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This will have to sustain me.
It was hard to choke them back, but the rain helped obliterate the words. This is it for me. He tried to let the water smooth them down, wash away everything that wasn’t Wolf’s exquisite invasion or Marc’s searing vulnerability. Philip was cared for, and he was trusted, and this was all he would ever have. Tension, culminating at this perfect moment, the one last time he would be part of something, before the moment would simply fall away like a birch shedding bark, like leaves in autumn—quietly, gently, but inevitably.
This was the turn: as he met the moment head-on, as Marc went to pieces in his arms and Wolf was there for them both—Philip felt the first leaves fall.
When speech returned and they rinsed themselves clean—clean, for the first time in months—and wrangled each other back into sodden clothes, there was a long moment of mindless, giddy contentment. Having not used his thighs in that way, well, basically ever, the three of them laughed as Philip stumbled, simply from being prodded in the back. His legs didn’t hurt; in fact they were quite numb, and just didn’t work. The congenial teasing nearly silenced the dread on the back of his tongue.
But there it was, as they approached the villa’s outer walls, the noise of celebration a muted echo through the rain into the forest.
This is goodbye.
They must have sensed his panic, and halted him at the tree line, one hand a comforting weight on his shoulder, another sleek and callused in his own palm. Philip inhaled deeply. The rain could conceal tears, but thunder would not disguise sobs.
Wolf leaned down, lips surprisingly plush, surrounded by all that bristle, and just as gentle as Philip had come to expect. He sank into the kiss, muscles weakening by the second, until Wolf set one finger beneath his chin, heartening him, bolstering him. Steeling him for Marc.
Those lips met Philip’s while his eyes were still closed, and it felt wrong. Marc was all hard edges, but so were flakes of quartz, and Philip was missing that clarity. He pulled back, owning the harsh sound of the separation, and braced a palm on Marc’s neck. When he chanced to look at those eyes, it was a painful relief to find himself so unequivocally seen.
Wolf was right. There was no conversation to be had that might communicate this. Even now, looking right into those eyes, Philip had no words to convey what they spoke. And Philip had never run out of the right words; there was always one more language with just the right shift in perspective to say it right.
The black of Marc’s eyes was one such language, and Philip could only translate it into the sensations in his own body. As their lips met this time, more harshly, more slowly, Philip felt heartsick. It wasn’t love, not really, but perhaps Marc was reaching deeper than tonight, pulling up the mourning that Philip never really got, and the yearning he would never really fill. That carved-out piece of him was just a feature of his body now, and he imagined it aging like the abandoned dry hollow of a tree, settling into dust and forest detritus, letting in the distant sunlight, ready to be inhabited but hopeless that it ever would be.
Marc’s brows were drawn with concern even as his teeth sought Philip’s bottom lip. He soothed it with a kiss, pushing a hand across Philip’s hair until it cradled the back of his neck.
Almost nothing hurt worse than kindness.
Philip tore himself away before the weight of his heart wrenched his skin asunder.
He drifted, unfeeling, through the joyous yard, wearing a smile which he could only hope reached his eyes. Did not feel his legs, did not feel his sorrow. He drank too much ale too quickly, hoping to stay numb at least long enough to have made a good appearance in celebrating with the others. And he waited, sobering enough to stand without swaying, and made his way up to his chambers without a word to anyone. Not to Wolf, not to the language of Marc’s eyes.
Philip sat on his bed, looked at his palms, felt the phantom weight of skin—another person’s skin, two loving people’s skin—and wept.
* * *
A light scratching at his door, then a voice, small but so secure. “Master Philip?”
Heavens. This visitor he could not turn away. “You may come in, Britte.”
He tried to set his face to rights as she slunk in, hair still dark with precious rain in places, surrounded by a frizzy copper halo. He smiled at her through his tears.
“Why are you crying?”
“Oh. . . .” He tried never to lie, and felt that in its way, this would pass muster. “I’m relieved to see the rain.”
Her brows were drawn with skepticism, and a bit of worry that he might be touched. “So you’re crying?”
“Yes.”
“But—so, grownups cry when things are good?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Sometimes.” He tried to hold back a lighter grin as her face screwed up in an attempt to assimilate that.
“But why?”
“Well . . . when things are bad, it’s scary. Wasn’t it frightening to be without enough water?” She nodded. “But we had no time to be afraid, because everyone was working together to improve things. People must be strong for one another when times are hard. Once you’re safe again, the fear doesn’t always disappear right away. Feelings can be quite slow to understand. So when danger passes, and you are free to be weak again, the slow feelings may show themselves.” He headed off any misunderstanding by adding, “However, showing feelings is not necessarily weakness. It can be a sign of strength as well. I like to think my tears are an expression of the worry I felt for everyone, the strength of my love for them. And my joy that they are safe again.”
Her narrowed gaze slid laterally in consideration. “So it’s both? Weak and strong at the same time?”
“Most things have some good and some bad.”
Britte’s mouth pinched to one side, and she nodded.
“But still,” he said, conspiratorial. “It’s a bit personal.” He put a finger to his lips, and mimed the gesture a few inches from her mouth. She nodded. The last thing he needed was for Wolf or Marc to believe they’d made a mistake with him, or that he couldn’t handle it. Maybe he couldn’t, but it wasn’t their responsibility to coddle him. He just needed time to reacquaint himself with normal life. Time’s plodding march toward his solitary end.
Not that he was alone, really. He had friends strong enough to open their lives to him, and cold wet curls pressed to his cheek. That man was not alone.
He shooed the girl off, after thanking her for her care and her time, and sat up on his bed again. A wave of darkness threatened his resolve, but he sniffed against it and stuffed it down. His friends—family—were safe, for now. He could sleep, and in the morning they would gauge the cisterns, and things would be fine.
His lamp guttered out as he sat and watched what would have been the path of the moon, were it not for the rain.
In the morning, they measured the cisterns, and it was fine.