Gray eyes wide and lambent, Camilla gave a solemn nod. "There was something else too," she said. "I thought he was with us. The god. Not the whole time, though. When I was running, but not -- you know."
Though it could be that she simply hadn't been paying attention then. Probably ancient pagan gods didn't really care about privacy.
"I haven't asked anyone if they thought so," she said. "Not even Charles," and if some of the bacchanal memories that swam to mind were accurate too, Henry probably knew more about her and Charles than she'd ever intended anyone to know. "I mean, I still go to church." Neo-pagan worship as a way of life was for hippies. "Only it seems like ..." She shook her head, sending a wisp of wind-tousled hair flying into her eyes, so that she had to raise a hand to clear it away with an irritable little flick. "I don't know," she said, for what seemed like the millionth time.
I want you to make everything make sense.
I feel safe when I'm with you.
She grasped for an analogy. "It's like Linear A -- no, it's like hieroglyphics, and you're the only person I know who can read hieroglyphics. So there isn't any point talking about it with the others, because they don't know what they're talking about. But you do. As much as anyone can." She bit her lip -- faint edge of white teeth creasing the pale unpainted pink there -- but she didn't look away.
"I really am sorry about what happened to that man. But I'm not sorry about the rest of it. And if it was all meant to happen, maybe what happened to him was part of that, too. Something bigger than us. Only how much of it did we really choose? I can't sort it out. Things I'd never dream of doing before, now I want --"
But she really couldn't say any more than that, the halting flow of words drying at the back of her throat.
Henry had wondered if he was the only one who felt that--he hadn't asked anyone else, because it seemed to personal a thing to say aloud. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Camilla, out of all of them, had felt it too.
"It's entirely possible," he said quietly. "We're possibly the only people to invoke him since the ancient Greeks. I imagine it would not have worked, had he not been present." To know such complete and utter abandon...there had to be a touch of the divine in it. "I haven't really asked the others what they do and don't remember. They would surely ask me in turn, and I have no desire to tell them."
Henry had indeed learned (or thought he'd learned) a bit more about the twins than they would likely want anyone to know. Bunny had voiced suspicions, before, but with Bunny it was easy to dismiss such speculations as the product of bored, occasionally malicious mind. It had not been important, at the time, and just at this moment it seemed less important still, with Camilla sitting in front of him, uncertain as he'd never seen her. Any other person would have demurred at her words, but Henry was Henry, and in many ways was nothing if not self-confident. Besides, just at present they seemed as unimportant as her dubious relationship with her brother.
He reached out, his hand not quite steady as he smoothed back a lock of her hair. "Now you want what?" he asked.
No, he hadn't asked them, had he? Francis and Charles had let their impressions spill in a nervous flood, especially Francis though every time he remembered something it seemed to contradict the last thing he'd remembered; Camilla had sat silent, the red scarf wound around her neck standing for her exemption; and Henry had listened, corroborating their accounts with brief assent sometimes, otherwise volunteering nothing. There had been some moment for which Camilla wasn't present, the three men gathered around the Vermonter's corpse; Francis and Charles and Henry had reconstructed that as best they could, but about everything else, Henry offered up no detail whatsoever.
Unlike Camilla's, his hadn't been a conspicuous silence. Mostly, after that first nervous frenzy of oh God what have we done, none of them had wanted to talk about any of it, and half the time Bunny or Richard would be hanging around so no one could bring it up even if they wanted.
But it was true what he said: he hadn't asked them. If there were things he hadn't wanted to tell them, then that would be the smartest thing to do.
Except he was asking her, now. Now you want what? he prompted, not allowing her the luxury of silence or incompletion.
She swallowed hard.
"What we aren't going to tell them about," she said.
Henry had thought she would say that--had hoped, at least; belief in Fate notwithstanding, the thought of Camilla's potential answers had actually made him uncertain. For Henry, this was little short of a miracle.
He found himself uncertain as how to respond, too. He had absolutely no experience with anything even remotely like this--during the bacchanal they had both been wild, frenzied, completely out of control. It was different, now, in the cold light of rationality, and he hesitated a moment before setting his teacup aside. There was no hestitation in his next action, though--nerves or not, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was not a light kiss, but somehow it contrived to be almost chaste--a test, almost, a test of her reaction. She deserved the chance to back away, if she wished.
Her words had set the two of them apart from everyone else. Oh, the group had already started culling the weaker members: Richard wasn't even to be considered part of the inner group, nice though he might be, and Bunny they'd left out of the bacchanal. Bunny wasn't one of them anymore. Camilla had just gone much farther than that, cutting everyone out. What we aren't going to tell them about, she'd said. The first-person plural only meant Camilla and Henry, now.
She hadn't consciously chosen that resonance. She wasn't thinking about all the things it could mean, or how it excluded her brother.
And as silly and thoughtless as this might seem, she wasn't expecting what Henry did next, either.
This was Henry, after all. How long had she known him? Two years -- no, closer to two and a half, now -- from the first day of her freshman year, the first day of Greek class for her. Always armored in his immaculate wool suits, stiff and pressed even in the earliest morning hours, always put together. Remote. Untouchable because it was unthinkable that he would ever want to touch or be touched, and Julian had always told them: what is unthinkable is undoable.
Startled, her eyes widened for a second before she closed them. Then she leaned into his kiss too, and her hands reached blindly for his shoulders.
She trusted him. She'd let him figure out what was supposed to happen.
It wasn't anything like the bacchanal, except perhaps a touch of that alien wonder tinted the experience. Still, Camilla was completely in her right mind, in every sense, sober and awake in the clear light of midday. No madness swept her or swayed her actions. She understood Henry knew what he was doing, too, and she could sense his restraint.
Henry knew what he was doing in one sense; in another, he really more or less didn't. He was going into this with both eyes open, as it were--he knew what they were doing, what they were getting themselves into. He knew how much it changed...well, everything.
In a perhaps more immediate sense, all his control and composure could not entirely be substituted for raw experience. While there was nothing even remotely hesitant in his kiss, there was a certain care, a certain watchfulness that was born of his inexperience with these matters. For perhaps the first time in his entire life he was partially vulnerable, but that wasn't about to slow or stop him.
Charles and Francis were still part of the small inner cadre, and for now at least he couldn't see that changing. Camilla, however, was something more--had been something more to him for quite a long while now. He would not have dared say a thing, if not for the bacchanal; if Camilla had thought him untouchable, he had thought her partially removed from humanity entirely--something above them all, as unapproachable as a goddess.
Camilla had no idea what Henry felt, or how long he'd felt it. To her, this was a consequence of the bacchanal. She wouldn't have seen him this way without it -- wouldn't have felt the way she did now, surely. (Or would she?) She'd always respected Henry. She'd always looked up to him. To have the intensity of his full attention focused solely on her was nothing short of thrilling, and almost a little disconcerting. It made her feel shy in a way she didn't usually. Not knowing he felt at all vulnerable, she felt profoundly vulnerable.
Her lips parted for him, and her hands tightened on his shoulders.
His vulnerability was quickly eroding. Henry was very inexperienced, true, but some things could be guided by instinct. One arm slipped around Camilla's waist, pulling her close as he returned her kiss, slow and almost exploratory--feeling out her boundaries, her likes and dislikes. He was very gentle without even realizing it--he didn't want to treat her with anything even close to roughness. She was too perfect for that--she should be worshipped, and he could easily do that. He'd worshipped her from afar long before this.
Another thing Camilla had no idea about: exactly how inexperienced Henry was. His love life, or lack thereof, wasn't something she'd ever spent any time pondering (until this past week, anyway. Two nights ago she'd made herself miserable imagining he was having some kind of affair with Julian and wouldn't want her).
Charles had been like this with her, a little, in the very very beginning, when they'd been very young and trying out kissing for the first time. She associated Henry's deliberate care with newness, not to kissing in general, but to kissing her. Gladly she let him lead, oblivious that he might actually have appreciated some guidance. (Besides, it was Henry. Logically it was his place to lead.)
While Julian might or might not harbor other-than-fatherly feelings for Henry, Henry himself had absolutely no idea there was even a possibility of such a thing. It would likewise have never occurred to him that anyone could think he'd ever had such a thing as a love-life--he had very little idea that the others saw him as something of an enigmatic figure.
Part of Henry's care was the product of newness, the result of the sobriety he had now, a sobriety he had not possessed during the bacchanal. Even if he'd had prior experience, he would still have been quite gentle with her; it was quite important to him that he find Camilla's boundaries--that he know what was all right and what was not. Secretly he really would have appreciated some guidance, but a lack thereof wasn't about to stop him. His free hand slipped into her honey-golden hair, part of him marveling even as he kissed her at the softness of it against his skin.
Camilla didn't know herself what her boundaries were, if she had them. Bacchanal quite aside, she'd grown up with a brother who felt free to demand anything from her, and the only real boundary she knew was that she wasn't supposed to do anything like this with anyone but Charles, or else he'd be angry.
The bacchanal had shattered that one, and she didn't know how much Charles knew for sure about that. But the bacchanal had been such a haze of fantastic and improbable perceptions, Charles might not know what really happened even if he'd been at Camilla's side the whole time, which Camilla was sure he hadn't been.
This, though -- this was indisputably real, what she was doing right now, and she could get in serious trouble for it. There was no excuse for it, either. Not that she should have to make excuses. Charles could do what he wanted; why shouldn't she?
She pulled away to catch her breath, staring at Henry with those inscrutable rainwater eyes of hers. A slow blink.
Then she reached to take his glasses off. "May I?" she asked, but she didn't wait for an answer.
Henry experienced just a fraction of an instant's panic when she pulled back--yes, actual panic; he would have been surprised, if he'd been capable of registering surprise. When he realized she just wanted to get rid of his glasses, he smiled.
"Of course," he said, low. His eyes held hers for a moment before his hand slipped down to the back of her neck and he drew her mouth to his once more. She'd tasted of something rich and exotic, before, and he was discovering that that at least had not been a product of the bacchanal; she still did, and he kissed her slowly, savoring her.
Of course, he said, and she let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, his glasses already in her hand. She wasn't really sure what his boundaries were either. She wasn't sure if either of them could have any, against one another, after what they'd been through. At the same time, this calm quiet sitting room was worlds away from the moonlit wild forest where they'd first come together. Maybe that made a difference. Light streamed through the window to remind her --
-- of what? She pushed away the nagging feeling (something forgotten, something she needed to take care of), wanting nothing more than to be subsumed in the improbable wonderful kiss he'd resumed. Her fingers stole up to wind through his hair, long at the front where he grew it and parted it carefully to cover that mysterious scar he had, and her other hand reached over to drop his glasses on the coffee table, then sought the small of his back. She had an odd suspicion she'd just dropped his glasses half in and half out of the ashtray. The same ashtray she'd thrown at Bunny to get him to shut up --
oh, damn it. She stopped again, drawing away from Henry's lips just far enough to murmur against them.
"Hold that thought," Henry said, standing and crossing the room. He clicked the lock on the door, and when he came back he took Camilla's hand to help her up. Certainly no one could see them in the back room, and unlike the bedroom, his bed that pulled out of the wall was more than big enough.
He led her back, away from the window, away from the theoretical eyes of anyone who might be irritating enough to try to stop by. The bed was already pulled down, neatly made as always, and he pulled her down to sit beside him, his hand tangling in her hair once more. For a long moment he just looked at her, and the fair clean lines of her face, her soft, almost luminescent hair.
She gazed back at him, uncertain what he might be looking for in her face. He was close enough that even his awful eyesight couldn't blur her too badly, she was sure. They'd left his glasses in the sitting room -- of course he didn't need them to navigate his own familiar house -- and it occurred to Camilla that this was the longest she'd ever seen Henry without his glasses. She'd seen him take them off to clean them before, but that was all. He'd even worn them the night of the bacchanal, scornful of any disjunction between that and the makeshift chitons. The glasses were like a part of the armor he wore, the facade that distanced him from the rest of the world; without them, he seemed somehow more human. More approachable. Not softer, exactly -- the square set of his jaw, the strong lines of his face, could never be soft -- but warmer, maybe. On an impulse she reached to draw her fingertips down his cheek.
It wasn't something she would have done that night in the woods, this tentative inquisitive little caress. This was terra incognita, completely uncharted, no matter how much of him she thought she might remember.
Henry didn't really know what he was looking for, either. His eyes shut when she touched his face, her fingers smooth and cool--in all his life, no one had ever touched him like that. He couldn't help but return the gesture, her cheek even smoother than her fingers beneath his hand, and with that he leaned in to kiss her again, pulling her close and shifting to lay her on the bed.
Though it could be that she simply hadn't been paying attention then. Probably ancient pagan gods didn't really care about privacy.
"I haven't asked anyone if they thought so," she said. "Not even Charles," and if some of the bacchanal memories that swam to mind were accurate too, Henry probably knew more about her and Charles than she'd ever intended anyone to know. "I mean, I still go to church." Neo-pagan worship as a way of life was for hippies. "Only it seems like ..." She shook her head, sending a wisp of wind-tousled hair flying into her eyes, so that she had to raise a hand to clear it away with an irritable little flick. "I don't know," she said, for what seemed like the millionth time.
I want you to make everything make sense.
I feel safe when I'm with you.
She grasped for an analogy. "It's like Linear A -- no, it's like hieroglyphics, and you're the only person I know who can read hieroglyphics. So there isn't any point talking about it with the others, because they don't know what they're talking about. But you do. As much as anyone can." She bit her lip -- faint edge of white teeth creasing the pale unpainted pink there -- but she didn't look away.
"I really am sorry about what happened to that man. But I'm not sorry about the rest of it. And if it was all meant to happen, maybe what happened to him was part of that, too. Something bigger than us. Only how much of it did we really choose? I can't sort it out. Things I'd never dream of doing before, now I want --"
But she really couldn't say any more than that, the halting flow of words drying at the back of her throat.
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"It's entirely possible," he said quietly. "We're possibly the only people to invoke him since the ancient Greeks. I imagine it would not have worked, had he not been present." To know such complete and utter abandon...there had to be a touch of the divine in it. "I haven't really asked the others what they do and don't remember. They would surely ask me in turn, and I have no desire to tell them."
Henry had indeed learned (or thought he'd learned) a bit more about the twins than they would likely want anyone to know. Bunny had voiced suspicions, before, but with Bunny it was easy to dismiss such speculations as the product of bored, occasionally malicious mind. It had not been important, at the time, and just at this moment it seemed less important still, with Camilla sitting in front of him, uncertain as he'd never seen her. Any other person would have demurred at her words, but Henry was Henry, and in many ways was nothing if not self-confident. Besides, just at present they seemed as unimportant as her dubious relationship with her brother.
He reached out, his hand not quite steady as he smoothed back a lock of her hair. "Now you want what?" he asked.
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Unlike Camilla's, his hadn't been a conspicuous silence. Mostly, after that first nervous frenzy of oh God what have we done, none of them had wanted to talk about any of it, and half the time Bunny or Richard would be hanging around so no one could bring it up even if they wanted.
But it was true what he said: he hadn't asked them. If there were things he hadn't wanted to tell them, then that would be the smartest thing to do.
Except he was asking her, now. Now you want what? he prompted, not allowing her the luxury of silence or incompletion.
She swallowed hard.
"What we aren't going to tell them about," she said.
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He found himself uncertain as how to respond, too. He had absolutely no experience with anything even remotely like this--during the bacchanal they had both been wild, frenzied, completely out of control. It was different, now, in the cold light of rationality, and he hesitated a moment before setting his teacup aside. There was no hestitation in his next action, though--nerves or not, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was not a light kiss, but somehow it contrived to be almost chaste--a test, almost, a test of her reaction. She deserved the chance to back away, if she wished.
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She hadn't consciously chosen that resonance. She wasn't thinking about all the things it could mean, or how it excluded her brother.
And as silly and thoughtless as this might seem, she wasn't expecting what Henry did next, either.
This was Henry, after all. How long had she known him? Two years -- no, closer to two and a half, now -- from the first day of her freshman year, the first day of Greek class for her. Always armored in his immaculate wool suits, stiff and pressed even in the earliest morning hours, always put together. Remote. Untouchable because it was unthinkable that he would ever want to touch or be touched, and Julian had always told them: what is unthinkable is undoable.
Startled, her eyes widened for a second before she closed them. Then she leaned into his kiss too, and her hands reached blindly for his shoulders.
She trusted him. She'd let him figure out what was supposed to happen.
It wasn't anything like the bacchanal, except perhaps a touch of that alien wonder tinted the experience. Still, Camilla was completely in her right mind, in every sense, sober and awake in the clear light of midday. No madness swept her or swayed her actions. She understood Henry knew what he was doing, too, and she could sense his restraint.
She didn't back away.
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In a perhaps more immediate sense, all his control and composure could not entirely be substituted for raw experience. While there was nothing even remotely hesitant in his kiss, there was a certain care, a certain watchfulness that was born of his inexperience with these matters. For perhaps the first time in his entire life he was partially vulnerable, but that wasn't about to slow or stop him.
Charles and Francis were still part of the small inner cadre, and for now at least he couldn't see that changing. Camilla, however, was something more--had been something more to him for quite a long while now. He would not have dared say a thing, if not for the bacchanal; if Camilla had thought him untouchable, he had thought her partially removed from humanity entirely--something above them all, as unapproachable as a goddess.
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Her lips parted for him, and her hands tightened on his shoulders.
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Charles had been like this with her, a little, in the very very beginning, when they'd been very young and trying out kissing for the first time. She associated Henry's deliberate care with newness, not to kissing in general, but to kissing her. Gladly she let him lead, oblivious that he might actually have appreciated some guidance. (Besides, it was Henry. Logically it was his place to lead.)
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Part of Henry's care was the product of newness, the result of the sobriety he had now, a sobriety he had not possessed during the bacchanal. Even if he'd had prior experience, he would still have been quite gentle with her; it was quite important to him that he find Camilla's boundaries--that he know what was all right and what was not. Secretly he really would have appreciated some guidance, but a lack thereof wasn't about to stop him. His free hand slipped into her honey-golden hair, part of him marveling even as he kissed her at the softness of it against his skin.
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The bacchanal had shattered that one, and she didn't know how much Charles knew for sure about that. But the bacchanal had been such a haze of fantastic and improbable perceptions, Charles might not know what really happened even if he'd been at Camilla's side the whole time, which Camilla was sure he hadn't been.
This, though -- this was indisputably real, what she was doing right now, and she could get in serious trouble for it. There was no excuse for it, either. Not that she should have to make excuses. Charles could do what he wanted; why shouldn't she?
She pulled away to catch her breath, staring at Henry with those inscrutable rainwater eyes of hers. A slow blink.
Then she reached to take his glasses off. "May I?" she asked, but she didn't wait for an answer.
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"Of course," he said, low. His eyes held hers for a moment before his hand slipped down to the back of her neck and he drew her mouth to his once more. She'd tasted of something rich and exotic, before, and he was discovering that that at least had not been a product of the bacchanal; she still did, and he kissed her slowly, savoring her.
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-- of what? She pushed away the nagging feeling (something forgotten, something she needed to take care of), wanting nothing more than to be subsumed in the improbable wonderful kiss he'd resumed. Her fingers stole up to wind through his hair, long at the front where he grew it and parted it carefully to cover that mysterious scar he had, and her other hand reached over to drop his glasses on the coffee table, then sought the small of his back. She had an odd suspicion she'd just dropped his glasses half in and half out of the ashtray. The same ashtray she'd thrown at Bunny to get him to shut up --
oh, damn it. She stopped again, drawing away from Henry's lips just far enough to murmur against them.
"The window."
Anyone could see them, anyone coming up the walk.
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"Hold that thought," Henry said, standing and crossing the room. He clicked the lock on the door, and when he came back he took Camilla's hand to help her up. Certainly no one could see them in the back room, and unlike the bedroom, his bed that pulled out of the wall was more than big enough.
He led her back, away from the window, away from the theoretical eyes of anyone who might be irritating enough to try to stop by. The bed was already pulled down, neatly made as always, and he pulled her down to sit beside him, his hand tangling in her hair once more. For a long moment he just looked at her, and the fair clean lines of her face, her soft, almost luminescent hair.
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It wasn't something she would have done that night in the woods, this tentative inquisitive little caress. This was terra incognita, completely uncharted, no matter how much of him she thought she might remember.
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