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one
Their first time, that first time, kissing in the park surrounded by their kin, rainbows exploding around them and oh the soft sensual press of Amanita’s lips to hers, the texture of her skin under Nomi’s hands, the endless surging body-pleasure racing through her cells, every individual cell of her body awake and alive and sparking with electric joy; the slip of their tongues together and the fluttering of Nita’s eyelashes against Nomi’s cheek; the abandon of it, losing consciousness of time and space, drifting in the pure sensation that is the only thing anchoring their bodies to the earth; and then, at last, the moment when the knowledge, that one piece of knowledge, disappears from Nomi’s mind.
The knowledge that Amanita will leave her one day, a grimace on her face and feathered lingerie sticking haphazardly out of a hastily-packed duffel bag (Nomi’s pictured it many times): that is the knowledge that leaves her body as the rush of pure sensation fills it, and for a little while Nomi even forgets that she ever knew this fact: that Amanita will eventually realize that Nomi is not good enough. The relief of the knowledge dissipating is palpable for a bare second, the moment of being released from pain, and then it’s gone on the gentle summer breeze and Nomi is kissing her girlfriend, and her girlfriend is kissing her, under the shining sun on Pride weekend, and neither of them has anywhere else to be.
two
After Amanita’s cousin’s funeral, which would seem like an odd time, especially given that Amanita was close to her cousin and talked to him on the phone every couple weeks. They’re sitting in Amanita’s family home, her mother pouring wine for everyone, her fathers taking turns putting vinyl down on the turntable. The room is full of people who loved Aaron, eating and laughing and crying and talking about him.
They’ve only been together six months, and Nomi has only met a few of these people a few times before. All at once it’s a lot of family to deal with. She sits on the couch – forward, not leaning back – and huddles her shoulders in, taking up as little space as possible.
While she’s staring down at her brimming full wine glass, trying to think of something to say to all these people, someone plops down heavily next to her. Nomi looks up, expecting Amanita, but it’s Jeffrey instead, one of Neets’ dads.
“You look like you’re not having such a great time,” he says. He’s holding a plate of . . . some kind of loaf, Nomi thinks. Something you bring to a bereaved family and that and no one ever eats. Zucchini. Banana. Something with a secret vegetable.
“Well, it’s a wake,” Nomi points out, which makes Jeffrey smile.
“You must’ve come from some real WASP hell,” he says. “You didn’t even know him, what do you have to be miserable for?”
Nomi feels herself flush wish shame, and starts to apologize, but Jeffrey cuts her off.
“I mean, there’s no use being miserable for other peoples’ sake. Doesn’t do us any good.”
It should be obvious, but it’s not; it’s surprising. Nomi begins to wonder what she can do that would do some good for these people – for her new family.
Temporary family, she reminds herself.
He holds up the plate. “Want some?”
Now that it’s closer, Nomi can smell it; it smells appealing to her in a way she can’t place until she sees the telltale green tinge.
“It’s – now?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at him. Jeffrey shrugs.
“Family tradition,” he says, and points around the room; almost everyone else has a slice of the soft sweet bread in their hands and is nibbling away. Amanita catches her eye and takes a big bite out of hers.
Nomi blinks twice, and shuts out all the things her father would say, and then all the things her mother would say, and eventually finds her own answer.
“Thank you.” She takes it, and eats it, and Jeffrey eats a slice of his own.
It’s a long night, and there’s more than one hysterical crying fit, more than one person who screams or shuts down or needs to be held, tightly, for a long time. Nomi isn’t any of those people but she holds people who are crying, listens to people who are screaming, holds people who need to be held. Amanita needs to be held, it turns out, held and squeezed until the breath comes out of her.
“I miss him so fucking much already,” she says, pressing her face against Nomi’s shirt. “I hate thinking about the future without him in it.”
Nomi doesn’t say much of her own; instead she listens and makes soothing noises, and floats through the ocean of other peoples’ feelings, for once in her life able to do so without shrinking away.
It’s so far away from any family experience she’s ever had that she can’t even say if it’s good or bad; it’s just different, revealing whole worlds of difference to her. New ways to live.
“Tell me more about him,” she says, impulsively. “Tell me what you loved best about him.”
And Amanita does, and Jeffrey does too, and others join in, and Nomi listens, and listens, and learns for the first time what grief sounds like out loud, when it’s shared.
three
“But is it responsible?” Nomi asks, toying with the joint, twirling it around her fingers. She vastly prefers to eat her smoke, especially in brownies or cupcakes, the drug sweet on her lips and the chocolate flavor blending with that sage-y taste of pot. This’ll do in a pinch, though, and they have been in something of a pinch lately, on the run from the law and all.
Amanita laughs, then turns to look at her. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“I’m serious! What if it – affects someone else in the cluster? Against their will?”
Her teasing expression shifts into an exaggerated frown. Nomi loves how she does that, telegraphs her feelings in her face and in her body; she never has to guess at how Neets is feeling. It still strikes Nomi as miraculous sometimes, even after the years they’ve spent together, because the years she spent with her family were so much longer, and every moment that Nomi remembers was spent trying to guess what would make them happy and always, always failing.
Nomi’s therapist once said that people who make you play that guessing game will always rig it so you fail. It’s still hard to believe sometimes, but easier to believe when Amanita is in front of her, refusing to reinforce the patterns Nomi lived in for so long.
“You’ve got a lot more control over it than you used to,” Nita muses. “You’re beyond the point where you share your adrenaline or your PMS or whatever without meaning to.”
“And Will’s been drugged up for months now,” Nomi agrees, because she’s already had the argument in her head. “And we’ve all been drunk, and Wolfgang’s cigarettes don’t make me jittery anymore. But still. It could be different.”
Amanita gives her and I’m-exasperated-but-I-love-you-you-nerd face, and Nomi feels something brighten inside of her. “If you’re so worried about it, which you shouldn’t be, by the way, because pot is perfectly natural, then you can just ask them, can’t you?”
Nomi grins up at her. “Yeah,” she says, and with Amanita’s beautiful face still in her vision she’s already moving, flitting across the world to brush across the minds of her cluster.
Everyone says yes: Sun with a shrug, Kala awkwardly enthusiastic (and with chemical formulas rushing through her mind), Wolfgang with an eyeroll and a muttered please. Lito offers her an affirmative feeling like a giggle, in that shy way he has with her, like he’s her little brother; Capheus says yes with a warm laugh, and Riley, bless her, yells a fervent fuck yeah that makes all the rest of them echo with amusement.
“Okay, so, they say it’s fine,” Nomi admits, and Amanita gives her an I-told-you-so look, pursed lips and quirked eyebrows, so Nomi gives her an exaggerated eyeroll back and lights the joint.
There is something about smoking that Nomi likes, though. The fire at the end of the joint and the way it burns brighter as you inhale, the crinkling sound of the paper, the taste of it on her tongue and the sensation of it filling her lungs. She manages to suppress a cough and passes it to Amanita.
“Thank you, darling,” Neets says primly, and takes a hit of her own. They smoke quietly for a bit, and as her thoughts unmoor themselves Nomi turns to look again at her girlfriend’s beautiful face.
“Let me look at you for a while,” she says, her voice low and full of urgency. “Let me see you.”
Amanita’s hand runs softly along Nomi’s cheek. The sensation is so old and familiar but made new by the pot, and Nomi revels in it as she revels in the sight of Nita’s face, full of emotion, full of expression, full of love and the history they’ve shared together.
“Of course you go all soft and romantic when you’re high,” Wolfgang laughs, appearing nearby.
“I think it’s sweet,” Capheus says pointedly, elbowing him in the ribs.
“They’re making fun of me now,” Nomi tells Amanita, refusing to look up at the people crowding around the bed.
“For what?” Amanita’s face is half curiosity and half faux-outrage.
“For being so sloppily in love with you,” Nomi says, and Nita laughs.
“Kiss me,” she says. “And tell your brain friends to either get in on it or get out.”
Nomi kisses her, kisses Amanita’s mouth that holds no secrets, and opens herself to the others at the same time, letting them ride on the wave of her radiating bliss.
four
On a quiet morning a year later when they’re on the road, holed up in some anonymous fleabag motel that accepted their cash and didn’t ask for IDs. It’s been weeks since they’ve stopped for more than a day, weeks since they’ve done anything but move and plan and try to outmaneuver the government-slash-corporate assholes they’re trying to take down.
Nomi’s tired, but as difficult as it’s all been for her, she knows it’s been even harder for Amanita. Nomi’s used to hiding her tracks and dodging feds, and even likes it a little – like a game, even if the stakes are way too fucking high. But Amanita never signed up to live this way for so long, and Nomi can see the stress of it showing a little, here and there. Amanita doesn’t try to hide that either, trusting Nomi with her frustration and anger and exhaustion the same way she trusts Nomi with her joy.
Nomi knows that Amanita is never going to leave her. Which is why she owes it to her to give them both a break.
She holds up the little baggie full of brownies she’d managed to get from one of her old contacts when they passed through Baltimore.
“Whaddya think?” she asks, raising her eyebrow at Amanita. Amanita sort of smiles, but sort of frowns at the same time.
“Is it safe?” she asks, glancing over at the door for the tenth time since they closed it behind them.
“Nothing’s safe,” Nomi says, stepping up close and bringing Amanita’s arms up around her so that they’re holding one another loosely. “But that doesn’t mean we stop living.”
“She’s the one who taught you that,” Sun says, appearing in the corner of the room, unobtrusive in her severe black business suit. Nomi looks up at her and nods.
“You’re right,” Amanita declares, sighing. “And it’s not like I could get more paranoid.” They each take a brownie and bite into it, reveling in the taste, and when they’re done they lick each other’s fingers of the last crumbs. It’s reminiscent of their first time, their first Pride, back when everything they did was full of firsts.
They haven’t had firsts in a long time, but that’s okay too; it’s good to feel solid, grounded, familiar.
They lay down together on the surprisingly clean bed covers, holding each other and toying with one another’s hair as the pot kicks in slowly. Nomi feels her muscles begin to relax down into the bed, tension she didn’t even know she was carrying, and feels Amanita relaxing too, going boneless.
“I’ll watch out for you,” Sun offers, suddenly. “If anything bad happens, I’ll take over.”
“Sun’s gonna be designated driver,” Nomi says. “So we’ve got backup just in case.”
“Thanks, Sun,” Nita says, to the wrong corner of the room. Nomi points her the right way, and Nita nods in that direction instead.
Sun looks a little surprised, and smiles at Amanita suddenly, forgetting or not caring that Nita can’t see her. After a moment, Sun speaks in a quiet, hesitating voice that Nomi’s never heard her use before.
“You should tell her – we love her too. Through you. We feel how you love her and we want her to be happy.” Nomi blinks at this, tears welling in her eyes. The sentiment surprises her at first, but then she recognizes it. It’s how she feels about Hernando, and about Felix and Jela and Sanyam and all the others.
Nomi feels a surge of love pass through her, out from her center spiraling towards her fingers and toes and hair. It’s like the body-high she gets sometimes, that thrills through her at a touch or a taste, echoing across the space between her cells; but it’s stronger, headier, the love of all her other selves funneled through Sun and focused on Amanita.
“I love you so much,” Nomi gasps, helpless to keep the feeling inside. It tumbles out of her carelessly, light from within shining out. “We all love you so much.”
Amanita laughs suddenly, exposing her long beautiful throat and closing her eyes as she tips her head back in joy. “You know, I never thought I’d be a fugitive hunting down a criminal cabal with my eight-person polyamorous family,” she says, and it sounds different than it might’ve an hour ago; it sounds pensive and accepting. She laughs again.
“More than eight,” Nomi says, thinking again of Hernando and all the others. “And growing.”
“I love you too, by the way,” Amanita says, settling back into Nomi’s arms. Nomi holds her tight, feeling the truth of that, and the responsibility it brings with it. She knows who she is, and she knows who her family is, and she will protect them all with her life.
“I know,” she says.