if i can't stand it.

Avery

After waking Calden in the middle of the night to tell him to please, he's about to push her off the bed, give her some room, and after Calden does so, and after she settles down near him but not beside him to sleep again,

there is a strange, pale early morning. She wears her robe to breakfast, which is at the crack of dawn if not before, so she can see Calden off before he goes to the stock show for the day. Her hair is mussed and she is quiet, though she often is this early. She sends him off just as quietly, and that afternoon, she calls him, leaving a voicemail asking him if... he would mind so terribly... if she spent the night alone. It's not a question that comes easily to her. But they have both, in the span of a week or so, gotten used to Calden coming home to her. Sleeping with her. In her home, in her bed. One way or another, he gets back to her. One way or another, he tells her he will.

That night she goes to bed, conflicted with thankfulness for her solitude and guilt for being so, so happy to have her bed and her room and everything to herself.

--

The day after that, she sleeps in. She languishes in bed, waking slowly. It takes time for her to remember the last day and night and that actually, it's almost unexpected that Calden isn't there. She breathes in deep, and she gets up, going downstairs for a late breakfast. Something light, as Calden never seems to want: just a bowl of oatmeal lightly dusted with brown sugar and slices of banana, a tall glass of milk, some animated feature or another on the DVR. She stays in her pajamas and robe for most of the morning, eating fruit here and there, lazing.

Calden

He gets back to her a few hours after her voicemail. Around dinnertime, which is -- though neither of them mention this -- the time he would normally be driving back from the stock show to spend the evening with her. It is impossible for him not to sound just a little disappointed, but: there is no anger, there is no blame. If she expresses even a shred of that conflict and guilt, he tells her, and more than once, that she never has to explain or excuse herself to him. He understands.

Which is the truth. He does understand. He's seen her at her worst, or close to it, and he understands what courage it takes for her to hold that at bay.

--

So they have a night apart, and then the morning after she, like a proper Silver Fang too blessed by blood and family to have to do anything so vulgar as work for a living, lazes about her penthouse. She eats a light breakfast. She wears pajamas and a robe. A light snow falls outside, making the world bright and white. Finding Nemo or the like is playing on a flatscreen, the volume turned down.

Her phone chimes. It is Calden. A message, laughably polite for such an informal medium:

Would you mind terribly if I dropped by?

Avery

A text? He almost never texts.

Avery does not have the volume turned down. There's no reason for it to be down or lower than average. She hears her phone all the same, though, and even if that anxiety rises in her again, pierces through her mind like a shriek, she taps back:

No. It's all right. When?

Calden

I'm free until 2pm. Whenever you're ready.

The words are perhaps carefully chosen.

Avery

There's no answer for a little while. And then, finally:

I'm just watching cartoons. You can come over.

Calden

Okay, be there soon.

And so he is: ringing her intercom about twenty minutes later, his image projected up to her viewscreen. He looks the way he's looked every day this week. Jeans and boots and a heavy coat, his hat held at his side so she can see his face through the camera.

Avery

Twenty minutes later, the cartoons are off and Avery has decided to change. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, bouncy with soft curls left over from yesterday's hairstyle. She is wearing a pair of heather-gray leggings and a pink v-necked cashmere sweater when she lets him in the front door.

She gives him a small smile. "Would you like a drink?"

Calden

He smells different, though. Clean, and like hotel shampoo and the shower gel provided in tiny 1oz plastic bottles. Not like animals at all. When he sees her at the door, he returns her smile -- but he doesn't wrap his arms around her, sweep her into a kiss.

He shrugs out of his coat instead, hanging it up on the same hook or coatrack or closet he's hung it every other day this week. "I wouldn't mind a cup of coffee if you've got a pot brewing," he admits, "but otherwise water's fine."

Avery

"I have a Keurig," she tells him with a smile, as the door closes. "I'll make you some."

The kitchen isn't far. She walks in there, bare feet and all, to go get him a mug, to brew him a single cup. She glances at him over her shoulder. "I thought you'd be busy this morning."

Calden

He takes the single mug with a thank-you, then perches on a stool at the breakfast bar. There's something a touch awkward about him. In the previous days he's grown comfortable here; moved about on his own, poured his own water, brewed pots of coffee to share on his own accord. Now, again, he is a guest -- and stiff the way he never was even the first time he was here.

"The only thing I was even remotely interested in this morning is the dairy auction. We've been thinking of getting a few more cows, maybe starting a dairy. But I'm asking Paul to go keep an eye out, and he's dependable." A pause. "And I wanted to make sure you were all right. That we were all right."

Avery

She's on the other side of the island, tossing the K-cup away, thinking of making herself some tea, deciding against it, because: yes. Everything is awkward, and strange, and she isn't sure how to fix it. She listens, though, as he mentions the dairy auction and Paul can handle it, and

he wanted to make sure she, and they, are okay. Avery aches, visibly, and nods. "I love you," she says, crossing a step to the island, reaching over it, touching his hand with her own. "Even... if I send you away, I..."

Avery swallows, struggling, her eyes hot. "You must know how dearly I love you, Calden."

Calden

That point of contact becomes an anchor: his hand turning over to catch hers, but only if she doesn't flinch from it.

"I do know that," he says, softly but -- fervently, yes. That word can be used. "I do know. I never doubted it. And I know that when you send me away, it has nothing to do with how you feel about me. I know that you have to be alone sometimes, and I know that it doesn't mean I should stay away forever.

"I just ... I want to know if there's anything I can do differently. If there's anything I've done to make this more difficult for you, that I can change."

Avery

She flinches. An iota, a flicker, but she steadies herself. She is okay. He does not turn her hand under his, hold it too tightly. She lets him hold her, even if she can't quite hold him back yet.

"Never forever," she tells him quietly, her brows tugged together still. "I want you always to return."

Even if as years go by, those needs for silence grow longer. From hours into days, days into weeks. If one day she is old enough, mad enough, that she must spend a year or more away from him, her family, her pack, her loves. In a dark way, she hopes she dies before she is that taken by her madness. This is why she fights it so furiously.

All he wants to do is help. She aches when she smiles, shaking her head. "I don't know," she confesses. "You are not the difficulty." There's a soft pause. "Though I will tell you, if I think of something."

Calden

The thought crosses both their minds, though neither of them voice it. These aren't the Dark Ages anymore. The Silver Fangs aren't icons of infallibility and perfection anymore. Information is as intangible and uncageable as light, as air. The dark secret of the Silver Fangs has long since become everyone's knowledge; old news. Calden knows, just as everyone knows, that the madness exists. It only grows worse with time.

From the hours she spent under the bed that first time, to the day-and-change they've spent apart this time,

to weeks, to months; years of silence and solitude, perhaps, by the time she is her father's age. Or her mother's, had she survived. Or perhaps -- if she is unlucky, if the curse is unkind -- by the time she is her mother's age at her death. Or sooner.

--

Neither of them say it. He holds her hand, though. Gently, but with a certain mute tenacity, as though to remind them both:

he will not abandon her. Not even if her madness wants him to.

--

"Maybe we should sleep like the Puritans." It's a weak joke at best, and he knows it, but he tries. "A plank in between, separating your side of the bed from mine."

Avery

She laughs. Weak joke or not, she laughs, and gives his hand a squeeze. "No," she says. "Though... if you pull at me in sleep and I cannot bear it, I may go to another bed," she tells him quietly, the laughter fading, her eyes meeting his. "I just don't want to break your heart."

Calden

"That wouldn't break my heart," Calden replies. They are both serious now, that brief tension-dispelling joke fading like so much smoke. "But I'd rather you woke me and told me. I'd rather sleep on the ground near you, if you can stand it, rather than wake to find I've crowded you straight to another bed."

Avery

He'd sleep on the ground just to be near her, rather than wake alone. She smiles, one corner of her mouth lifted, and she aches. "Darling, I don't want you to sleep on the floor. Or send you to another bed."

Her hand moves over his. "Maybe I'll put a sofa in my bedroom," she murmurs. "And I'll wake you, if you crowd me in your sleep and if I can't stand it," because sometimes she can, and sometimes she craves it, "and perhaps one of us can just go to the sofa instead."

Calden

His one hand joins the other, now. Both holding hers gently; both bringing hers up, now, until he can kiss her knuckles as softly and adoringly as he does. As he loves to.

"I think that's a plan, Miss Chase," he answers.

Avery

She smiles at him. There's no flinch this time, his hands on hers. She lets him kiss them, watching him with something like benevolence, something else quite like her own form of adoration. And she leans over, closing her eyes, kissing his mouth.

Yes, Calden,

she does not say.