by Laila Blake
“You... yeah.”
Emily stared at him, and just shook her head. She reached out for him with her bandaged arm but then dropped it again and took a deep breath. There was a feeling of strength that flooded her: she was a mother and a protector, and she hugged Song closer, her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling as fear started to wane in favor of an enormous adrenaline rush.
“What now?” she whispered.
“You want me to go back in?” he asked, voice as even as he could make it; truly, there was fear all around the edges, but she knew he would if she asked. She shook her head almost before he could finish, but she still hesitated.
“I...” she started, tried to find a way to actually word her sudden and crazy desire to go herself, and then stopped when Song buried his face in the crook of her neck. She couldn’t go.
Aaron nodded, but just as Emily turned, expecting him to return to the front, he touched his fingers to his forehead.
“I’ll be right back.” His smile was bracing, and he waited for her to step back—hesitantly, and with a strange, confused look on her face—so he could shove the door closed again and return to the ruins of the store.
He moved faster this time, and, with a suitcase found atop a pile of junk, he shoved handfuls of clothes inside, not being particularly choosy or observant. There were shoes and socks and underwear, some brightly colored shirts, even a raincoat. Once the bag was bulging, he balanced it on his shoulder and brought it back to the van and pushed it in through the back before getting into the driver’s seat, shutting the door, and letting out a breath that he’d been holding, somehow, the entire time.
Emily was still in the back and the tears finally spilled over at the sight of him. She sat Song down and came close to Aaron’s seat and, just for a moment, she leaned her face against his hair and breathed him in.
“You didn’t have to do that, I didn't mean... you didn’t... damn, I’m sorry.”
He sucked in another breath, dizzy. “It’s okay. You, um, need clothes.” He had no idea if he’d gotten anything worthwhile, of course, and that, for whatever reason, seemed even more offensive in his mind.
“Not... not in exchange for you,” she breathed but even as her heart was slamming against her chest, she was aware of having to downplay the situation for Song’s sake. She was already working on turning her face into a smile.
He glanced up at her, blinked and then nodded. He didn’t reach for her, and certainly he didn’t know what right he had to any real comfort just then.
“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, instead, starting the van once more, when Emily nodded. She didn’t linger but sat down with Song again and pulled him on her lap. She didn’t feel the cold on her arms, just held him until he started to babble and she knew he was okay.
Chapter Fourteen
Emily stood over the old, saggy sofa bearing Song’s sleeping form. She had wrapped him in so many blankets, his face was flushed and warm. Almost comfortable, sleeping almost like he used to, except for the axe he was cradling in his tiny hands. Emily sighed. He had allowed her to clean it, but then he’d wanted it back. He had taken to carrying it around and lifting it into the air like a trophy, babbling about killing zombies and heroics, as though in his mind everything had turned into a movie already. Emily had a feeling that this was a good thing, but she kept catching him in her arms and trying to get him to stop running around with a weapon.
He was deep enough asleep now and, not quite as gently as she could have, she loosened his fingers from the wood and edged it out from under his blankets. It wasn’t a movie for her, and after the feeling of heroic adrenaline had faded, she’d had to force a smile every time Song retold the story of how she had cut a zombie’s head off.
She pushed herself off the ground and quietly placed the axe on a table by the door. Stretching, she reached for the water bottle and took a few deep drags until her hair fell into her eyes and Aaron entered the house again from his usual patrols. She gave him a dry smile.
“Long day, huh?”
“You could say that,” he drawled, only giving her the barest hint of a smile in return. His face was drawn and weary, and he’d rubbed his hair into a mess atop his head, despite the cut she’d given it.
They were safe—as safe as things got, at least. The house was set back from the road and he saw no evidence of anything living or semi-living, whatever the case may be, in a long time. The building, itself, smelled a bit, rotting around the eaves, but it was sturdy, and dry, and they all needed a break where there was an illusion of some kind of calm, of peace.
“I’m gettin’ tired of surprises,” he went on, setting his gun down so he could take off his jacket; it was warm by the fire.
“Just the kind that’s trying to eat us or shoot us or steal our stuff...” she replied and shrugged a little apologetically. She was exhausted, but more emotionally than physically, pent up and tense.
He squeezed her shoulder, just briefly, and moved to poke at the burning embers in the fireplace. Emily felt the absence again starkly as she watched him.
A fire in the house, smoke billowing from the chimney, wasn’t the safest decision, but they needed the heat, and he was willing to make them obvious over freezing through the night. They’d been through too much recently.
“It’ll get better,” he said, trying to muster a good amount of conviction into his voice. They had said the same sentence or one to the same effect so many times, it had stopped having a real meaning. They were just words, uttered in a comforting tone, and Emily nodded.
She flopped onto a chair and pulled the bag with their provisions onto her lap. Except for the boxes of cans in the van that were technically not for them, their supplies were growing sparse.
“At least Song seems okay,” she said finally, groping for anything to say. The silence was heavier between them than it usually was.
“Kids bounce back quick,” he said, this time with a genuine smile, gaze going to the sleeping boy for a moment. There was a tenderness there that Aaron didn’t outright display all that often, and it vanished once he turned back to Emily.
“The sleepin’ with the axe was a bit much,” he added, shrugging and finally sinking to sit on the floor.
Emily shrugged, too, still watching him, then ran her fingers through her hair and wrapped her skinny arms around herself. All too many times that day, she’d felt herself pulled back into that dark room, grappling through the blackness for the doorknob, Sullivan outside.
“Are you okay?” she asked finally.
“I’ve been better,” he admitted, rubbing his hand over his hair again, not noticing how it stuck out in all directions over his ears. “But I’ll be okay in the mornin’. Gotta keep moving.” He was exhausted, and it showed, but he stayed upright, jaw set.
Emily watched him. She felt a certain tenderness towards the messy hair and that face, that tired, tense face. But giving into that feeling and following its course had become a sore point in her pride and so she stayed away, breathing deeply. She wanted to get her things out and draw or write something, but she didn’t feel quite awake enough, nor quite in private enough.
“You wanna talk?” she finally asked instead.
“Bout what?” He didn’t sound surprised, but he also didn’t sound entirely willing; in fact, he didn’t sound like much of anything, but distant, somewhere in his head, somewhere nowhere near that room.
Emily didn’t snort but it was a close call. Instead she just raised her brows and shrugged. Her nostrils flared.
“You’re gettin’ good with an axe.” He sounded doubtful, and his shoulders raised almost to his ears.
“That’s not...” she started and found herself shivering with a sudden flash of anger. And while she couldn't quite pinpoint where the rush of emotion came from, it wasn’t entirely new.
“I...” she exhaled a hard breath, then set her jaw and looked at her sleeping son as though his sweet sleeping face could stem the anger, could stop the sudden ne
ed to kick or tear something or to scream.
“Yeah?” His eyes went to Song, too.
On some level, she knew she wasn’t really angry at Aaron but he was there, with his accent and his ears and his stupid sweet voice at night.
“Why did you close the door on me?” she asked finally, her voice dangerously level.
He frowned, and blinked.
“So you wouldn’t get hurt.” It was so simple, and he was completely baffled by the question—a zombie charged, he tried to protect her and Song. It seemed cut and dry to Aaron.
“But I had an axe,” she said in the same tone, her brows drawing closer together. “And that left you all alone.”
“I had a gun.” His voice was even, almost reasoned. “And better one person than three in danger, don't ya think?”
Her jaw fell open and her eyes glinted.
“No. No, I don’t think that,” she spat and got up from her chair, suddenly only able to breathe while moving. “No. Because it’s better two against one than one against one. What... what would have happened if the door was stuck or... or if that thing had been faster? We would have lost you, I—I would have lost you, Aaron!”
“You would have been okay,” he began, but it was almost immediately a losing battle. Emily stopped and stared at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“Fuck you,” she exhaled, shaking her head.
“What?” Though there was confusion in his tone, his expression was a mix of anger and hurt, and he rose to his feet as well, hands going behind his back, shoulders stiff and squared.
“That’s making it really fucking easy, don’t you think?” She hissed, clearly dying to yell. “We’d be okay? Just so you can be hero? I wouldn’t be. Okay? I wouldn't be fucking okay.”
“I was just trying to help!” Aaron rarely snapped, before the end, in the end, now—he rarely raised his voice, but he, too, was struggling with the volume of his words, eyes locked on hers and burning.
Emily flinched. Aaron was tall and strong, and in that moment, suddenly intimidating in a way he never had been before. But her anger reinstated itself almost immediately, and she raised her hands in frustration before she pointed at the next room.
He was almost angry enough to refuse, but his gaze flicked to Song, and he did as she indicated, hands still held tightly behind his back and head ducked as he walked the few paces out of the living room. What had been the dining room was lit with the light of the half-moon, and colder, but certainly out of earshot of the sleeping boy.
Emily shivered and her skinny arms went across her chest, staring up at Aaron, defiant and hurting. The moment had taken some of her fire and for a second, she just wanted to collapse against him and satisfy herself with the knowledge that he, at least, wasn’t dead.
“You can’t do that again,” she finally said, her voice was weaker now, and not exactly loud enough to have required the move.
“I only did what I thought was right,” he said, tersely, but his own anger had mostly leached out of his voice. His hands stayed behind his back, but not clenched in some kind of stance of anger, but one more of helplessness, and the very real desire to put his arms around her and not let her go.
“Well, it wasn’t and you won’t do it again. He... he died okay?” she pressed and immediately her eyes filled with tears again. “He shut me in a dark room and by the time I could help him he was bit. I could have... I could have helped him. I...” she sniffed, then fell silent and pressed her hands over her eyes.
“Hey,” Aaron interrupted her, and he reached for her then, hands easily encircling her wrists. “I... I know. It's... I didn’t mean...” He couldn’t find a way to complete his thoughts, to assure her with any words: they all seemed clumsy and stupid in light of that, in light of himself, and so he just pried her hands from her eyes.
“I’m okay. We’re okay, we’re all okay.”
It was just dark enough to feel hidden, as though anything that might happen there was secret and safe and Emily sniffed once, trying to catch her breath.
“Just... I wouldn’t be okay, okay?” she breathed into the warmth of his fingers against the back of her hands.
“You’d be okay.” It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but Aaron needed to say it, and he believed it, nonetheless. “You would. You’d have to be, alright?”
“That’s not... what I mean,” she breathed, her voice hoarse and high pitched. “I just... people have to stop dying and... and you can’t take risks like that anymore. Please?”
“What else am I supposed to do, Em?” His thumb was pressed to the hollows of her good wrist, and their pulses matched, beat for beat. “I can't let you get yourself hurt.”
“I can help, I’m strong...” she insisted even if just then she didn’t feel it at all.
“I know you are, of course you are.” His voice was quiet, and he finally released her wrists only to cup his hands at the sides of her face, instinctively. “I just... I am who I am, Emily. I can’t help it.”
Her eyes closed momentarily and she exhaled an aching, frustrated breath. After a moment, one long, warm moment, she forced her eyes open again and pushed her fists against his chest—if she’d tried to hurt him, or to prove her strength, she didn’t do a good job.
“Just... don’t be stupid. Not like this, please?”
His mouth went up a little on one side. “‘Fraid I’m not able to be non-stupid,” he said, thumbs finding the curve of her cheekbones, freckles black in the silver light. “Sorry.”
“You are trying to pacify me with your hands...” she pouted, but it was obviously working as she sighed and leaned against his touch, aching and hungry.
“Tryin’ nothin’ of the sort.” And he didn’t stop, not when they were that close, and they were both leaning into it, her chin tipped up so that their faces, in the hush, were barely inches apart.
“You always disagree with me,” she noted, quietly, shaking her head. She bit her lip and released it again; it quivered for a moment as she rose to her toes.
Their mouths came together again, but, in another beat of the blood in their veins, the kiss turned different from the ones before it, the fear of the afternoon, the anger that had risen quickly, the need for something good and warm and base pushing it up, harder, almost immediately. His hands moved from her face to her shoulders, down to her waist; they walked backwards in unison until Emily bumped against something hard, a desk. She carelessly reached back to push dust and papers on the floor and almost instantly, Aaron lifted her up on its empty surface.
With the motion, the kiss broke, but only for an instant—a breath in, and his mouth landed on hers again, hands at her thighs so they were spread on either side of his, pinned without pressure.
Hands clenched in his shirt, Emily pulled him closer, breathing hard already. He was hot and solid and so wonderfully alive, her legs crossed behind him hard until she could feel him pressing against her through all those layers of clothing. His hands clenched at her legs, and then released them, moving under the hem of her shirt to the curve of her waist, the bare, untouched skin there.
She didn’t say anything, talking always ruined it. She just kissed him; needed to keep kissing him, letting him set the pace this time. Their tongues tangled, and his fingers found her ribs, utterly too prominent, and the undersides of her breasts. His mouth jarred away from hers, and their gazes swam back together but he, too, didn't speak. Aaron’s fingers caught the frayed bottom of her shirt and pulled it up over her head. Her hair crackled with electricity and gooseflesh rose over her arms and breasts as she looked up at him, needy, all too afraid he’d put a stop to it again.
His hands, though, went back to her waist, her chest, and his lips to hers, her cheek, brushing along her jaw and to her throat. For a few moments, she was almost too distracted by wondering if this was actually going to happen to actually feel anything. And when she did, it hurt—it hurt like frozen fingers in warm water. Her eyes teared up again and she buried her face in the crook of his
neck, kissing, licking, sucking at his throat.
Aaron paused, but could only groan, fingers finding the waist of her jeans, loose around her hips, button easy to pop. He was working on instinct, need, some amount of fear, want that refused to be tamped down any longer. At his first tug, Emily wriggled until he could pull her jeans off, finally loosening her hold on his hips. Insistent, she pushed her fingers under his sweater, finding taut muscle and hot skin.
He moved just to pull his shirt off, dropped on the floor without thought, and his fingers reaching for her panties. They hooked in the waistband, and he tugged them down off her hips, lifted her ass and dragged them down off her legs, and the tips of her toes.
Their eyes met in the dark and Emily wet her lips. There seemed to exist a momentary balance in which neither of them was sure they’d actually go through with this, but then her legs closed behind him again and her lips found his chest, kissing and biting, while her hands tried to unpop the button of his jeans.
Her fingers were strong and deft, and he exhaled, low, against her ear, when his jeans loosened around him. He pushed her hand up to his shoulder, letting her wrap it around his neck so he could free his cock himself. He slipped his hands under her ass to tug her to the edge of the table, to tip her back almost precariously, and pushed inside her. Her eyes widened and she held her breath until he bottomed out, then let it all go in one sharp moan, fingernails digging into the back of his neck.
Despite being far from Song’s hearing, they were quiet, breaths coming out in muffled gasps, his hands planted to the table to keep it from squeaking or hitting the wall. It felt illicit, and not, like something completely necessary, lest they both wither and die. It was also fast: after denying themselves too many times, it didn’t take long until they were pressed together, sweaty foreheads in the crook of each other’s necks, catching their breath—afraid to pull back and see the world was still there.
The table was gritty under Aaron’s palm, and still breathing hard, he finally lifted it to find Emily’s bare back, the curve of her spine, and held her there. He could hear her heart drumming in her chest, feel it on his skin, in sharp contrast to the chill of the room behind him. He kissed her neck, the salt there. Still, the silence hung, both of them well aware what talking seemed to do.
