Grounded

by Narrelle M. Harris

  She trudged home again, feeling small and lonely and tired down to her aching heart.

  ***

  Benedick gathered the papers into a pile and set them neatly on his desk. The application was taking longer than he’d hoped. He knew the courses he wanted to apply for, but he couldn’t quite work up the enthusiasm for them.

  Studying law was an obvious choice, but the goal of it eluded him. Did he want to emerge with a plan to become a criminal lawyer? Would Public Prosecutions be a career path? Was it too soon to be thinking of career goals? But if he didn’t have a goal, would he just meander through his studies? He preferred clear targets, definite targets to aim for. Until he knew the what and why of the outcome, it was hard to get engaged at this end.

  Or perhaps he was just feeling fractious and unsettled because of everything that had come pouring out of him in the aftermath of Clementine’s fall into the river.

  Peri had been the best brother a man could hope for, offering shelter and kindness. But since then, Benedick had hardly been able to meet Clementine’s gaze, fearing that she would see how broken he still felt, and think less of him for it. When he tried to think about it square on, he knew that she was a champion of rights for the flightless and was sure she wouldn’t be so unkind.

  Yet she was so strong and confident and proud. How would she feel about someone who no longer felt he was those things?

  He heard her return in the late afternoon, not so much her always-light tread in the hall as a hard clunk as she smacked her keypass against the reader to make her door slide open. She clearly wasn’t in the cheeriest of moods. Benedick considered all the things that may have upset her, and decided only one was in his court to fix.

  He knocked on her door. She opened it and looked at him with a heart-hurting combination of surprise, vulnerability and defiance.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry I was busy when you stopped by. I should have gone out with you. I found the right box, but that application was lousy company. And I still don’t know what to do with whatever course I decide to apply for.’

  Her jaw twitched, like she was steeling herself. ‘I don’t mind going over it with you, if you think that might help.’

  Why had that offer needed courage? ‘Thanks, but I need to get a few things straight in my head, first. Until then it’s all just … murk and grey skies.’

  Clementine nodded, accepting that her offer wasn’t outright rejected, even if he wasn’t taking her up on it. Yet.

  ‘Maybe we could talk uni courses later in the week, yeah?’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready. If you want to.’

  He felt he was struggling in deep water, trying to splash his way out of this graceless unease. ‘I, ah. Wondered how you were doing.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘No more letters or disturbances at the gallery?’

  ‘No. Your friend Officer Sifakis called. She says they’re interviewing someone. No other details.’

  ‘Right.’ He hated how awkward this was. She wasn’t inviting him in, though she wasn’t closing the door in his face. Her expression was still vulnerable, her manner subdued.

  ‘Benedick …’

  ‘Clementine …’

  They stumbled over speaking to each other. Benedick browbeat his gentlemanly instincts down, afraid if he let her speak first he’d never get to apologise.

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  They both stumbled to silence again.

  ‘What in earth and sky do you have to be sorry about?’ Benedick asked, bemused.

  ‘I thought stubbornness and general bad temper might make a good start.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything to apologise for.’

  She quirked a rueful smile at him. ‘I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.’

  ‘Believe me, I have. You’re worth paying attention to.’

  Clementine opened her mouth to reply, a sceptical expression flickering across her brows and in the tightness around her eyes. All his years interviewing victims and suspects made her an open book to him. She closed her mouth again without saying the obvious. But you stopped paying attention.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘You could do it here,’ she suggested, tone somehow both tense and resigned.

  ‘Do what?’ Then he noticed how her eyes gleamed and the corners of her mouth pulled tremulously down. He couldn’t help but to reach for her, to take her hands. ‘This isn’t what you think.’

  Benedick half expected Clementine to close the door so she could avoid this conversation, but of course she didn’t. Of course she had the courage of a lion, and the curiosity of a crow. She raised her chin so that her eyes met his. He could almost see the space her wings would have commanded, if she’d had them. Dark like her hair, they would have been. Elegant and perfectly proportioned to her height, her build. She would have had wings like a swallow, if genetics or fate had not trapped them in their cells, undivided, undifferentiated, unfledged.

  She made wingspan anyway, as she always did. The least he could do was to show as much courage.

  ‘Go on, then. Say what you need to say,’ she said firmly, though he could see her fingers were clenched into tight fists.

  ‘Can we … go inside? I don’t want to do this in the hall.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Clementine, her tone trapped equidistant between hope and misery. ‘Watch your wings.’

  ***

  Clementine went into the kitchen ostensibly to pour drinks but mostly to put the kitchen bench between her and whatever Benedick was about to say. ‘This isn’t what you think’ still left a lot of scope to break her heart.

  My heart shouldn’t be breaking. I’ve known him for twelve days. That’s not enough time for him to get inside and break me.

  The glasses rattled as she set them on the bench. Her hand was shaking as Benedick stood on the other side of the counter and blurted out this thing he needed to tell her.

  ‘I miss flying.’

  Clementine looked at him as though he’d spoken in whale song.

  That was not at all the thing she thought he was going to say.

  Benedick opened his mouth again and more came rushing out.

  ‘I miss my wings. I miss the sky. I miss who I used to be. If I could go back in time, I’d change the past so this had never happened to me. I know there’s no miracle cure, but I want one anyway. I wish I was okay, but I’m not. I wish I didn’t want what I can’t have, but I do. I wish I was as strong as you are. I don’t want to pretend I am. I can’t. I’m. I’m sorry.’

  Benedick’s breath hitched and so he held it.

  Clementine found she was holding her breath too, and wondering what that look of fear in his eyes meant. Did he think she was going to tell him he was wrong to feel how he felt? Did he think that she thought him unmanned by the confession? Pitiful?

  ‘Oh Benedick,’ she said, in none of those tones. You do. You think I think less of you. She abandoned the drinks and reached across the counter to place a hand on his wrist. ‘Shall I tell you a secret?’

  ‘Sure.’ The word was short, sharp, tremulous behind the determination that had driven this admission.

  ‘I practise being strong. I learned early on that I had to shout for and demand my independence. And then I learned that the shouting never ends,’ she said, exchanging his difficult confession for one of her own. ‘It always feels like I’ll lose everything I’ve fought for if I falter for the smallest moment. I’ll sink into the ground and never be seen again. So I practise and I have to do a lot of top-up practising. It’s exhausting.’

  The fear had left his eyes now, even though he still seemed wary. ‘You make it look so easy.’

  ‘It’s all that practice,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘And if I never tell anyone it’s sometimes hard for me, nobody ever realises that it is. When it’s hardest is when I hide it most. Especially lately. I’m sorry.

  ‘You don’t need to apologise to me, Clementine.�
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  ‘I do though. I don’t want you to pretend you’re okay for my sake, Benedick. I’m sorry if you thought I did.’

  ‘You’re always so at home with who you are, and I still feel so … so wind-tossed.’

  ‘Is this why you’ve been avoiding me?’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you with this … this grief that I can’t let go of.’

  ‘That doesn’t hurt me, Benedick, except in wishing I knew how to help you stop hurting, and knowing I might have made it worse. My life isn’t your life. I never knew the sky to miss it. But I’ve been so busy insisting on my own wingspan I haven’t given you any. I’m so sorry.’

  He was hard to look at for a moment, his wonderful face was so unguarded, so soul-piercingly open and suffused with everything he was feeling. Sorrow and grief and relief and forgiveness and hope. The tightness unfurled from his shoulders and chest and his breath caught in a soft gasp as he inhaled. It felt like she’d somehow unlocked a cage he’d been keeping himself inside, and she felt ashamed. She was supposed to be the one who understood what it was like. She’d hurt him without ever meaning to.

  ‘If you don’t want to keep seeing me …’ she began just as Benedick said, ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘It is though,’ she said. ‘In part.’

  ‘Then I forgive you,’ he said simply, his expression kind.

  Clementine breathed in deeply, exhaled. ‘Can we still be friends …?’ she began this time, and as before her words were tangled with Benedick’s as he simultaneously spoke, ‘So, do you want to keep on with this dating thing we started?’

  They fell silent and stared at each other, eyes full of hope and fear. Clementine’s heart was pounding. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Absolutely I do.’ He turned his hand palm-up to take the hand she had placed so lightly on his wrist.

  She stepped around to his side of the bench, not letting go of his hands. Relief made her limbs weak. ‘Me too.’

  Benedick bent his head to capture her mouth more perfectly with his as she tilted her face up to meet him. He tasted sweet to her in this moment of reprieve. I haven’t lost him after all. She clung to his hands and parted her lips to taste more deeply of him. When he released her hands she made a small sound of protest, but his hands were on her lower arms, smoothing over her elbows, up her biceps to her shoulder.

  ‘Clem,’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘Clementine.’

  Clementine pressed her body to his and pushed her fingers into his dark hair behind his ears, loving the silky threads against her fingertips. She kissed the corner of his mouth, his cheek, the sensitive lobe of his ear. ‘I thought you were saying goodbye,’ she whispered, throat rough with the remnants of that anxiety. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  His palms had left her shoulders and ran warm down her spine until they cupped her ribs. ‘I like being with you.’ He kissed her again, then more deeply, then held her body firmly to his and nuzzled her cheek, her temple. He lipped the shell of her ear, kissed the corner of her eye. ‘We can practise together, hmm?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She breathed in the scent of him. The faint hints of witch hazel and mint, the underlying maleness rising from his wings, the warmth of his breath.

  ‘Being strong,’ he said, with a huff of dazed humour.

  Clementine kissed the skin beneath his ear; a line down his throat; nuzzled at the hollow below his larynx and felt the vibration of his voice as he murmured her name.

  Her arms were around his waist now, and his wings curled around her and brushed against her skin, raising goosebumps. She wanted to know what his feathers would feel like against her back, her belly, her breasts, her tongue. She longed to touch every part of him with her hands and mouth and body. She wanted to know his body, his mind, his heart, to make sure she understood him, heartbeat to wingtip, and never hurt him again.

  One of his hands was in her short hair now, the other rested on the rise of her backside, holding her close without clutching at her. She felt both the heat and hardness of his erection pressed against her thigh. She leaned closer, shifting so that the heat of her own desire couldn’t be mistaken.

  He’ll leave, part of her mind insisted. They all leave when they don’t need me anymore.

  But the other part of her mind whispered back: I want to at least have a chance to love him first. Maybe this time it’ll be different.

  ‘I want to be more than friends,’ she said, meeting his eyes.

  ‘Good.’ Both his hands slid unflinchingly down her back to cup her bottom. His smile was a little boyish, a lot more roguish. ‘So do I.’

  When she kissed him again, she flicked the tip of her tongue against his, then parted her lips to encourage deeper explorations. Sipping kisses, darting tastes with tongue and mouth, all while their bodies pressed more closely together. His hands stroked her back, her hips, her thighs, then slid up to cup her breasts, while she stroked her fingers lightly over the base of his scapula and the soft axillar hairs. His wings opened slightly and he arched against her.

  ‘Come to bed with me,’ Clementine offer-asked.

  ‘Please,’ Benedick sigh-begged in reply.

  She took him by the hand and led him down the hall she’d cleared of paintings and easels to make space for him since their first kiss. Only three days ago? Clementine wanted to go back in time and dismiss the fears that had let her waste all the days she hadn’t spent kissing him, and all the days she’d waited to take him to bed.

  In her room she pulled the knots of his shirt ties free so that she could run her hands around his waist, then up over his chest. She kissed him, nuzzled a line from his throat to his dark nipples, pebbled and sensitive with arousal. He likewise pulled the knots loose from her shirt and bent to kiss her breasts, to lip them and suckle gently, before smearing his mouth up to hers again, and they kissed like kissing gave them flight. Clementine clung to his shoulders and shivered with sensual delight as his wings curved around her, brushing against her arms.

  Shoes and shirts came off quickly, then urgency gave way to the slow savouring as they kissed more bared skin. Clementine undid the button of his trousers and he grinned as she tugged both trousers and underwear down his thighs, over his ankles and feet. She ran her palms up his legs again, over calves and his strong thighs, over his hips. She kissed his flat belly and flicked her tongue into his navel, making him squirm and laugh.

  Clementine stripped off her own skirt and pants and she knelt on the bed, arms outstretched to him.

  Benedick kneeled beside her, kissed her wrists and palms, her shoulders and throat and lips. His wings spread behind him for balance, but she still had to put her palms to his shoulders when he almost overbalanced.

  Benedick frowned. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been with … since I fell. I haven’t been with anyone. I’m not sure …’

  ‘It’s not that different,’ Clementine said. She took his face in her hands and kiss-kiss-kissed him while they kneeled, facing each other. ‘We’ll work it out as we go.’

  ‘We’ll … practise,’ he said with a small smile.

  ‘That’s right.’ She danced her fingers down his torso, the flight muscles banding his ribs, chest and back were gaining strength and tone from his physio routines. She rubbed his nipples with her thumbs, softly then with more pressure until he was panting, his wings flexing again. ‘Can I touch them? Your wings? Can I kiss them?’

  He murmured yes, and Clementine dragged her fingers softly through the underside of his wings. They shivered and spread. She traced the lines of the top of his wings, across the upper bones and down the leading edge of his primaries. She could feel where the bones of the right wing joint had healed imperfectly and caressed the spot lightly, then continued to stroke down to the wingtip.

  She straddled his lap as his wings curled around them again, and she rubbed her cheek down his primary feathers, softer than they looked. She kissed his wings, right and left, while she flexed her fingers in the down between his underwing feathers. As he brought hi
s wings higher, she guided the left between her lips and sucked gently on the very tip of it.

  Benedick moaned her name and pulled her closer into his lap. Clementine rose up on her knees, moved closer still. She looked down at his beautiful face now, and he was gazing at her with both fire and tenderness.

  She pressed her forehead to his. ‘I’ve got you,’ she said, and eased herself down onto him. He wound his arms around her, face pressed to her throat as she rolled her hips.

  The feeling of his body against hers, then inside hers, was both transporting and grounding. They moved together, her knees spreading to bring her closer to him, bring him deeper within her. His wings shivered and spread too. When he bucked up into her, whispering her name, his balance shifted again. Clementine tipped back onto the mattress, pulling him down on top of her with her arms around his shoulders. She rubbed her hands along the top of his wings, guiding him to her. She lifted her legs, wrapped them around his hips, thrust up to meet his body thrusting down.

  ‘Yes, that’s it, Be—Benedick, mmm …’

  He bent his head to lick perspiration from her throat, from her breast, suckled one nipple then the other, then kissed her as he found his rhythm again. She brushed his cheeks with her fingertips, then stroked his wings again, following the shape of them until she could bring them forward, to kiss and suck at the tips of them again. She gazed at him through heavy lidded eyes, loving the intensity of the bliss in his as he looked at her mouthing him. She let him go again, only to rake her fingers through the underfeathers as his wings spread behind him. Her legs spread wider, drawing him more closely to her while her ankles tightened around his waist.

  Clementine spoke his name and flexed to meet each thrust. And then his wings spread and shivered as he gasped her name: ‘Cle—Clem—Clement—tine.’

  Benedick subsided over and around her, wings curling to shelter her beneath him. He kissed her, then kissed the tip of her nose, and he grinned. Three quick kisses to her lips and then he dropped sensual kisses down her throat and chest, her breasts and belly, before pulling away far enough so that he could nuzzle between her legs.