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This is the problem with marrying someone who knows you. Someone who sees you and always wants to know you more.
They pick apart seams of anxieties and ills that you’ve wrapped so tightly around yourself, unraveling threads, leaving you with strings in disarray and a bit more breathing room.
Then, when you’re all but bare, they wait for you to pull the fraying ends yourself.
Or, perhaps it is just Attolia’s husband who does so.
They have reached this stage again.
Eugenides waits, quiet and open after having put himself on display. For her. Always for her.
He has teased the underlying discomfort out of her with his usual poking and prodding. He makes a procession of it here, behind closed doors. It’s a damnable thing when he’s earnest and wanting, tripping her into concession after concession with smiles and secrets that make her forget herself, until the only thing hanging over them is what she refuses to admit.
Eugenides, of course, remains unimpressed by her attempts to ignore the issue.
There are only so many times she can deny (to herself and him) that something is troubling her. The only thing left for her to do is share what has been making her eyes shutter in moments like these.
He moves closer in the face of her silence. “Am I to guess, then?”
Irene shakes her head. She’s not certain he’d even follow through on that, but she won’t let the possibility of it dangle in the air.
It would hurt to have him guess. To hear it. And far, far worse for him to spear the truth of it with his tongue.
It is a living fear, frantic in her chest. Beating against bloody bars.
“I do not want the power to hurt you again,” says Irene. Her fingers clench, twisting her hand into the fabric of her skirt like twine, tighter, tighter. Making a fist.
The fabric, at least, she could torment to no harm.
Eugenides frowns, soft and thoughtful. “You will always have the power to hurt me.”
Her next breath comes sharp and shallow on the inhale. All the dread in her stomach so neatly turned to shards.
“Do you think I don’t have the power to hurt you?” he asks gently. Like he already knows the answer.
Eugenides meets her gaze as he holds out his hand, beckoning her closer.
He does not drop it at her prolonged hesitation. Only waits.
This too is a wound.
She swallows, once, twice, words sticky and catching high in her throat. But he doesn’t need her words. He never did.
Irene takes his hand, and steps into his arms. She lets him reel her in, slow and steady, unraveling.
His closeness is always a revelation.
Eugenides does not ask her for anything. He does not falter when she does, squeezing her eyes shut and releasing a sigh into his hair. He’s as warm as he ever is, an arm around her waist, fingers disentangling from hers to run down her side, back up to her shoulder, her hair.
With the base of her head cradled in his palm, Eugenides rubs his thumb in soothing circles at the back of her neck.
She thinks she understands.
Her heart hurts now, but in a way she doesn’t want to stop.
It made it feel like hers. Like it belonged in her body.
All tied to her chest and her throat, there, there, there. Strung along his fingers. Caught and held.
The memories are bitter in her mouth when she thinks of all the times she has hurt him these past few weeks, just by refusing to believe he loved her (and oh how he loved her).
Her doing.
And for what? Because she was afraid?
Because she was holding too tightly to everything she had ever known, when something wonderful and new–something different–was right there waiting for her.
She thinks she’d rather open herself up and offer her insides than put him through that again. Pull all her vulnerabilities out, the bloody mess in the light of day for him to see.
Every painful thing dredged up would be worth not hurting her husband with.
With a huff Irene tugs him to the nearest sofa and pulls him down with her, never releasing him. “I think you’ve proven your point,” she mutters, face pressed to the curve of his neck.
“Oh, have I?” There’s laughter in his words. He shifts to a more comfortable position, carding his fingers through her hair.
He doesn’t attempt to lift her face, and she appreciates that.
Eugenides, of all people, knows the value of hiding.
“You think too much of me,” he muses, “to assume a point in everything I do.” He drags the words out with his fingers. “Sometimes there is nothing but love and impulse, not a pretty thought in my head.”
She squeezes him tighter. “More than that.”
“More than that,” he concedes. He presses his lips to her temple, a soft and firm press that he holds. For him or for her, she cannot tell.
She doesn't mind.
“Tonight, though?” he says lightly. “I’m little more than a desire for you to see yourself as something that does not have you pulling away, and retreating further into yourself before my very eyes.”
Alone, he does not say. She knows what he means, and what he fears as well.
If she would harden and pull back to hide from voicing ugly fears, then he would cut his hands open on her edges to keep her there.
His hand. He only had one to hold onto.
And one hook to wield as a weapon like any other. He could hurt her just as well. They could. Handing themselves over to each other like this.
Yes, fine. So she could not retreat from the discomfort of a position primed to cast over him, and the memories that came with it. So he would not surrender gracefully, and would fight with her to acknowledge they are both made weak with this, and hideously vulnerable. So he has finally reached her, and will be damned if she leaves him behind, kept on the outside.
So, so, so.
“If we are to be bloody and bladed things,” he tells her, “let’s do it as the people we are.”
Irene loves him. Eugenides loves her.
Hurt and human. So it will be.
He makes everything seem so easy, sometimes. She’s still getting used to the idea that with him, it can be.
She snickers, rubbing her face against his cheek. “You say the most romantic things.”
Eugenides grins, wide and victorious. “I do try.”
Irene pushes him away, and no sooner than she does it is she pulling him back in again.
Dragging him down to kiss all over his undefended face.
Maybe, in time, she can convince him that she’ll take him with her.