoulder. Reuven was slowly turning a marshmallow on the end of a carefully chosen stick, letting its sugars char against the flames.

“What are you sorry for?”

She shrugged, pursing her lips.

“That’s a good question,” she huffed, after a long moment of not quite being able to put a name to her shame. A heavy sigh lifted through her, and Reuven shifted to curl his arm around her shoulders, and tug her in closer.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he promised, before handing over the now roasted marshmallow. She took the stick from him and blew against the sugar, trying to cool it off.

Silence blanketed them again, and Nara found herself relaxing into the comfort of her roommate again. Unable to keep herself from enjoying him in a way she wasn’t supposed to. Unable to keep herself composed and distanced.

He played absentmindedly with her hair. She ran her fingers through his chest hair.

It seemed his mischief was not through, because Reuven broke the silence with a hell of a question.

“You ever hear the stories about the vampires that live out this way?”

There was a pause before Nara’s features narrowed, and then she snorted. “What?” she asked, though it was mostly rhetorical. He was so dumb. She loved it.

“Yeah… werewolves, too.”

She rolled her eyes, sighing and tucking her face into his side. “Okay, Dr. Suess.”

His fingers trailed along her shoulder absentmindedly as he continued.

“No, I’m being serious. They say… down in Forks, there’s vampires everywhere. The cashier… The bus driver.” He lifted his brows as she pulled back to cast him a disbelieving look. “The doctor.”

Her scolding look was met with a break in his composure, a grin pushing up against his lips. “What? You don’t believe me?”

“Erm… Nope,” she hummed, eyes hooded with fatigue. It was barely three in the afternoon, but it felt like the day had already been so long.

“What if I told you… there’s rumors that down on the Quileute reservation, there’s werewolves. Like real, rrrr , werewolves.” Nara pursed her lips. Reuven tucked some of her hair behind her ear.  “And they fight with the vampires.”

She rolled her eyes again. He snorted. And then they both laughed. Nara reached down to pick up a pebble off the floor and toss it gently at him. “Stop it. You’re scaring me,” she scolded, and he chuckled, reaching for the back of her head.

As he did, she turned and bit gently at his forearm. He withdrew it quickly, feigning offense.

“Agh! Vampire!”

“You’re so stupid!” she whined, getting up and stretching with a sigh. “I’m tired. I wanna go home.”

His features softened, that grin on his lips dissipating. “All tuckered out?”

She pouted, nodding.

He inhaled a deep breath, rising to his own feet with a small grunt. “Yeah… Yeah, me, too.”

They stood in silence for a minute, before Reuven sniffed, and reached to playfully snatch the blanket from her shoulders, and drape it around his own. “Blanket privileges are revoked,” he announced, striding towards the tent to start breaking it down.

“What? What did I do?” she pouted, following after him.

He shook his head, teasing her. “Shouldn’t have dissed the vampires.”

She rolled her eyes.

“That was fucked up,” he continued, playfully, before pulling the blanket off his shoulders, to drape it back around hers. “Alright. Go relax. Let me get all this packed up.”

The urge to kiss him flooded through her.

Nara kept put.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“At ease, sailor,” he retorted, his palm coming up in a reflexive salute.

She giggled, tipping onto her toes to kiss his cheek. That would do, at least to placate the urge to cover him in them. “You’re dumb.”

“ Elnara ,” he scolded, breaking down the tent. “Language.”

“Oh. Okay, Daddy .”

The term hung tense in the air, drawing heat into both of their faces.

“What’d I tell you, dingbat? Go relax . Get outta here.”

“Oookay…” she hummed, skipping off to go lounge by the fire, where she could be far away from the temptation to snake her palms up his bare chest.

Reuven, too, was thankful for the distance.

She really did make it tough to breathe.

    The sun was beginning to lower in the sky when they got back to the truck. Both of them were dressed somewhat appropriately again. Nara had tugged on a pair of shorts over her bikini bottoms, and Reuven had put a plain t-shirt back on, even though they were just heading back home.

She was pushing the cooler into the bed of the truck when a sound caught her attention.

A high-pitched, yelping noise squeaked up at her from within the foliage nearby. She followed it with her senses, trying to put a sight to the sound, when suddenly it came to her . A little ball of feather-light, fluffy gray fur emerged from the tall grass. A tuft with two eyes and a wide-open mouth, screeching a meow at her like she was its mother.

“Oh my God! Reuven!” Nara gasped, immediately falling to the ground to scoop it up. “It’s a kitten!” Its sharp claws dug into her skin as it continued its screech, for what exactly, Nara didn’t think either of them knew. 

She brandished the little ball of fur up at Reuven, her own eyes big and pleading, just as its were. “Can we keep it? Pleaseeee?” she hummed, gazing up at him hopefully.

Reuven’s lips pursed and he canted his head. “Agh… I don’t know, Nara…” he tried, his initial reaction that of not wanting to add another mouth to feed; considering the responsibility of it. The additional expense.

Nara pouted, holding the kitten up higher, closer to his face. “Pleaseeee?” she begged again, her voice high and lilted.

It seemed she knew, instinctively, exactly how wrapped around her finger he truly was.

Reuven rolled his eyes, sighing, but gave in. A small smile tugged at his lips, not because of the cat, but because they were both so damned cute. “Alright. Fine… But that’s all you, alright? You gotta clean its litter box and feed it. I ain’t helpin’.”

The fullness of this responsibility wasn’t enough to discourage or dissuade Nara. All she heard was alright, fine. The girl squealed, cuddling the equally as scream-y kitten to her chest and petting it. The sight was entirely too endearing to keep Reuven from being infected by the joy. He reached over and scratched briefly at the kitten’s head, his two fingers almost as big as its skull.

Nara lifted it up to press a kiss to its furry little head the moment Reuven went back to packing things up. Another moment later, and she was already roping him into taking care of it with her.  Those terms and conditions didn’t last very long at all.

“Wait…” she hummed, her eyebrows drawing inward. “He seems really hungry. Can you catch him a fish?”

Reuven pulled back, out of the cover of the back seat, and cast her a knowing look.

She pouted again, giggling, because she knew she was already breaking the terms of the contract here. “Please! Just this once!” she whined, cuddling the kitten into her cheek. “You fed me when I was stinky and scruffy.”

Her older object of affection grinned, knowing she had him right where she wanted him, and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. That’s right. You are stinky and scruffy,” he agreed, playfully, before slamming the back door of the truck, and sighed with feigned frustration as he reached over his head and yanked his shirt off from the back of its collar. Nara watched as he went, indulging just a bit. Long strides took him back down to the lake, the khaki of his shorts deepening in hue as it soaked in the water. He took wading strides a bit deeper, until the water was level with his waist, and he could scan its surface for signs of movement. There was just a moment of intent staring, deciding on which fish was the unlucky winner, before he reached in and, quite literally, snatched the first minnow he could see with a quick, unremitting fist.