It was the first time Ollo had ever been in Hazel's room. Only it wasn't a room. It was, if it was anything, a meadow. He wasn't sure if it was actually anything, because how could a meadow be through a door at the top of a spiral staircase? The how didn't really matter and he was, for once, glad that he had dropped her hand to push through the door so that his first impression was fully his own. It wasn't the clearing in a forest she'd taken him to when she'd apologized his first day back, but it made him think of it, anyway. Mostly because he didn't have a whole lot of experience with natural places like this. He was raised in cities with two parents who were not outdoorsy. He knew this was a meadow like he knew what an armadillo was- from images on screens and in books, not his own experiences.
He glanced over at Hazel and smiled. Squeezed her shoulder briefly but long enough for his mind to receive assurances that he wasn't simply allowed in this space but actively wanted here. Good. He wanted to be here. He grinned and took off towards the stream. Not quite jogging- he was barefoot and it was ground beneath him, not flooring. It was summer and he'd left his flip flops inside the door to her parents' house when he'd arrived.
And he had arrived this time, on his own, not been brought by Hazel. The week had started fast but was ending slowly. If he'd been a stone rolling downhill he thought maybe this was where he'd finally stopped. Where the moss might start to gather.
She had stayed with him that third night. In his room- in his bed- that didn't feel like his anymore. His room was actually a room but hadn't been his in...awhile. The next day had been Wednesday though, so he didn't have to go to the restaurant. The imagined breakfast had been left in the imagination. He'd woken up to kiss Hazel goodbye only and then had gone back to sleep, sprawled facedown in almost exactly the same visual from the fantasy. He'd woken up lonely and puttered around without much to do since Hazel had unpacked for him and they'd both reset the kitchen after she'd made dinner. He ate the leftovers for lunch so that his declaration that his next two meals would be Fix made was still true. Thought about texting Tadhg but he was actually Hazel's cousin so he didn't. Jacob Beckett was in London now he'd heard, but yeah- he'd heard, as in second hand, so not exactly a person he felt comfortable texting out of the blue. Though he knew in different circumstances he would have. There was really only one person he wanted to text, anyway, and so in the end he had. He had Hazel's number, but it wasn't surprising to find he'd never texted her before. He knew he'd never asked for her number and only had it from group chats coordinating Fix and Donahue hosted holidays. His teenage self had saved her contact as "Hazy." He didn't change it, just texted come over again after close tomorrow? against an empty screen. She'd agreed.
He'd read, called Luc, played Tetris on his phone because Jett had been with Luc and told him he'd looked shell shocked and Tetris was supposed to help with that, remember? He did. He did remember. He walked over a mile to the Catholic church he knew his grandmother had preferred on the occasions she came to stay with them in London, lit a candle for her, ate dinner at a chicken shop, fell asleep playing Tetris. Dreamed of falling bricks.
Nearly fucked Hazel in her office the next morning before her openers arrived. Not nearly; they hadn't even gone into her office. The mental images had just been innumerable; from both of them. The mind fucking was possibly somehow satisfying the desire for actual fucking because they still hadn't, didn't that night either, even after the very explicit images from the morning. Whatever was going on in their brains had yet to manifest physically. It didn't matter that he'd given her a dozen orgasms that first night- he hadn't given her any since, hadn't even teased a hand under the hem of her dress or pulled at her collar for more skin to kiss. He had been kissing her and holding her and touching her but he was already inside of her and more intimately than could be had by sex, anyway. Anyway, he thought it was maybe the location. How the house didn't really feel like his or his room wasn't really his room.
Then today he'd texted her, even though she was only a doorway away invite me over to dinner before your mum does and so that when Briar did ask he could say he was already coming (but he didn't text that part). Hazel did invite him, and then Briar had, and he'd told Briar he was already coming and she apologized for not knowing and he'd told her Hazel'd only just texted him to ask. He didn't go right over after close. He asked Hazel to drop him home to shower and change, and then he'd take the underground back to hers. The dress code had already been established last time when he'd been presented with a t-shirt and lounge pants after showering there. So he was in a t-shirt (two rocks on the edge of a canyon with 'ha ha ha ha' in subtitles above each one a la Everything Everywhere All at Once) and loose black athletic shorts.
Elliott had answered the door in shorts and a t-shirt as well (a montage of Anakin Skywalker surrounded by big block letters declaring "I CAN FIX HIM," which Ollo had laughed at before he'd even stepped over the threshold ("My children are hilarious," he'd said, upon realizing the laughter was for the shirt (but proudly, like it was just as much of an accomplishment as being Prime Minister, which was also something that one of his children was))).
Elliott didn't call out for Hazel or announce Ollo's arrival, just escorted him to the drink cabinet bar in the living room with a "I have something to show you." The bar, it turned out, had been imbued with magic and so it wasn't even Elliott actively using magic when he'd had it make drinks magically the other night. It was just that he'd asked the bar to do it. He'd made it that way after discovering that doing the magic himself in the moment distracted him too much from the subtle political happenings that often happened in gatherings in this room. "So you can use it, too- try it." And then added. "Briar is not allowed though; permanently off her list of tasks even if it can do most of it on its own." Then he'd shouted, very un-world leaderly like, "DRINKS BEFORE DINNER OR WITH?!" and Hazel had shouted back "WITH!" which Ollo grinned at- he'd been expecting Briar's voice, though he did know it was usually Hazel who cooked dinner. "I bemoaned the summer heat earlier so I think that earned us a cold foods dinner."
"White wine?" Ollo asked.
"Well, don't ask me: ask the bar," Elliott clearly agreed to the choice.
So he did, and the bar did as asked, and Ollo had a moment of amusement feeling like he sort of caused the magic, which he sort of had. And while the bar worked, Elliott spoke again.
"I think I owe you a great deal of thanks for something that words alone will never be able to fully express."
Oh. Well. "Not me: Ruby," Ollo denied.
"Ruby would have done it sooner if it had just been up to her," Elliott parried back.
Ollo was silent. New Hazel had been apparent to him immediately; of course it had been apparent to her dad. To everyone, probably; it was hard not to notice. He just hadn't been thinking at all about how anyone else might be reacting. In his defense, he'd been going through a lot.
He broke his own silence. "Regardless; nothing is owed."
"It's only a debt of gratitude. If you can bear it just this once, I won't mention it again," Elliott promised.
"Alright," Ollo conceded.
And since Elliott could tell he could only just bear it, he only said the two words. "Thank you," as he clapped a hand on Ollo's shoulder and gave it a telling squeeze.
"I'm glad," Ollo replied. 'You're welcome,' was certainly incorrect. He was sure Elliott knew next to none of the details. But who knows if maybe one day he would. "That it happened, even..." but he didn't elaborate after all. "I'm just glad." He decided to leave it there.
"Me too," Elliott agreed, and then released him.
Then they were in the kitchen talking and eating and laughing and with none of the awkwardness or mother-daughter fighting from last time. Just easy company, made even easier by Ollo's hand on Hazel's knee beneath the table supplying a constant stream of context, bursts of memories upon memories and references and feelings all appearing in his mind exactly as if they had been his own. It felt natural and not overwhelming. Her thoughts were never overwhelming. Even when she herself had felt overwhelmed by them, they hadn't been to him. Maybe all the reading and poetry had well prepared him to welcome thoughts that weren't his. He always felt like he had more room in his mind when she was there, too- not less.
There was no fake emergency this time, either. "Come along, Darling, there's a piece I need to play for you," Elliott had said, while Ollo lived through the memories of the upright piano being replaced with the grand and Piper claiming it was hers and Elliott denying that no, it never was and Ollo's own memories of how Piper's room had looked after the electric pipe organ had become a part of it, with the Rose Window added as a surprise. Then back to Memory Elliott saying "the organ is yours, the piano is mine" and Memory Piper arguing that the organ was a part of her old room and belonged there and that the piano should be hers to take where she pleased and the argument resolving with Piper agreeing to teach him to play the organ and so ultimately what Hazel was wondering was: was this a piano piece or an organ one? But she wasn't curious enough to ask, and Ollo could tell it was an intentional break from the larger group anyway, so he didn't ask, either. Instead Hazel invited him up to her room as her parents left the kitchen.
The room that was not a room at all and in which he was steps away from swimming in. He pulled off his shirt, tossed it aside, shucked off his shorts and let them drop by the bank. Then splashed into the stream. He turned back to find Hazel when he was thigh deep. He'd thought he was about to ask where she slept....because where? On the ground? But that question died when his eyes fell on her again and he thought oh, that's why I was running. But he had stopped running and so the thought he had been running from came out. "I'm in love with you on purpose." He had thought you could only fall in love with someone accidentally; had even said so after Hazel had joked about it. But having never done it before now...no. It was no accident.
It was the first time anyone had been in her room, apart from her siblings and parents. Hazel lingered in the doorway cricketing a bare foot against a bare calf. The gentle weight of Ollo’s hand lingered, too, and her own drifted up to squeeze the same spot reflexively while she watched him lope towards the stream, a sixth sense still anticipating discomfort that no longer materialized. Earlier, cleaning artichokes for their ‘Too Hot For Dinner’ dinner, the metaphor had smacked her over the head. ‘I am exactly this,’ she’d thought to herself, because she was always, upon her own demand, alone in the kitchen; there’d been no one around to share her small and private epiphany over produce. She was Newer and more herself every minute it seemed, like something peeled away and scraped with teeth, and like the meaty heart revealed. She was both, she was learning she was mostly boths. She’d been thinking about the transformation as a rebirth, because that was how it’d seemed right on the other side, but the longer she sat with that the less right it felt. If she was Becoming, it wasn’t because she was some kind of phoenix from the ashes, it was because she’d been pared back and unburdened. ‘O heart weighed down by so many wings.’
Everything was poetic lately, an aura that glowed warm and made apprehension so absurd as to be nearly obscene. No one but Hazel, after all, had ever thought she was a project that needed to be binned and started from scratch. She wasn’t miraculously freed from nerves, but nerves and misgivings were not one and the same- these were the butterfly kind now, and Ruby’s old advice to ‘do things afraid’ finally, finally made sense. There was a kind of fear that could be motivating, and Hazel, who had no right names for anything at all, was experiencing it now for the first time. She desperately didn’t want to muck things up worse than she already had and she realized that inaction would do just that, so it’d come as a welcome relief that all she had to do, in the end, was accept Ollo’s invitations. She didn’t have to talk in speeches, or drink (arguably) too many cocktails, or accept a repeat delivery on one dozen consecutive orgasms. She didn’t have to be a Whole New Hazel… there were tender parts of her worth saving, she was just working out what those were. She was finding herself more recognizable the less she studied herself- the way a glimpse of a reflection in a shop window was always more honest than what you saw staring back from a mirror. Anything could be a metaphor to a stranger searching for the truth of herself. The whole world looked shiny and new and she caught her face everywhere.
She’d had no apprehension about inviting him upstairs, a fact even the staircase had understood; it had, after all, been right where it was meant to be, spiral and all, no funny business to speak of. She wanted him here, or he wouldn’t be, she wasn’t anxious or regretful. Hazel Fix was, at the meaty heart of her, a toe-dipper. She did not dive in, or run headlong, or jump anticipating unseen nets, but caution didn’t have to be thrown to the wind if it could be fashioned into sails instead. That was the doing afraid. Maybe she’d twisted a need to acclimate at a Hazel-pace into fearfulness of the opposite sort, the freezing kind, to avoid ever making moves that required acclimating. She felt, for the first time, fully in-motion. In the sense that the entire sky was in motion, which was to say: slowly in big and silent ways. After a beat, she followed after him, skipping the first few steps in a burst of laughter and then darting to catch up to his twice-longer stride. Behind her, the door swung itself shut and disappeared into a pinprick of light from the hallway on the other side. This would have worried Old Hazel, the idea that Ollo might feel trapped here, and might have worried New Hazel, too, except that she didn’t notice. She didn’t turn to look back.
The ground rose to meet her in a plush swell of moss and tiny white flowers when she collapsed at the bank of the creek. She stared up at the clouds shifting, slowly, in big and silent ways, their edges all lit up like neon signs by the last bit of the sun. ‘I’m exactly this,’ she thought again, even though this time she did have company to share the thought with. She stretched her arms over her head to brush her fingers through the tall grasses that grew between current-rounded stones. Like the clouds and the ground, both again- something ephemeral, forming and collapsing, something ancient, turning, turning. She hadn’t said much all evening, or during the ones she’d spent at Ollo’s flat, not out loud anyway. And why would she? When she touched him she didn’t need to speak, and most of what she’d said that first night he was back was monstrous. Or at least monumentally regrettable, and she was… if not a little gun-shy, at least cautious. A little. About opening her mouth and saying too much of the wrong thing. She felt as lucky as she knew she was that Ollo hadn’t iced her out, nothing she’d done had made that easy. She wanted to deserve his interest in a way that defied timelines- if she could have reached backwards to change how she used to treat him, she might have. Even if it would’ve changed everything that came after, she might’ve shaken herself by the shoulders until she snapped out of her teenaged, self-involved fog. Might’ve.
There was no rewriting the past though, so instead she’d been filling it in. They’d existed in each other’s periphery from the very beginning, but there was a lot to learn… Hazel had always been on the sidelines, it didn’t matter how much their lives had overlapped. She’d left the door to her memories propped open; she couldn’t even be sure what all he knew now- it was only sometimes that she shared anything specifically or intentionally, the rest just bubbled up. And it didn’t matter what he knew. The proof was in him letting her back in, and not only once. “Hey!” She protested when his shirt landed on her face, temporarily blocking her view. It took her all of a nanosecond to realize a better view was probably right in front of her, and she shot up giggling, still slightly winded. She was surrounded by people who ran for fun (gross)- the only times she’d ever found herself home alone growing up was when everyone else was out jogging around like sociopaths. She’d never been tempted to join them, but she had to sort out some cardio because she wasn’t sure someone of her age and relative fitness should find themselves needing to catch their breath for more than a couple of seconds after crossing a small field.
She tucked her skirt behind her knees as she drew them up to her chest to hug them, letting her gaze sweep over him appreciatively while he took off his shorts too. A fair percentage of her Ollo-related thoughts were, frankly, lewd. And because he’d been mainlining her headspace, that was entirely out in the open. It was a relief that the dozen orgasms hadn’t been repeated… not that she never wanted that again, but the experience had been not unlike being launched into a too-deep pool. She knew how to swim! But that didn’t mean the first few seconds didn’t feel like drowning regardless. So far, nothing more had happened outside of their heads, and she didn’t feel compelled to alter that. It was nice, their taking half-steps. It made her feel nice. And at her heart, maybe more than she was anything else, Hazel Fix was a Nice Girl. Just dealt a bad starting hand.
Ruby had not been impressed that they were ‘just hanging out,’ and she kept calling in anticipation of more interesting gossip. And then texting when Hazel started screening her calls. Hazel had never really found her eldest sister irritating in the ways other people who loved her seemed to. But it turned out she’d just never been specifically worth bothering- and the critics had some points! She was relentless, no one that motivated needed so many sets of thumbs to send messages with. Hazel had already begun to regret ignoring the calls as the texts turned to paragraph-long speculative fiction; she already knew entirely too much about her family’s sex lives for more to be revealed by whatever Ruby thought she was secretly up to. It was her original meddling that had put Hazel on her back on their parents’ couch in the middle of the living room, too, for that matter! A regret sandwich! She’d reach out when she needed help with something her sister knew anything about at all! Inventing an efficient scheme to distribute fishing licenses or something. She was beginning to think Ruby and Cole had happened fully by fate, because Ruby seemed to make (in large part, in non-professional settings anyway) the choices of a much stupider person.
Anyway, Hazel had already not been feeling her most charitable towards her sister when she made a sudden and un-ignorable appearance in the bakery early that afternoon. Un-ignorable because she was a goddamn Member of Parliament and the press was obsessed with her. She’d always commanded a room, but the whole ‘voice of the little island’ thing kind of brought her presence to a head, which was why Ruby really wasn’t supposed to be turning up during operating hours. She was a disruption and a headache and entirely too big a personality for such a small shop, and she did immediately go about proving herself as such by bellowing, “I’m looking for a missing person!” She’d had the immediate full attention of everyone, including Hazel’s staff, all three of whom were doing actual, important, time-sensitive work. In flagrant abuse of her charisma, as she was want, because so far no higher power had struck her down, which Ruby took, always, as cosmic permission to carry on. “Yea-tall?” Alright, on top of the insult (Hazel was not that short), her sister then had patrons under the impression they should be searching for a missing child- Ruby leveled her hand around her belly button.
It’d taken that long for Hazel to react; she was always forgetting she was a witch when she most wanted to disappear. She literally could and what good had it ever done her? “Okay, enough.” Hazel popped out from behind the counter and started shepherding Ruby towards her office. Tried to anyway- who’d ever successfully herded a lion? Just a gigantic toothy cat, and there was a saying about herding those. She found herself, predictably, crushed into a hug as soon as she was within arms’ reach. “Ugh, Ruby, come on.” She hated the way the y came out, whiny and childish, but that was a bit how she was feeling so at least it was an honest kind of embarrassing.
“Case closed, you may please return to your pastries,” Ruby announced importantly. And to her credit, the scene she’d caused died down just as abruptly, like a soap bubble she’d taken a claw to. And then she had come on, at a Ruby-pace, which was to say not until the bit had been bled to death and everyone else was quite cross indeed. “Hey, this is vintage, dough-hands!” She’d protested against a rather spirited shove from Hazel, whose bangs were angrily askew from the violent embrace.
“It’s mum’s top anyway,” Hazel argued, hastening to fix her hair and then shrieking in frustration when Ruby immediately tousled it again. “What are you even doing here, don’t you have an untenable number of children to look after?”
“Four are perfectly tenable, thank you, for a nanny and a husband,” this was a joke, but Hazel wasn’t in a funny mood, really, and in her opinion the right sibling had been promoted to professional joke-writer. “And I’m not really here, shh.”
Hazel rolled her eyes and only didn’t slam the door because the bakery was full. “That has got to be the worst kept secret on the planet.” It was unbelievable that the story hadn’t leaked yet- magical doppelgängers were pretty juicy. But Ruby never really attracted attention she wasn’t looking for; they’d bickered, loudly, the whole way to her office and no one had shown even mild interest, they probably were already remembering her as some loud, faceless redhead. It just happened to be that she wanted most kinds of attention most of the time, so this was a hard fact to read in her without a lifetime of data to extrapolate from. Like she was a conductor, or the director of a very large and immersive production where all the world was a stage, literally- scenes burst to life around her, crescendoed, then neatly closed. ‘Puppet-master’ might have come to mind if Hazel had been feeling 5% less loving, but she was still her sister.
All of that had been play, Ruby waited for the door to close to pounce. “Dad insists you’re alright, are you?”
Hazel scoffed at the apparent softball. “Obviously!” She shot back irritably, then sighed and toned it down a little. She’d been too excited to sleep well at Ollo’s Tuesday, and that had carried over into Wednesday, and then last night was a repeat of Tuesday (only lighter on the angst)… but actually, until this moment, Hazel hadn’t even noticed she could use a nap; it had been a very pleasant morning- she was surprised how long a kiss goodbye could sustain her. The bakery was buzzing because she was today, not just because she made a good cup of coffee. None of this was actually Ruby’s fault. Hazel knew better than to dangle an interesting morsel of information, she’d watched less beloved people be eaten alive. “Remember when you babied me? Maybe we can just go back to that, it was fine,” she attempted to compromise.
“Like it was yesterday,” Ruby reminisced sappily- it practically had been yesterday, which was partly why she was here, inserting herself where she’d been warned (by the aforementioned nanny and husband BOTH) not to meddle. She couldn’t get a handle on what was going on. Their mum was delusional (admittedly, and she’d insisted she be kept out of it); their dad was doing that irksome riddle-talking Sphinx bullshit he always did when one of them was trying to use their parents as middlemen. Hazel, who observed everything and was observed by practically no one, was her main source of household intel, so to be locked out of the first good story that had happened there in years just because the youngest Fix was finally at the center of one was a special kind of punishment for Ruby. Plus she felt protective over Hazel… genuinely, and Hazel knew it was genuine or she wouldn’t have tolerated it all this time. From her half-informed perspective, everything seemed to be moving too fast and somehow too slow; she didn’t know what Hazel-pace looked like, it’d only just been invented. The timeline as Ruby knew it was this: all hell broke loose with a side of forced reconciliation on Monday; on Tuesday, Hazel could hardly believe Ollo was speaking to her but she was headed to his flat after work; Wednesday ??? the last text she’d sent was that morning and all it divulged was just-touching and not-talking; apparently (as she was decidedly NOT at home when Ruby dropped by there) a secret, undisclosed sleepover Thursday? That was a lot of intensity buried in unaccounted-for time, and very many opportunities for Hazel’s weird Victorian romantic proclivities to blossom- all those (probable) stolen glances through the kitchen door, and she was sharing NOTHING! They were just ‘hanging out?’ What did that even mean! Hazel was the least casual person on the PLANET, she couldn’t DRESS casually- not even when the situation called for it!
Anyway, Ruby was not feeling her most magnanimous towards her youngest sister at the moment either, two days was a long time to be ignored by anyone but it was intolerable to be ignored by Hazel. She wasn’t ready to admit she was jealous, but she was a little. Happy for her, if she was indeed happy herself, but their relationship had shifted out of nowhere. She was used to hearing from Hazel throughout the day, and if she was a bit less grumpy and a bit more reasonable, Ruby might have acknowledged that her feelings had been hurt… but that would have required her to acknowledge having feelings that could be influenced by outside sources, and fat chance of that. “Will you please just fill me in, and then I’ll leave I promise.”
“Um…” Hazel knew what she wanted to hear, but she hadn’t been lying- they really were doing a lot of hand-holding and light snogging… they just happened to have good imaginations rolling ideas at the same time. She didn’t want to explain because the only way to not invite a million and a half questions would be to demonstrate. For now, she didn’t want to, it was too new and too intimate. Not wanting to had to count for something, even to a human steamroller. “I think I might move out.” She tested the words out loud and found that she liked how she felt when she said them- the sense of being in motion again.
Ruby, mistaking a smile of personal satisfaction for stupefied infatuation, immediately balked. “He asked you to move in?”
“What?!” Hazel was dumbfounded. “No! It’s been like, two days!” Of… whatever they were doing. She wasn’t sure what to call that either, which was partly why she had been avoiding her family (mildly) and Ruby especially (in active earnest). She wasn’t even embarrassed, she was just too deep in self-discovery to be hassled by their commentary. She didn’t want to be rushed into anything she was already feeling, and she knew she was prone to being led along.
This surprised Ruby, who was famously difficult to shock. She’d been certain (for the last three seconds) that she had it all figured out. Sure, she’d never thought of Ollo as a man, but he was one wasn’t he! She shouldn’t have let herself be lulled into complacency by his good haircuts and a lifelong history of being Very Nice and Polite. What kind of manipulative prick would lure a sweet, innocent girl out of her family home to ‘hang out.’ Absolutely not, not on her watch. She’d been prepared (…again, for all of three seconds) to march over to his kitchen and give him a good talking to, but a surprise was also a delicious breakfast; she could settle. “…too right it has, good.”
Hazel stared at her like she had six heads- who did she think she was talking to? But then… the last she’d heard about in any detail was everything that happened Monday night, maybe Hazel just didn’t seem like herself again yet. Monday’s New Hazel would have moved in with Ollo, or jumped off a bridge, or done any number of other dangerous and/or debasing things- it was a dozen consecutive orgasms followed by the fight of her life though, to be fair. And then she realized Ruby thought she was talking to herself, and Hazel laughed, she had to, because what a ridiculous notion. “I’m not… impulsive, Rue. I think maybe you can retire from worrying about me.”
“I mean… no. I can’t. But thanks for the offer.” She reached out to properly straighten Hazel’s bangs, then added, “Where to? …you can’t leave the city or mum will sulk until Will moves home, which is never happening.”
And so Hazel had relayed her brand new plans, which wound up repairing everything- when Ruby was excited her energy was a propellant, and she was easy to excite. It felt more actionable once she’d said it out loud, too, more than just a daydream she’d shared with Ollo. But it’d been fully real in her head already, the whole thing: they’d be together, and they’d be happy, right above the restaurant they’d both come up in, down the street from family that loved them. Old and New, both. She just wanted to try things on her own first, which even Ruby had to agree seemed like a good idea.
She’d been ogling him openly for… a while? What was time, honestly. She was caught off guard when he spoke, but pleasantly so, so pleasantly that her grin was approaching caricature, so she tipped her face forward to press her lips to her knees through the thin cotton of her dress. From that position and blushing furiously, she laughed in obvious delight. This was why things were still worth saying out loud. It was hard to react openly when they were sharing thoughts, there was never only one thing to react to so nonverbal communication was a bit of a tight circle- it was tempting (already sometimes) to skip straight to it, the promise of perfect understanding was enticing, but there were tradeoffs like with anything else. She was glad he’d said this out loud, the words themselves mattered and words didn’t exist as such inside of heads. “The good way,” she acknowledged, beaming. What she really meant was ‘the way that lasts,’ but everything didn’t need to be all at once. He already knew: she’d extrapolated a whole life for them in her head, and broadcast her intentions entirely without shame. They didn’t have to run to get there… she was a shit runner anyhow.
She got to her feet and studied him (significantly less lasciviously), hands fisted in her skirt at her hips. If she looked nervous (a little), she was (a little), but only because she’d never said it the words like she meant them now, and only because there were too few to do anything but say them all at once. “That’s how I love you, too,” she confirmed, and when she smiled again it was closer to a smirk- only she wasn’t smug, it was the exact way she smiled when she tasted something she wanted another bite of. Couldn’t be replicated on purpose. When she joined him in the water, it was fully clothed; even at a Hazel-pace, some actions needed to be taken without delay. The skirt of her dress floated up around her waist when she got deeper, and she laughed again twirling so it pulled itself back down, and then twirling into his arms, If he’d been harboring any nerves of his own, there was no room at all for doubt to come creepy-crawling in: she was sure.
Was there a precedent for suddenly acquired synesthesia without a preceding head injury? Because watching Hazel react to his love confession had altered his vision. Previously unobservable wavelengths were pulled onto the visual spectrum; long hidden colors that had been waiting for this moment to reveal themselves. Painting themselves into the landscape, bleeding out from everything she touched. Ultra-violets and infrareds, tesseracting oranges and greens, pinks and blues that were stuck in time and would persist until infinity and back in both directions.
She was radiating joy so obvious he didn't even need to read her mind; wasn't feeling small and empty without the added room he'd been feeling like her mind provided. His heart was full. He wanted to scream at whoever had first coined that phrase because, sure, it was accurate, but simultaneously woefully inadequate. His heart was full but it wasn't just his heart and it wasn't just him. Everything had been filled up and was overflowing.
Then she said it back and he laughed; all that before she'd even said so out loud?! He shook his head. "I know," not smug: just sure. Grinning with teeth that were surely a new shade of white.
He'd had an assignment in school where the teacher had asked again and again (and again and again) 'what is this color like?' But that had been just one color and this was every color. What is this color like? What is this color like? What is this color like? And this one? And another? What are they all like? Unyielding. Revealing. Abounding and unbounded. Indisputable and irrefutable. Unconditional. Like he didn't have to look; he could finally just see.
He laughed again at her twirling and half twirled along with her to wind her into his arms. He hugged her; he held her. He loosed his arms and slid down her body until he was sitting on the creek bed and tipped his head under the current. Came up laughing again and shaking his head like a dog.
He slid his hands down behind her knees and pulled, so she had no choice, really, but to fall further into the water and into his lap. His arms rewound around her and his lips found a kiss to put on hers. He wanted to kiss her for a very long time but his grin wouldn't let him. He clutched her against his chest and smiled against her cheek. "You live here," he said. Partly in awe and partly in understanding.
He wished he had known earlier. Back when they were kids and all he did was misunderstand her. He imagined he maybe would have done less of that or if not maybe at least been less hostile himself. The only way he would have been in her meadow then, with the way he'd treated her, would have been as a predator. Which was insane- his surname was literally Finch- he was generally very like a small harmless bird. He hoped he was harmless now; at least to her.
Hazel turned her face away from the spray of droplets when he shook his head, shrieking happily as they pelted her anyway. “Whoa!” This was not a whoa of protest- when she opened her eyes again, everything was suddenly technicolor. “Whoa-“ she repeated, trailing her fingers through the tiny rainbows still painting the air around Ollo’s head before raking his hair back. Impossibly. That wasn’t how light worked… that wasn’t how anything worked. But then he pulled her down into his lap, and she was reminded that the universe tended to take claims like ‘impossible’ as a challenge. She kissed him until their matching grins forced the end, and she forgot her surprise entirely until she was looking around again. This wasn’t her, she was only seeing it because he was- which… double-impossible, he wasn’t supposed to notice magic like that. Being able to use the bar cart was one thing (that was its function), but seeing an invisible spectrum of colors? That was Ruby stuff. Usually. As far as Hazel was concerned, this was above her pay grade. She didn’t need to know what was happening, she was just going to enjoy the spectacle; who knew if it would even last. Sometimes it was good to just let the mystery be.
She wrapped her legs around him and pressed her lips to his temple before settling against his chest. His chin was dripping water onto the top of her head, but she didn’t mind- that made her grin, too. New Hazel invited playfulness; she was glad to know that, she’d spent most of her life as a doll on a shelf. She nodded, understanding dawning in both of them at the same time. She did live here. Here. In the whole valley, not just the clearing she’d first opened the door to at five years old. She was the only one who’d kept walking past the edge of it, the only one who’d even seen the edge of it. Ruby would have been lost to the jungle if she’d been the one to notice. This, Hazel thought, was another tender/toothsome part of her- that she could sit, and be still, and notice things, and take them for what they were. That part of her was a seed shaped by this landscape, but it’d taken fresh eyes for her to see that.
This time, she surfaced the memories intentionally. “It was a room,” she assured him, because part of his astonishment was surely due to an inability to imagine Briar allowing it. A room like Ruby’s, but, they assumed, based on the plants and the birdsong and the pale yellow sun set in pale blue sky, ‘English woodland’ themed. …the house wasn’t yet properly understood to be, like, alive, they just thought of it as whimsically wish-fulfilling then. On the morning of Hazel’s fifth birthday, Ada went to put a stack of towels away in the linen closet at the end of the hall only to find the shelves of sheets and washcloths replaced by a spiral staircase to nowhere. A little later than her siblings to be moved out of the nursery, but the house kept perfect time, and it had always known when it was right to add another door.
She remembered feeling too small for her bed the first night, and discomforted by the way everyone’s thoughts were muffled from here, like her family was much further away than just downstairs. She’d never been a good sleeper, her head was too full all the time and when it hit her pillow, she worried. That first night in her new room, she worried too, so she was awake to see the fox. Just her silhouette against the indigo pre-dawn sky as she slunk through the trees that corralled Hazel.
She remembered not feeling afraid, and she remembered not feeling afraid because it was like being released from a too-tight grip. Fear was something that left her. Temporarily, memorably. And she’d gotten out of bed, armed with her stuffed mouse and caped in the gigantic quilt Aunt PJ had gifted her for her new bed, and she’d followed the fox. It’d let her follow it; or maybe it’d guided her, Hazel had never given it much thought until now. To the stream, and then along its banks through the whispering grass, over smooth stones and tree roots, until the wide valley narrowed into a ravine she recognized. She remembered how quiet it was, once she broke through the trees and her family’s dreams faded like radio static. Animal noise, and the creek babbling, and far away a waterfall. She had made quite a bit of noise, dragging her blanket through leaves and breaking twigs under her bare feet, but she was deaf to it that first night- she was so accustomed to cacophony that natural sounds barely registered at first. She was as quiet as she was now because she’d learned to be, later, so she could hear better when she was alone. Because she lived here.
When the sun came up, she’d been waiting in Ada’s kitchen with their cat, having already made herself a soft boiled egg for breakfast. And a piece of toast, too. Waiting because now that she knew where she was, she didn’t especially wish to walk all the way back- a side along would be fine. Very nearly killed Charlie, who’d already started down the stairs in his boxers before he saw her and, upon turning to retreat in alarm, tripped over the other cat.
“There are better spots for swimming next time,” she recommended, showing him those, too. She was in the stream every day, after work and sometimes before; even when it was far too cold to actually swim, she felt better for having a quick plunge. She knew every well and eddy. There was the lake, too, where the spring ended by Ada’s cottage, but in her memories that was where she’d spent sweltering summer afternoons with her siblings; it wasn’t hers. Not that she’d call any of this hers, it would feel wrong to imply ownership, somehow, but in all her years of exploring, she’d never crossed paths with another human. Whether that was simply an extension of the wards (all the ones on her own house, which extended to her, and all the ancient ones protecting Ada’s cottage from attention) or something else was also a mystery. What mattered was that this had been where Hazel was, all those sideline years. When she wasn’t here bodily, she had been in her mind.
“I hope it comes with me,” she added, realizing, with mild alarm, that it might not. This was the ideal time to come to that realization though, when she was so stuffed full of joy that there was no room for mild alarm to blossom into panic. She shrugged, because there was no way of knowing… and she felt ready to go, either way.
He was mildly alarmed at Hazel's assessment that he was seeing something magical. Not that some kind of mental symptom was especially comforting, but it made sense. A sudden dump of serotonin and endorphins and oxytocin all at once: why not? But why not magic, either? He didn't feel especially drugged, well, at least not like any drug he'd ever taken. Just jubilant and, yes, very in love and loved.
And not loved in any familiar way. It was brand new, because what they were doing was brand new. Or at least newly rediscovered. Nobody else had ever loved him as fully- how could they? Nobody else could step inside his mind. Nobody else could let him inside theirs.
He reveled in the memory of her first night and morning here and kissed the top of her head fondly. What a gift for someone like her. He was glad she'd been given it. He blinked away the contrast it set against his own childhood experiences.
He shrugged at her swimming suggestions; that hadn't really been the point. But he did think he'd probably like to in the future. Maybe a kind of distant future. He couldn't see wanting to be around her without touching her anytime soon and he didn't think he could swim while holding her hand.
Not that- not that he'd refuse to be around her if he couldn't touch her- no, he'd want to be regardless. He wanted to be with her all the time; he was exactly the Ollo leach he'd said he was that first night back.
Just, the logistics! It wasn't fair to put all of his social emotional needs on Hazel. He needed other people. He HAD other people but they were related to her! Who was he supposed to talk to about what loving her was like? Jett and Luc didn't even believe him when he'd said they got along now; fat chance they'd take him seriously about being more than friends.
Which, he'd caught glimpses of her Ruby visit already. Were they just 'hanging out?' Only technically! It was NOT like any situationship he'd ever just been 'hanging out' in before and this WASN'T a situationship anyway, it was NOT just 'hanging out' (and he knew Hazel didn't think that- he was in her thoughts- that was just what she'd told Ruby).
"Are you going to be my girlfriend? Do you want that?" She wanted to live with him in an apartment above her bakery for the rest of their lives; he knew that. But not yet. And how to get there? And what did that even mean- if the meadow did become a part of the place that they would eventually live together in...what did the rest of it all look like? She'd wondered if she could sleep without the sound of the stream, what if he couldn't sleep with it (not a real concern! He had slept in hostels and at music festivals and on trains. He could actually sleep anywhere; it was not a legitimate worry)?
He was just anxious, and not even about Hazel or their relationship. About all his other relationships. His parents and siblings and his old friends how he really needed to make new ones and how was he even supposed to do that when all he wanted to do was be with Hazel? What had he done without her on Wednesday? Sulked, mostly.
He knew it was grief and he knew the grief wasn't just about his grandmother's passing. That would have been tolerable. Sad, but not life upending. The life upending bit wasn't even all that upsetting!
It was that he'd spent most of his childhood afraid he'd been half a step away from being abandoned by everyone who was supposed to love him and then... Now it felt like that had actually happened.
Maybe it was only temporary and maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed; maybe he was catastrophizing. And it wasn't like he was unloved! Jesus, he was full to bursting with Hazel's love. And her parents'. Briar supporting his career and Elliott shepherding him into the culture of their family... He was soaked to the bone in the oversaturated colors of their outrageously obvious love. It was solid proof that loving him was easy, actually! It took so little! And nobody in his immediate family could do it. Their poor efforts were dull to begin with, but the contrast washed them out completely.
He supposed his mum got a pass; it was her mum who had died. But what about his dad? Why hadn't he called? Or texted? Did he think talking to Briar was enough? Ollo knew Jett wasn't passing on any meaningful details about the restaurant because she'd barely asked, but she had told him their dad was proud of him for getting to set the menu. Was secondary communication through intermediaries meant to count? He'd been talking to Jett and Luc at least every other day but he'd been the one to reach out every time and it felt both petty and terrifying to wait and find out what would happen if he left it up to them. How long it might actually take for them to realize they hadn't heard from him. He didn't want to know. He would never have to know as long as he kept reaching out first.
"I love you," he said into Hazel's hair. "I want to be your boyfriend," he clarified his feelings on the questions he had asked her.
Hazel still didn’t know what to do with her newfound impulse to fix things. Not meddling had been easy before! But she’d promised she wasn’t impulsive, and promising made it feel true, so she ignored the urge to poke around for solutions to Ollo’s troubles. If he knew what to do, he’d have no troubles left to resolve, and after all, the only things in his head were what he knew or had known at one point. Plus… these seemed like the sort of troubles that would have required time-rewriting to set right. Old hurt under new.
She agreed with him, anyway- she couldn’t be everything. Especially not while she was trying to figure herself out, that was a surefire way to end up wearing a half dozen faces again. And he couldn’t be everything for her either; if she was a plant unfurling new leaves, she couldn’t let him take the place of the sun. She understood that he didn’t want that any more than she did, in spite of a (shared and) competing desire for clinginess.
She straightened up and laughed when he interrupted her out loud, nodded giddily, then took his face in both hands and kissed him. Fondly. He was both too. In this case, blunt and poetic. That was what’d made her laugh- ‘are you going to be my girlfriend?’ She could almost hear an ‘-or what?’ hanging off the end. “Yes please. I like that you asked.” She almost didn’t say so (she knew he knew), but she wanted to go through these motions- it was all new for her, and she only intended to have the one shot to experience it all. She did want to be a girlfriend… and she was glad he’d asked.
She kissed his shoulder before resting her cheek on it again. She didn’t want anything her face did on its own to confuse things- she certainly felt like frowning every time new information about how his family was treating him surfaced. She couldn’t imagine not hearing from either of her parents for as long as his had been incommunicado. Not even under regular circumstances, let alone immediately after a death in the family. …they had loose plans for champagne when Bridget finally kicked the bucket, so the tone would certainly be different than this, but Hazel knew she would be called. It made her angry, actually, now that she was thinking about it less logically, all of Ollo’s thoughts and feelings jumbled in too. Mad for him, obviously, not for herself. You weren’t allowed to just neglect your marriage for two decades and then turn around and neglect your children because you finally wanted to put some effort into your spouse. And you certainly didn’t violate sibling code to take your parents’ side when they were being neglectful and selfish. That wasn’t fair at all, any of it, even if it was temporary. Which she couldn’t do anything about, but she did feel it for him and with him: nobody had a pass and he was not overreacting to be hurt, so she let him have that instead of her pity. No one liked pity; he was entirely too tall to be pathetic anyway.
“I know,” she acknowledged when he clarified, grinning at getting to repeat the line so soon after he’d used it. She wasn’t any more smug than he’d been; she only knew because he’d been sure when he said it, and before, and after. “I think we both deserve to see what it feels like not to skip any steps,” she concluded, “I like doing things on purpose.” And then, circling all the way back to touching while swimming, she continued, “That’s how otters sleep- they hold hands so they don’t float away from each other.” By which she meant, ‘we don’t have to be everything to each other to be each other’s floating home in the waves.’
He liked that he'd asked, too. He liked being brought back into the moment with a laugh and a kiss because he had asked. He liked Hazel's hands cradling his face. He'd been holding her so closely she could only make the moves she'd made by moving her body against his and so he laughed, too, when she broke the kiss. HOW had it been possible to forget she was sat in his lap with her legs hugging him just as closely as his arms were hugging her? Because he hadn't been in the moment; right.
He swallowed hard against his sudden desire for her. Was grounded again, this time by a sweet kiss against his shoulder and the assurance that his feelings about his family situation were valid. He did want her, but not while he was so easily distracted by his other thoughts. Not while having sex would be the distraction. She deserved his full attention and he wanted to give it to her. She deserved for her first time to be about only her, and not colored by him trying to chase away bad feelings with better ones.
He grinned at her 'I know' and kissed her temple appreciatively when she said they deserved to see what it felt like to not skip steps. To do things on purpose. To keep holding on in the meantime.
"How do you sleep?" He'd seen the bed in her memory, but he didn't see one now.
WHY was she a virgin?? She hadn’t been waiting in anticipation of some beautiful, loving first time; she’d earnestly assumed there just wouldn’t be one! Obviously there had been opportunities- she worked in a kitchen, everyone was horny and it was hard to date with odd shifts. It was just that type of man who would be into carrying on while his casual hookup cried was not a super enticing catch, so… no. And now that she had a shot at Big Time Romance (with special Tear-Free formula), and she’d already waited, it would sort of be like pouring good wine in a plastic cup not to take it semi-seriously. If she didn’t care about romance, fine, but she really and desperately did. Plus, Ollo was… well, look at him. She couldn’t from her angle of imprisonment, but he was very clear in her mind’s eye so that didn’t matter. His appearance was the least interesting thing about him and it was still on frequent rotation in her thoughts. Because like most truly attractive people, his came from how he was (in addition to… again, look at him, for her, please).
He was gentle, but in an efficient sort of way- for all his waxing poetic, he didn’t waste words when it counted. That was the different pace she’d noticed in the kitchen the other day… he’d moved through the line checking on his staff at each step where Briar would’ve been call-and-responding. It wasn’t that he was quiet, or that the kitchen was when he was in charge, it just felt… calmer. Less frenetic. He was the center, and he held. Moved to the little fires to put them out before they could shift the energy of the room, and everything moved and rearranged around him. Fast and calm both. She liked that he didn’t need everyone’s eyes on him, and she liked it when he had them anyway. She liked that he was careful. She liked that he was careful with her. He was right again- this wouldn’t be the time, and not just because of what she deserved. He deserved undistracted sex too, even if it wasn’t the first time he’d be having it! Hazel trusted him, and she’d keep waiting because she did. It was sort of a relief to not be the only reason for taking things slow anyway.
It was funny how far the present moment (any present moment) could bend without breaking. The way it could circle around to loop in the past and future, too. She was struggling to stay in the now- he’d brought her back (by noticing the same thing in himself), but, apparently, her mind liked to meander. There’d never been room for it when her thoughts were crammed shoulder to shoulder with everyone else’s, how was she supposed to know! She nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck appreciatively when he asked another question and grounded her again. She couldn’t exactly tell to what degree he did that on purpose (the putting out of small fires- she hadn’t been able to tell in his kitchen either). It felt, to her, like it was just the way he was. And if who he was was someone who could move through the world like that on purpose (and who chose to), that was equally good.
“I honestly don’t know where all my stuff goes when it goes… it always shows up again when I want it.” She demonstrated without looking, first with her bed, since he’d asked; it blinked in noiselessly behind her the same way the door had disappeared. Unsurprisingly, it was basically unchanged from the way he’d seen it. That was a trick of memory, because of course she’d been even smaller then, and it would have been absurd to send her off to an adult-sized bed. But in all other respects, it’d always looked the same, because it came straight out of an illustrated copy of Sleeping Beauty she’d been obsessed with looking at- a polished brass frame piled with soft things. Everything the house gave her was very dainty, and storybook-esque, and strong- which suited both Hazel’s sensibilities and the setting of a meadow between mountains. She did not make her bed this morning, or any other that she could think of… Ruby had pretty much guaranteed that was never a rule their mum tried to enforce growing up. It was tidy, but obviously slept-in; there was still a Hazel-shaped nest in the pillows.
“Usually I watch the stars,” because truthfully, the short answer was she didn’t sleep much, “But sometimes the trees pull in if they’re not out anyway, and then it’s even cozier.” She laughed again, then added, “If you find the inside of a hedge cozy, I suppose. Are you staying with me tonight?” She left off the ‘or what,’ too, but it was in the grin she kept pressed against his still-damp skin. “I’d like it if you did.”
He had been right from the beginning about the couch being a bad idea. It had seemed patronizing to stop when she'd told him not to, though, and he hadn't especially wanted to stop, either. Maybe it would have been fine if they had just continued on hooking up, but no; he didn't actually believe that, either. She had been right: he was a romantic. So how come he'd never really romanticized sex before now? Maybe because he'd started too young and because his early experiences were the opposite of romantic. That fucking garden shed and his body wracked with adrenaline and the overwhelming terror of both spiders and getting caught. Yikes, yeah, okay. Hazel was right, too. He also deserved better. Or at least better was being offered, whether or not he deserved it. Eventually. In a probably not too distant future. It would be worth waiting for.
He blushed at the way he was in her mind's eye. He knew he was getting an authentic outside look- not an idealized fantasy. He knew because he'd been there, too! That was how he was in the kitchen. It was just...he preferred not to shout and Briar's staff trusted her well enough that when she'd instructed them to trust him... they just had. It should not have been so easy for him to just show up and be the chef. It was still primarily Briar's doing! He hadn't shifted the tone intentionally. Well, maybe a little intentionally. His vendetta against shouting was long. If he could totally eliminate it from professional kitchens he worked in, he would have. So quieter and calmer had been the natural result.
He laughed when her bed appeared in a blink. How was she so casually powerful? It had been explained to him that mind reading was a difficult skill that had to be specifically cultivated and practiced and took immense concentration for practitioners- except for Hazel, who was born with the ability. So it should have been obvious that she was powerful; knowing others' thoughts with no effort. But she'd never wielded it like a power (until she had Sunday), so she'd never seemed exceptionally powerful. Clearly she was, though, and beyond mind reading! She lived in an enchanted meadow up a spiral staircase with disappearing furniture!
"Or what?" he answered cheekily, only because she'd thought it twice now. "Yes, I'm staying." He kissed the crown of her head and then loosed his arms to slide down her body until his hands settled into the riverbed behind them. Then he started crab walking them back into shallower water. "Can't sleep or need less?" He thought maybe a bit of both- he'd already demanded that she nap on Tuesday and she had. He could keep telling her to sleep if it worked. "I'm off again tomorrow, are you?" She should be; she'd already worked overtime this week.
He popped up and cradled Hazel's head and shoulders in his arms and then started to roll her off him and onto her back, so he was leaning over her- everything above their shoulders had made it to the spongy bank but the rest of them was still in the stream. He'd been trying to move her body away from directly stimulating his dick, but he'd been too subtle because her legs were still wrapped around his hips so noooooooope she did not just fall off of him. He'd created more friction, not less. "Fuck!" he exclaimed, but laughed after. So he was hard, so what! He leaned down and kissed her before she could cooperate with his now more obvious plan to disentangle and drop her legs. He pressed himself against her, then broke their kiss to nip quick kisses across her jaw and to her neck. "I think I have to go swimming after all," duh!
Hazel blushed as well and fought her urge to argue instead of his assessment- he’d been a good sport about her mental image of him, and on top of that, he’d been right about everything else, so. Why not this, too. She was probably more powerful than she gave herself proper credit for… it was easy to lose perspective in a family like hers. And a house like theirs, for that matter. Before a few days ago, she’d been able to imagine that any good magic was the house’s doing because she didn’t seem capable of much outside of it. Magic or otherwise. That wasn’t really true anymore though, or maybe it hadn’t ever been, but when every feeling (hers and everyone else’s) had been so intensely visceral, she hadn’t really been able to do much else. It had been all feelings all the time, and that was only worse in public, so of course it’d felt like the house was responsible for everything that worked properly.
“I think I’m just used to asking,” she finally answered out loud when he kissed the top of her head, since she didn’t have to over-explain. Magic loved to be asked for. It bent towards delight. And she’d spent a very long time personifying it via the walls that surrounded her, so if she seemed powerful it was probably only that she and magic were unusually friendly. She wielded it casually now because she didn’t understand herself to be wielding anything… calling her bed back felt the same as it ever had: like flipping on a light. The kind of miracle you expected to work every time.
She laughed with the full weight of her body wrapped around him at finding herself suddenly crab-walked towards the bank of the stream. She also bent towards delight. They were both learning that; she could tell he was noticing and leaning in, and not in a forced way either- lovingly. “Mostly can’t,” she answered through giggles. It did stop being ha-ha funny when it became clear this was going to be a nearly effortless maneuver for him, because then she was distracted. It wasn’t the first time he’d just… moved her. But this was different than being scooped up or set on the counter, he had to be legitimately strong for this.
Was she tracking his intentionally subtle signals to get the hell off his dick? Definitely not. It was incredible, actually, how suddenly her brain left the building whenever he did something hot. A nod was all she could manage in response to his next question- even internally it was more ‘uh-huh’ than answer. She gasped in sync with his swearing, squeezing her eyes shut to laugh with him so that she had to reach for his face blind when he kissed her. She drew him closer instead of arching up towards him when he pressed against her, a soft, needy sound muffled by his lips.
“Sorry!” she apologized, not really sorry but finally disentangling her legs anyway while he kissed her neck. “It’s just, you know, right there.” Very in the way! Like. Very.
Could she help that she was lap-sized? Without protest or much warning, she moved them to deeper water and dumped him in. She turned her face away from the splash he made when he hit the water, laughing again when he resurfaced to see her treading water, hair still mostly dry apart from the side she’d been resting on his shoulder. Once he realized he could stand where she’d dropped him (just) she went under too.
Sitting was one thing and swimming was another- her dress was in her way now, so she let it float off over her raised arms and resurfaced right in front of him in just her pants. Seemed only fair considering he didn’t have the option to choose different attire, otherwise she’d have swapped the waterlogged dress for a swimsuit. Not that she wore one when she was alone, but. She wasn’t alone! “What’re you doing tomorrow?” She asked after kissing him again. “Anything I can tag along for?” It wasn’t a passive aggressive ask, she was giddy at anticipating an invitation, couldn’t even wait for him to extend one.
Oh yeah, he had done that, too, hadn't he? The asking for magic. Through her: on Tuesday. It had been so easy. He hadn't thought to do it again. It had seemed like a special treat at the time. But he was pretty sure it could happen again whenever he was touching Hazel. It wasn't even really asking her; it was asking through her.
He knew it was right there that was the whole problem! WHAT kind of evolutionary advantage was this supposed to provide, actually! Clearly the work of a smirking, chaos God! He laughed again. Because no. The evolutionary advantage was CLEARLY more procreating! It worked! Only higher level reasoning was stopping him and he was almost out of that!
He found himself splashed into and submerged in deeper, cooler water and he kicked up and breached the surface laughing again. Okay, yeah! Helpful! "Thanks," he grinned at Hazel and then she dunked herself under and he laughed again.
Only, no thanks! She was NAKED AND KISSING HIM (not totally naked (great info to get from the return of the mind meld!))?! That was 44336 times worse: colder, deeper water drop completely negated! He was standing up but his head was only just above the water. She would clearly be too short to stand. It was totally an altruistic move to grab her by her waist and pull her legs back around him while they kissed. Higher up so she could breathe! No dicks directly involved! Indirectly VERY involved: do brains need blood to function?
She broke the kiss to ask a question: at least it had the tone of a question. What were words? Unnecessary, that's what! He was in her head; she wanted to know what his plans were for tomorrow. He'd had no plans! He had plans now:
"Recovering from an all night sex marathon- you'll definitely be around for that- or have you not changed your mind? Just remembered you like being mean to me?" He tried to tease, but he was in her head- she hadn't done it on purpose! But HOW?! She wasn't THAT virginal (thanks to him)! "You know I don't have to fuck you to make you come- I bet you'll sleep better if you'll let me. You're so beautiful when you fall apart, Hazel. I'm so in love with you;" and saying it out loud again was like flipping a reset switch. He wasn't just horny and turned on! He was in love!
"-forget I just said anything about sex," he kissed her cheek. "We don't - we can watch a movie in the playroom." He kissed her other cheek. "Or I could read to you-" because she had asked why he didn't have anyone to read poetry to, but he did now- it was her! But she was then thinking about what poetry books she actually had and "-you have a Mary Oliver book from Sebastian?!" WOW he was learning all kinds of things about her. But stay on track! "You don't have to give me your body yet if you want to stay slow; your mind is already such a gift." Full of things like FRIENDSHIP WITH SEBASTIAN?! Hadn't she been like eight years old when he moved in?! (yes, because he'd been eight years old and when he was in London over summers Adalaide had been his nanny, too, so extra teenager in the house he spent most of his waking hours in: notable!) "I'm going to be in love with you until my bones dry and turn to dust. We don't have to rush." But! No unilateral decisions!
"We don't have to wait, either, though- not if you don't want to." Had he primarily been the brakes? Every time but the first time: yes. "You're not distracting me from anything right now. Right now you are everything. In every corner of my mind. It's only you." And Sebastian Avery because WHAT?! but that was because of her: didn't count!
Hazel draped her arms around his neck; it was strange to be looking down at him for a change. Barely down, but still. The answer (to his ‘how?!’) was mostly impulsivity- she’d only had half a thought before her dress was already gone. But she most often swam fully naked, so it didn’t really warrant further thought. There were things that seemed inherently sexual, to him, because it was her… which she wasn’t quite sure what to do with. She’d just been interested in not drowning, and then secondarily had been curious what it would feel like to touch him skin to skin. Kind of slippery, it turned out. Anyway, she could see his point, but it only seemed mean in retrospect, and not very. Why were her nipples different than his! His torso was hot to her, too, and she hadn’t lost her damn mind over him whipping of his clothes. She’d leered respectfully and then kissed him about it! Like a lady!
The thing was though, she didn’t feel disrespected, or pressured; there was no (even faint) ringing of alarm bells. Possibly because Ollo was talking with his mouth full of foot, and his nervous backtracking made him immediately less intimidating. Not that he was ever scary or anything, he could just do it all! HE WAS A DEEPLY SKILLFUL MAN. And she didn’t only mean in- on the couch. He was so good at talking she hadn’t even cut him off now! When he was being a little embarrassing and, arguably, it would have been kind to! Oh no, DID she like to be mean to him? …no, right?
“Well…” Hazel laughed because she couldn’t pick a place to start- she SHOULD have cut him off. She forced her eyebrows to relax- they’d nearly shot off her forehead by the time he was finished. She kissed him again instead of immediately trying to figure it out. Which was pretty good evidence of the lack of forward thinking necessary to be a tease! She only knew what she wanted right now: IT ALL. Who was she to squander his talent?! It felt entirely different to be desired like this, too, because he knew her well enough to want her now. So maybe it was less his talking in circles (which she did find very charming) and more that it made him feel more like he was in his head; maybe she just wanted him now, too.
“I don’t forget anything,” she pointed out after slowly breaking the kiss; she was mostly teasing, and that was obvious by her grin. She felt buoyant- love was sort of intoxicating actually. But she didn’t feel out of control the way she had the other day. She was going to be impulsive, but she was only choosing not to look… the leaping wasn’t happening on a whim this time. “Can we do both?” she asked, only half-rhetorically. Being read to and watching movies sounded like a good recovery day to her, but she didn’t know what that usually meant for him.
Bash would be extremely tickled to know his books were being put to such good use, but he’d have to learn it through the Ruby grapevine because both he and Hazel would probably die of mortification if she even made a joke about it. He was her friend the same way Ollo was her boyfriend: since the right word had never even been fathomed that one had to do. And it was fun to say, so that was alright. She didn’t have enough friends (or any boyfriends at all) for it to feel too-cheap anyway. Sebastian was special… in the grand scheme of things and also to her specifically. It caught her off guard that that would be so shocking to Ollo, but then why would he have known? They always stayed in! Since it was too complicated to explain, she just showed Ollo what it was like inside of Bash’s head- like a combination rocking chair/heated blanket/sound machine/nightlight. For her anyway, because that was what she needed; it wasn’t the same thing as the mind meld, it was only one way. They consumed media and napped, mostly.
She HAD BEEN EIGHT! Which meant for Bash, she stayed that way, absolutely zero funny business ever… not that she thought Ollo was jealous (he seemed ONLY surprised), but she was used to having to defend Bash and old habits died hard. They were friends! Probably, if either of them was being real, best friends. Or whatever. He was like if brothers were calm and quiet and didn’t fuck with your bangs or pull shenanigans or move to America. Or whatever. They were psychically linked. Or whatever. “I’d say pick a different book, but-“ they were mostly from him, because he read voraciously and refused to keep anything in his flat once he was done using it. She had endless space and exactly opposite sentiments, so. The relationship was symbiotic! Wait no. Mutually beneficial… that was the one for humans. Right. The relationship was mutually beneficial! Mary Oliver wasn’t a castoff though, that was a favorite (of anyone with a SOUL, which did include Sebastian Avery, contrary to some opinion) and an actual gift, which was probably why it’d been a shinier memory-object to pull from her mind’s bookshelf.
“If you’re ready I’m ready,” she added, punctuating it with another languid kiss. She was trusting his self-assessment without probing… she didn’t want to be policing him. She trusted herself! She wasn’t disconnected from her body, or overly focused on it, it was there just as much as the rest of her and she was both, her body and her rest of her. How many brand new feelings was she going to experience?! Anyway, her gut’s newly improved instinct said Ollo was not, in this moment, trying to outrun anything; she only felt loved and wanted, and the overwhelming feelings were most important anyway. “I can’t believe you’re going to stop loving me once you’re bone dust,” she teased, then kissed both of his cheeks the same way he’d done to her, “I’d figure it out if I were bone dust first, but that’s me.” Just because she’d liked it. Wasn’t as cute in reverse though.
“I’m not freaking out,” she reassured him out loud… two-factor authentication just in case. She wasn’t fully abandoning taking things slowly, but there was no real reason this had to be one of them. They were past the uncertainty of wondering where they landed on the casual to serious scale (they were on a different scale entirely). If she wasn’t a virgin, she really didn’t think either of them would have thought twice at this point. And she didn’t have any desire to REMAIN one, it was distracting to THINK about fucking him all the time (well, in flashes throughout the day) without being able TO act on it casually. She WANTED casual! In the sense that she wanted a LIFE, not a production. There was plenty of not-hurrying to be done. Tomorrow.
Oh, there it was again: the urge to argue with her. There WASN'T anything inherently more sexual about her nipples (he was more French than British!): it was the context! He would have leered respectfully if she'd stripped before getting into the water, too! But she'd done it directly after sliding against his hard dick while she moaned into a kiss! Very different circumstances!
He didn't want to argue with her any more than she wanted to be mean to him (right?) so he let the urge die with her next kiss. It would have died even if he hadn't consciously killed it; Hazel obliterated it. It didn't really matter what the kiss was like when she'd spent it thinking she wanted 'IT ALL.' SAME, HAZEL, SAME!
WHY had he wanted to argue when she was so very very right! That what he wanted now was her and not just the pleasurable sensations he knew to accompany sex. Historically: a large reason why he'd been a frequent participant. But the mold was broken; he wanted her specifically. If she never wanted him sexually he was quite certain he'd just go rub one out if ever he got too uncomfortably hard and she could have him all the ways she wanted him even if that wasn't one of them. Very magnanimous of his imagination (which was in her mind watching her fantasize about fucking him)! But it was true: he liked sex, but he loved Hazel more.
He was very thrilled that she wanted him sexually (mutually!) and that sex in the context of love would be something they'd get to share together. He wasn't a virgin, but in that way it was his first time. So maybe he was a virgin in a kind of romantic sense. She kept being right: their love was buoyant and intoxicating even as he blushed at her teasing that she didn't forget anything. "I'm in trouble, then," he quipped back. And then an emphatic "Yes!" at her request for both. IT ALL.
He let her feelings about Sebastian wash over him in a wave of warm understanding. What a gift, he thought for what must have been the hundredth time or hundredth hundredth: to just know. And be known. How could he ever be jealous? How could he ever love anyone else in even remotely the same way? She would be able to, he supposed. But she didn't want to, so it was moot.
He shook his head about picking a different book, then switched to nodding when she said she was ready if he was. Then from nodding to kissing. He slid his hand from her waist around to her back and pressed her closer. Then he had to stop kissing her because a laugh bubbled out of him because apparently he didn't forget either: she had called them slippery.
She joked through his laughing and he laughed harder and shook his head. An entirely different scale was right! Nothing to freak out about when real misunderstanding might probably be impossible and fake misunderstanding for a joke was cute. "You put words in my mouth," he accused with a grin. "Not 'until' and then stopping. 'Bone dust' is just a waypoint. 'Until,' and then onward."
And then because he was not forgetting things either, he asked how Hazel usually did and they were teleported, dripping wet, to the side of her bed. "Until the sun expands and swallows up the earth," he said as he set a knee down on her bed and then leaned over and laid her down on top of her bedspread. "Until the universe slows and cools." He asked again, as he brushed his hands across her shoulders, and waves of warmth rolled out from his fingertips and down her body, taking the water with it and flinging it off the ends of her toes. "Until every atom that once made you and me gives it's final vibration and stops to rest." He shook himself like shiver and he was magically dry as well. He looked at her and thought still, after that, he would be loving her. From bone dust to star dust until the only thing left in the universe was the magic it had sprung from and the only thing left to do was to start again. To be remade from that love and keep loving.
Then he braced his weight above her with his left forearm beside her head, cradled her jaw with his right hand, and leaned down and kissed her like she'd been kissing him. With the languid slowness of people who had learned to savor.
She had no bones left to be returned to dust by the time Ollo finally kissed her again. He still seemed too good to be true, like he’d literally sprung from her fantasies, that hadn’t changed. But now she hoped it didn’t change- she felt lucky, not suspicious. Most of the time anyway, and right now for certain. Her body was still gently radiating warmth, only she wasn’t sure if it was the magic he’d dried her off with or the steady pulse of readiness thrumming through every inch of her, low and humming like a furnace. Now she understood the hype. Ironically, a dozen orgasms had been less convincing than the speechifying, than the false-familiarity of his hand cradling her jaw. This was how she wanted to be kissed- like she was precious, like he was sure she wouldn’t bolt, like he was sure he didn’t want to.
The pace of the kiss left room for breathing- shallow, panting breaths, but still. There was no reason to stop, and a very real imperative to keep going, so she did. Until her skeleton eventually re-solidified and she could reach for him, too, one hand covering his at her jaw while the other skimmed down his bare torso to slip beneath the band of his boxers. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew what she wanted to do, and that had to count for something. But then reality crashed the scene, because she hadn’t properly grasped scale until she was actually grasping IT… his cock, in her hand. Seeing it through fabric was not the same at all!
“I thought it was an optical illusion!,” she defended herself breathlessly, because she hadn’t meant to laugh, but- “Should I just learn to unhinge my jaw like a snake then, or?” She was being funny but as her mum LOVED to say, there was a little bit of truth in every just kidding. She was nervous, a bit! Not scared, she was pretty confident that kiss had been a promise to be very nice, but she was a little concerned about logistics. She was ‘a little’ everything! “Sorry,” she offered apologetically, “You were being romantic, I can get it together.” Only she was still grinning, because she could not, actually. She was the winner of the Boyfriend MegaMillions, she was the luckiest girl who had ever LIVED, she was pure mirth.
Her hand was hot on him and he couldn't help the "Holy shit," that hissed out of him and into her mouth. Optical illusion how?! Like she hadn't been essentially RIDING him already, but whatever, in her hand was different. She was tiny and he was... Big, yes. Proportional! He was very tall!
He didn't laugh when she did because he was too turned on by her hand wrapped around him. It was honestly unexpected; even being in her head he'd thought she'd be slower. They did need to be slower: she was tiny. He was not going to hurt her.
But he did laugh against her cheek at her unhinged comment about unhinging her jaw. Could she have thought of a more unsexy visual?! Probably not! He was instantly entirely uninterested in putting his cock in her mouth. He hadn't been thinking of it much anyway, he liked kissing her too much.... His fantasies usually involved his lips on hers (either set)- not hers on his dick. He was a romantic! He'd yet to have a romantic blow job. He'd also never turned one down when offered: he WAS a human man who enjoyed sex- it didn't have to be his favorite sex act to still be worth it!
But NO dicks in mouths tonight; he wasn't going to be able to unsee Snake Hazel (yikes) for a bit. Maybe it was becoming more funny than yikes. He'd kissed her cheek and then tried to kiss her neck but found himself laughing again because she'd thought the word 'logistics' about sex.
He shook his head at her apology, rubbing his evening stubble against her neck and shoulder. "Laughing is very romantic," he assured her. Was it making this 'logistically' more difficult? Sure, but who was rushing? Not him; Hazel laughter was rare (becoming less so!) he was going to revel in it. Plus, oh no, he was blushing because she'd felt like she won the lottery.
He pecked her shoulder, then her clavicle, then in a move that felt a bit like cheating (given the general context) ducked and sucked her nipple into his mouth and stroked it with his tongue. She could scold him for finding them enticing if she wanted; he was enticed regardless! He released it and gave it the same peck he had her shoulder and then leaned his cheek against her sternum and breathed deeply.
"Okay. 'Logistics,'" he quoted with a grin. He had a very good view of her pretty pink nipple he'd just made wet and Hazel's hand was still, just, holding him, so how he was supposed to coordinate logistics. "Fuck, you're so pretty," saying so helped! Okay, he could do this.
"Okay," he said again, and pushed himself up, off from his forearm and onto his hand, halfway to sitting, eyes back on her face. His right hand was still holding her jaw and he stroked his thumb across her cheek before he pulled it away to grasp the elbow of the arm that was holding him and tugged gently. "Let go for now, just-" he dipped and gave her lips a quick peck "-you can touch me however you want to in a minute," he promised. "As long as you're not unhinging your jaw," he teased as his hand dropped her elbow to lift at her thigh instead.
"Jesus, you're so small." Not like he ever forgot: it was just very apparent in their current position. He was big and she was small and logistically: was it going to be an actual problem?! To be determined: here's to finding out. God, he hoped not. Whatever; she could magically shrink him if she had to!
He shifted up to his knees and half lifted, half slid himself and Hazel into a more reasonable position on the bed. Centered in what was clearly her usual pillow-y spot; his feet wouldn't be dangling off any sides here. No accidental falls.
"I'm taking off both our pants-," he informed her- probably unnecessarily, the fingers of both his hands had already hooked into the waist band on hers. "-I want you very wet and not soaking anything but me." For the logistics! He sat further up on his knees and tugged her underwear over her hips, down her legs, off her feet, and tossed off the bed. Onto the ground? He laughed and confessed, "I forgot we were outside."
He shoved and kicked his own boxers down and off his legs and similarly lost them to foliage over the side of the bed. Then crawled up the bed beside her, not over her, so she wouldn't be immediately confronted with the hard drag of his cock against her lower half. He let his right hand cross over her torso to rest against her waist and then leaned over and kissed her. Sweetly. "Can we go slow? Or will that make you anxious?"
His stubble didn’t tickle; it was a warm sting and Hazel turned her head into his hand for more of it just as he stopped nuzzling against her to kiss her shoulder, her collarbone. The air left her lungs in a single rush when his lips closed around her nipple and she arched towards him reflexively when she felt his tongue. Jerked, more like- it was unexpected even when you could see it coming. To be fair, there was quite a lot to see inside another person! Not least interesting of which: she could feel her hand wrapped around him, from both perspectives, which was pulling a lot of focus.
He didn't realize the anxiety was his own until Hazel declared she wasn't anxious (after already assuring him that she'd be fine) and so the third such assurance ('you'll know if I'm not okay') made him blush with embarrassment. Of course he would! He was in her head.
In her head where she'd just made their size difference very hot; definitely not a thing to be anxious about. He was kind of a string bean, he didn't think of himself as particularly big (tall: yes! big: not him) or strong, but she was right... Lifting her was like nothing. It was so easy. It was hot to him, too.
He wished he could logic himself out of his anxiety, but it persisted even so. Very unfair of his brain to insist upon it RIGHT now. It didn't seem to be making him any less turned on, just.... Hesitant and slow, which Hazel already verbally agreed: slow was fine.
Anyway, he knew what his anxiety was about now and it wasn't about him hurting her. It was about her hurting him. Because last time... God, he'd been so wounded already and then she'd more than twisted the knife. He didn't believe that she would again, it was just that she had and he was only human and prone to finding patterns even where none existed. What he believed was that he'd love her anyway; even if she was prone to hurting him. Even if she personally ground his bones into dust.
He'd always been prone to being aggressively vulnerable: especially with her, even when she was being mean. He wanted so badly to be seen and known and who could know him better than a mind reader? He was in love with her on purpose. Maybe she did like being mean to him and maybe he did like arguing with her. Maybe those things were fine some of the time or even most of the time. Just not right at this time.
He shifted down onto his left side. He didn't want to be reminded at all of the couch and what came after. He knew what would come after, here. He'd read her Mary Oliver while she ran her fingers though his hair and-
"-put your hands back on me, won't you, Hazel? Anywhere you want; I won't stop you this time," he hadn't really meant to stop her the first time.
It was just: the feedback loop! Every sensation was amplified when you could feel it from both sides. He liked it; he'd liked it so much he was certain he could have come right there in her hand (which he had not wanted (He'd let her get him off in fifteen seconds some other time, just not this first time. GOD, IF THEY COULD JUST HAVE ALREADY FUCKED. He'd fucked people out of their virginity before, that was not the issue at all! His baggage was the issue!)).
He brushed his thumb against her skin at her waist and brushed his lips against her temple in a kiss. He wanted to keep kissing her, but didn't want to make it immediately impossible for her to do what he'd asked, so he waited. He could take turns! He didn't have to be the only cook.
Hazel rolled onto her side nearly in tandem, not wanting to take her eyes off of him. She felt nearly entranced, but not in an unwelcome way. It was just… had she ever wanted anything this badly? Her whole body warmed at his invitation, at the way he’d phrased it more than anything. After what she’d done… she did sort of need to be invited. Vampire style. She hadn’t known until it was offered in literally the hottest possible way.
She knew where she’d most like her hands, but since she’d just promised she could be slow, she didn’t immediately reach for it again. Plenty of other real estate anyway, he was like twenty feet tall. She let her gaze sweep over him appreciatively before deliberately making contact again, experimentally. The second her fingertips made contact with his abs, she automatically shifted closer, heart rate (impossibly) accelerating. Intention… seemed to matter a great deal; it wasn’t like she got caught in this sort of echo chamber every time she held his hand, but she already wanted him fairly desperately and so there simply… wasn’t a separation between his pleasure and her own. Any contemplation about the implications was going to have to happen later, her mind had one track at the moment.
She flattened her palm and slid it up the smooth plane of this torso until she reached his collarbone, her thumb resting against the hollow of his throat. Her eyes were dark with desire when they met his again, but when she kissed him it was gentle if insistent. She freed her other hand from under her head and found his chest to reverse the path her left palm had just made. She deepened the kiss, following the trail of hair from his navel, then lower until she circled his cock with her fingers. She groaned softly into his open mouth, unashamed because she truly couldn’t have helped it if she’d tried.