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They were fighting. And it was horrible.
Of course they had disagreements, and not just over politics. They were raising a child together, running a complex household together, and both learning how to be together with someone else, for the first time in their lives. There were bound to be differences. Points of frustration. And at the same time, January was amazed to discover the weird satisfaction of cuddling up after a spat, and reaffirming that they really did like each other. They weren’t a lovey-dovey couple. In fact, January wasn’t sure they had ever really said the words. But he did call them “love,” in private moments, and they always seemed to like that. And they dropped qin ai de into those conversations as well, and he knew it made him glow a little.
So, he guessed he thought they had an understanding. An understanding that this was love, that this was more than a job for him, that love would keep him at Songshu as long as they would have him.
But this fight was something altogether different from those little spats; he could see it in how unsettled the staff were. It was in the nervous glances they traded when January and Gale changed course to avoid each other, and in the tension that hung in the air as they passed him leaving the morning briefing, where his seat at the table had been empty for the first time since he had arrived at the house three years ago.
The worst part was that he couldn’t figure out quite what had happened - how a small disagreement had escalated quickly into this inability to even be near each other, snowballed until he was at a loss what to do about it. Touch - a brush of hands, their body leaning into his when they bent to whisper in his ear, a quick kiss on the cheek - sustained their relationship, and January missed it. Perhaps missed it even more than sex. The sex was, well, okay, but it always felt like both of them were holding back, and January never felt brave enough to tell them what he wanted or ask them whether something felt good. They muddled through on the sex thing, but those little touches, that they had all figured out. It was their private language, and here they were not even able to be in the same room.
This morning it all felt like too much. As senior staff began drifting towards the conference room for the first meeting of the day, he turned instead towards the area by the front doors where Songshu kept the heat suits and insulated boots.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Gale’s voice behind him wasn’t loud but it was forceful. Compelling.
“Out.” He answered flatly, pausing to answer but refusing to turn around.
“You’ll miss the morning meeting.” He could hear the recriminations lying underneath that sentence: duty; responsibility; do your fucking job…
He half-turned towards them but didn’t meet their eye. “Put it in my next performance review.” he spat out, and walked away. Gale didn’t follow.
It felt good to be out in the cold, away from the house. For the first mile he walked as fast as possible, putting distance between himself and, well Gale. He tried not to think too much about how quickly any of the Natural staffers (Gale) could catch up to him with their ridiculously long legs.
The further he got away from the house, the lighter he felt. The sun was out, and it was warm enough for him to have the faceplate of the heat suit open, with just a scarf wrapped around his face. The woods were wonderful - he could smell the needles from the towering trees and the loamy soil underfoot, and vaguely thought how much it smelled like home now. He passed the area where they had chopped down trees for firewood during the storm, almost three years ago. The seedlings planted that spring as the dust storm was blowing itself out were thriving, already twice as tall as him, on little trunks as big around as his thigh.
He kept walking until he reached a small clearing ringed with mature trees, their trunks a car-length wide, and upper branches that creaked as they rubbed together in the breeze. Suddenly, he realized that he was completely alone, and there was nothing keeping him from unlocking his cage and enjoying a little freedom.
After walking around a bit and jumping up and down just for the pleasure of really feeling the floatiness of lower gravity, he leaned against one of the trunks, the rough plates of bark pressing into his back, and tilted his face up towards the sun. Out of the cage, he could imagine he was back on Earth, on his mother’s vineyard in May, with the smell of freshly warming earth and honeysuckle in the air. The ground was far from warmed here, and honeysuckle didn’t grow, so his brain must have been manufacturing that illusory scent. A thought stirred in the back of his mind, some fragment of one of River’s mini-lectures, but he couldn’t catch it. River…he breathed out a huge sigh and for what seemed like the hundredth time, tried to figure out what had gone wrong…
“Mutually assured destruction” they had said, with a hint of a smile. One of those jokes built on a truth so sharp it slices through you. And nothing had felt the same since the fight that had followed. He felt like that truth, revealed, exposed all the weaknesses in their union, all the holes they would never be able to patch. “My identity. Your killing the soldier keeping guard outside my room that night. The kinds of secrets people die over. Mutually assured destruction.”
He had blurted out “I would never…” then paused as he processed what Gale had actually said. “River…would you? You would do that to me?”
The answer he wanted, needed in fact was some version of “Of course not, never, love, devotion, honor” all the things he thought the trust they shared was built on, even if they never said it out loud.
But instead Gale looked surprised. “If I had to, of course I would. But I know the stakes. If I ruin you, I destroy myself. Like I said…”
“Mutually assured destruction…” January trailed off. “But doesn’t it bother you, having that as the foundation of a relationship? Our relationship, I mean.” In his head he added “instead of love?”
On any other person, Gale’s discomfort would have shown up as looking away or shifting uncomfortably, but instead their spine straightened and they stilled, expressionless. Something flickered across their face, surprise maybe, that they had ended up here, but it looked like pain.
“I apologize. January, I didn’t mean it as a threat.”
“I didn’t hear it as a threat.” January whipped back. “I heard you say that you think this is what binds us together.”
”What binds us together, I thought, was a willingness to tell each other the truth, not to coddle and humor each other. Do you deny that the things we did for each other that night bind us together? The truth is that I put you before many other things. For you I have found myself, gladly, wandering through morally ambiguous territory my former self would be appalled by.”
January knew River well enough to understand that this was meant to be taken as fact, not recriminations, maybe even as a weird little River-esque love declaration, but it was hard to hear it that way when he literally felt that he’d been punched in the throat. “I…I don’t know what to say to you right now. I can see that I made some assumptions about what this thing between us is that you don’t share. It’s my fault, for not understanding what this really is.” At least, that was what he meant to say, but instead his brain glitched, and he actually said “for not understanding what you really are.” And he didn’t realize it until he saw River’s face twitch, which he knew was the same as another person contorting in pain from an unexpected blow. He wanted to say that he’d misspoken, that he meant to say “what this is, our relationship,” but it was too late. River had already turned and walked away.
That was a week ago. A bitter, horrible week of avoiding them, of sleeping in the room he was first given when he came to Songshu. At his request, one of the staff had packed a small bag for him with a week’s worth of clothing, because he thought that might signal to River how upset he was. A week’s worth of upset, and then it would blow over and they would find their way back to how things were before. But the week was up, and he was out of clean underwear, and if anything, things were worse than ever.
The crashing sound of breaking underbrush startled him out of his reverie. He opened his eyes, and across the clearing saw a mammoth stomping their way over the scrubby ground cover and dandelions that filled the spaces between the giant trees.
It, he really, was surprisingly small for a mammoth. After years of instruction from River, January was able to tell that it was a young bull, with a large, rounded head and shaggy hair still transitioning from calf fuzz to the straighter, darker adult coat. He had never seen a mammoth this size; it was much smaller than the adults he knew, and much larger than the babies he played with sometimes when a family outing took them visit to the herd. And then, as clear as if River were whispering in his ear, he remembered: musth. The hormone surge male mammoths experience. In young bulls, it smells sweet, almost like honey, marking them as young, stupid, and relatively harmless, at least if you were an adult bull. Otherwise, another male might kill them for crossing into their territory.
Even though he had never seen one, January knew that adolescent bulls would leave the herd to go out and make their own way, much like he had when he left for ballet school at 12 years old. But unlike him, who had the structure and protection of ballet school and regular calls with his mum, young bulls didn’t have social connections tying them down. They went out to roam, and get big, and eventually find other males to form a bachelor herd with. But this one was still young, and all alone, and maybe he was projecting, but January looked across the clearing at the bull and felt a kind of kinship with him.
He stood up from leaning against the tree, and took a few steps forward, talking to the little mammoth, knowing that his squeaky human noises meant nothing to them, but still hoping to make some kind of connection, the way he was often able to with the calves in the herd. “Hi there, gent. Hello, how are you? All out here on your own, huh? Maybe you just left your herd. Feeling a little like you thought you had a family that loved you but now they’ve just kicked you to the curb? I know how that feels…” He just rambled on, letting some of the swirl of hurt and emotion dribble out of his mouth. They were alone out here, it didn’t matter.
The little mammoth raised his trunk and blew out a gust of air in a little honk. Then swayed a bit back and forth on his legs. Maybe the talking was getting through to them after all?
“January.” He froze. Turned his head. Saw River, not needing a heat suit, just their long coat, standing off to his right, at the other edge of the clearing.
River continued in a soft, urgent tone. “January, don’t move. I…you’re in a lot of danger right now.” Realizing what they must mean, January turned his head back towards the mammoth and, without meaning to, caught his eye. A second later, the bull, who was now clearly not at all “little” was charging at him.
It was too late to try to run, so he sort of dove off to the side. He avoided being stomped on, but the bull’s huge trunk caught him as it swung to the side and knocked him back, flying through the air and slamming into a tree. He felt the shock of the impact, and a chunk of the rough bark biting into his back before he landed in a heap on the ground.
The young bull let out an angry trumpet that shook the ground, and trotted away out of the clearing and back into the trees. He lay there for a moment, the wind knocked out of him, unable to tell whether he was dying. He fought to take a breath, willing his brain to remember how to do it, and finally it did and he sucked in a huge lungful of air.
He was aware of River running over, and bending down as if to touch him. He shook his head and managed a hoarse “No, not caged.” He looked over fifteen feet away, where his cage stood like an empty shell shaped like his body. Now it was River’s turn to freeze, and they backed up a few feet. For a dizzying second he remembered the first few months of their marriage, when they kept his key for so long that the cage pressed bruises into his skin. And how when they finally let him take it off when they were out on the cliff edge, raising the gravity trains, there were mammoths there too. And then he realized he might have hit his head too, because those thoughts didn’t all go together.
He lay on the ground, letting his body understand that he was alive, and that it knew how to breathe, it really did. And gradually, the pain began to overtake him. “Ow. Oh fuck.” was his eloquent reaction to that.
“Are you okay? What hurts?” River sounded legitimately worried.
He tried a joke “Don’t sound so worried - I’m supposed to be mad at you.” He finally looked at them, and tried to say, with his eyes, that he needed them not to panic right now.
They nodded. “Can I take a look?”
January shook his head. “Probably not a good idea. I haven’t been out of my cage long, and I was alone - didn’t really do any adjustment exercises. Maybe, maybe bring it over here? If I can get into it…”
Now River was shaking their head “But you’re hurt.”
“Let me try…” and January put his arm under his shoulder and pushed himself up. He doubted he could have done it in normal gravity, but here, it only felt hard.
“Your back.” River gasped, and January guessed that the rough bark had done a number on him, even through the heat suit. The idea of turning to try to get a glimpse of it was too much, so he decided he didn’t need to know that right now.
He rolled onto all fours, wanting to get up and back into his cage before the shock wore off.
“Can you? Get my cage?” he grunted.
“I called Sasha, he’s bringing out an ATV. January, please wait for them, I don’t think…”
He closed his eyes. “I know, I know. It’s going to be horrible. But I can’t risk hurting you.” He opened his eyes and looked at them, probably showing too much of what those nightmares he kept tamped down deep inside did to him. The teeth on the floor…
River nodded, their mouth a firm line, and walked over to pick up his cage. It always felt light to him, but it was heavy for a Natural person, and River had to drag it over by the shoulders, the heels catching on the rough ground. They stood it up a couple of feet from him and then retreated.
With a deep breath, he got one leg under him, and then pushed up. The sharp pain in his side told him he probably had a couple of broken ribs, but he couldn’t mention that right now, or River really wouldn’t let him get the cage on. He held his breath and backed into it, hearing the shush as it closed around him. And then, nothing.
________
He woke up briefly on the ride back, when a bump jostled him so hard that the pain penetrated his haze. Someone was screaming, and Christ, it was him, he had time to think before he passed out again.
________
He had two cracked ribs, and one that was actually broken. The force of the cage closing had pushed it in and punctured his lung. The skin was badly scraped and bruised on that half of his back, and he’d sprained one of his wrists as he fell. Overall, Dr. Okonkwo told him, he had gotten away easy. As much as they annoyed him, he had to agree.
River came to see him a few times, but he was too drugged up to talk to them. Yuan visited too, and left him a surprisingly well-drawn rendering of a mammoth tossing him into a tree with the words “Get wel sune” written unevenly along the bottom.
He was looking at it with a smile on his face when River came back. They paused in the doorway, silently asking for permission to come in. January smiled. “Hullo love.”
Their posture relaxed a fraction and they stepped into the room. They glanced at the nurse, who quickly bowed and left, closing the door behind them.
They came and stood on the same side of the bed as his bad wrist, so he raised his other arm and tried to move it a little in their direction, but he was too bruised to reach across his body. River understood, and moved around the bed and took his hand, very gently.
“I’m sorry. This is my fault.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No, you tried to warn me. I don’t know what insanity possessed me to approach a bull like that. Maybe I was feeling a little like I had nothing left to lose.” He looked away, down at the bandage around his other wrist. One of the edges was peeling up and he badly wanted to stick it back down again, but they were holding his hand too firmly.
“Yes, that’s what I am sorry about. That I hurt you, that I said those things that made you feel…unloved. Because you are, you know.” He looked at them sharply. “Loved.” River was trying to cover up how nervous they were, but he could see, they had their ‘brave face’ on. Like they were scared of what he was going to say back to them.
“I love you.” he said, because them saying he was loved was not the same as saying that they loved him, and he wanted to hear them say it as much as he wanted them to hear him say it back.
River looked at him, squeezed his hand a little, but didn’t say anything.
He tried again, because he was on a lot of painkillers and had almost died for Christ’s sake and he was not going to risk them refusing to understand him. “River, I love you. Really love you.” It still sounded ambiguous to his ears. “In love with you. Passionately in love with you.”
Their brow furrowed. Okay. That wasn’t the best sign. Fuck. It had been years since someone he was in love with had let him down easy. He had forgotten how horrible it felt while it was happening to you. Like you were being consumed by a roaring bonfire of embarrassment.
“January, I too.” they paused “I too feel the same way. But you never said it. I would have noticed. And so I just…” they shrugged. “Assumed.”
“Assumed what?” Confused, he thought back to the argument between him, the one that had been running in his head for the past week. “That I only stayed because you were holding something over me?”
“Well that, and I did know you liked me at least. That we worked well together.”
“Worked well together? Well, fuck. And all this time I was hoping for more.”
“You were? Like what? I mean we do…everything, right, that love matches do? That’s better than a lot of contract marriages.”
“If you’re happy with that, and don’t want anything more, then that’s okay, I guess. I can’t make you want me. But I do want more. I want to be able to tell you I love you and be romantic and touch you all the time, not just a morning kiss on the cheek as we head to work or a hand on my arm. And I want to make you feel so good but I don’t know how to, or what you want and so I wish we could sit and talk about how to make this marriage, all of it, better.” he stopped for a minute, thinking about how to say what it was that was missing. “River, I don’t want a contract marriage any more.”
They tried to pull their hand away, but he held it. He knew he shouldn’t, Tharsese rules demanded that he let them step away if they no longer wanted to be touched. But he needed them to understand. “I’m sorry, I’m not done. I don’t want a contract marriage, because I want a love match. With you, my beautiful, genius, spouse that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the worlds. And I even though I want a love match, I wouldn’t trade you, even if this can never be more than a contract marriage, for anything, even to wake up in an alternative timeline where Earth is just fine and London never flooded. That’s what I mean when I say I love you.”
River didn't say anything for a moment, but then they let out a choked sob that seemed to get caught in their throat. They shook their head, and bent down and kissed him, lightly, on the lips and then just rested their foreheads together. They were still holding on to his hand, hard, and January started to think that maybe they weren’t about to try to let him down easy.
They finally pulled back and said “I’m so bad at this. I want those same things you do. I thought maybe this marriage could just be…converted into a love match. But I forgot that people were involved. I forgot to tell you about what I thought was going on.”
“When I’m feeling much better and have all my wits about me, can we take some time, a whole day, or an hour each day for a month, I don’t care how we divide it up. But I want a whole day’s worth of your time to talk about everything we each want. And all of our feelings. With some time in between to make actual love to each other.” He could feel his energy ebbing, all at once, the way it does when you’ve damaged major organs and broken some bones.
“You rest. I’ll talk to Solly about the Schedule.” They were still holding his hand, and the other hand was gently stroking his face. “But can..” He tilted his head, waiting for the rest of the question. “Can I move your suitcase back into our rooms?”
“Of course.” he said “Your timing's perfect. I put on my last pair of clean underwear this morning…”