Chapter Text
“This is the end, isn’t it?
And you are here with me again, listening with me: the sea
no longer torments me; the self
I wished to be is the self I am.”
— Louise Glück, from “Otis”
➢ ➳❥ ➣
She watches him from the corner of her eye.
This, as she has come to see over the stretch of time, is not something she does with intent. Catching glimpses of Loid Forger when he’s not looking is a blind habit. Yor never notices that his reflection is dancing in the ring of rubies around her pupil until something in her chest blossoms, withers, and blossoms again.
He tends to lean his face into the palm of his hand when he looks over Anya’s homework, gentle frustration sitting in between his brows. When they stand together at the kitchen sink, he inspects the tableware through one eye for any residue, holding it up against the light, before handing them to Yor for drying. He can’t seem to finish his cup of coffee in the mornings without a newspaper in hand. If he’s thinking too hard or too much while seated, his elbows will dig into the surface of his spread thighs as he stares at the floor.
His right shoulder slightly twitches when he receives bad news. It’s a movement so quick and subtle that it can get lost before the naked eye, but Yor catches it each time. Anya’s tumultuous days at Eden are always the main culprit behind this reflex, so when the fitted upper edge of his tweed jacket exhales with a faint shiver, Yor tilts her head to an angle that sharpens her watch.
The street lights are burning his blonde hair to an all too blazing platinum. She can only see the side of Loid’s face as he stands before the entrance of The Madison, their favorite restaurant on Richt Street, and that, too, beams under moonlight. His face is open and welcoming, softened after an evening with Yor over sips of white wine and bites of pepper-roasted pork with dumplings, as he chats away with the strange man.
That’s another thing Yor observes when it comes to her husband. He makes friends everywhere. She shifts in her red suede heels as she stands on the side of the street that overlooks the waters. Perhaps “friends” is a term that weighs too much on her narrow shoulders—Loid is good with people. He’s better than she’ll ever be. There is always the cordial chatter with the vendors behind kiosks, the respectful small talk with fawning colleagues. A warm goodbye to a cashier here, a light hello to a fellow dog walker there.
This one is Louis Lincoln. An old classmate from Loid’s time in medical school, as he had introduced when he caught them outside in a chance encounter, a friend that time had weathered away in memory. Brunette and sickly pale, dressed in athleisure for a night run. Yor considers the shoulder twitch again, but then her curiosity loosens its grip. Who knows how many lost years the two men are trying to recover in conversation, joy and grief laced into days gone by, and what would she—a misfit who has lived on nothing but blood and kinship—know about lofty halls and difficult professors, reckless parties and nights spent cramming for exams?
Turning her back to them, Yor casts her gaze elsewhere. The port is busy tonight, and dark patches of water are still where they’re caught in moonshine. A breeze entangles itself in the ends of her silk black hair, fresh out of a headband. In the distance, music falls out of windows, a child’s laughter fills the air. Is this what it feels like, that other term that often rests on her shoulders with the weight of the sky? Peace. Something she once thought was solely reserved for ordinary people of ordinary breeding.
But all is calm tonight, within and without. There is a lovely, pink-haired bundle of joy waiting for her and Loid to come home, and a kind, white-furred blessing that she’ll take on a walk tomorrow. Pointed footsteps patter behind her.
And, of course, there’s him.
Loid’s hand finds the small of her back. She doesn’t flinch like she used to. The woman who would panic and kick and flail whenever he got too close for comfort seems a stranger through the scope of time. Yor does, however, still blush.
“Sorry about that,” he says, his fingers moving to clinch her waist, “we had a lot to catch up on. I haven’t heard from Louis in years.”
Yor looks back at The Madison’s front now dotted with new strange faces passing by. Loid presses his lips against her temple, and it calls her attention back to shore. It’s such a chaste kiss—she knows these well, and yet her body shudders. Loid swiftly takes off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders, the perfect gentleman.
She clutches the handle of her purse in embarrassment, looking down at the sidewalk. “Thank you.”
That little inner voice that tells her she doesn’t deserve someone like him is starting to return in a whisper, and as if he knows, Loid tilts her chin up. Her colleagues always call him handsome. Tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fit, and so much more. Was it Camilla who said it was a miracle that a man like him married such a dimwitted oddball like her? Or was that Sharon? No, it might have been Millie—
His lips are warm against her own. There’s no swing of her foot against the underside of his chin. It’s just her cradled in his arms, her bones molten, and her hands weaving through blonde tufts of hair.
It started with a goodbye kiss a few months ago. Yor wasn’t thinking in that moment. A sweet peck on the cheek outside before he went off to work. He had frozen for a split second, and she mirrored him. Then, Loid kissed her—really, truly kissed her—without a second thought. She spent the day trying to rationalize his response. It was understandable, Yor thought, on her end: things were becoming real in her mind. The Forgers are a mere cover. Olka Gretcher suggested the very same aboard the Princess Lorelai, but it was there, in the middle of the sea, where Yor became aware of the exact opposite. Loid and Anya are both the flame and the hearth within her. There was no denying that anymore.
The code was harder to crack when it came to Loid that morning. She believed he reciprocated to keep up the act. Happy married couples engage in public displays of affection all the time. Yet, he came home that night and kissed her again before no audience like he couldn’t help himself, like he spent his hours at the hospital thinking only of her.
Yor never asks if he does any of it in truth for confirmation. She looks into his eyes, a set of tranquil seas. That would ruin everything. So, she anchors her arm around his in silence, and they walk on home. Piano notes spill forth from drawn curtains, a child giggles nearby. Yor savors every minute.
They return to a quiet apartment on Park Avenue, and it casts the lightest gloom on her heart. This is the single downside to late date nights. There is something to be said about Anya screaming “Papa and Mama are home!” the minute Loid jangles a key and twists the doorknob, Bond barking in excitement. Yor doesn’t know if she can call it sustenance, but it’s close enough. After Loid pays Franky a hefty amount upfront for babysitting, Yor joins him in Anya’s room where they take turns placing a quick peck on her forehead. She’s even more precious when she’s asleep.
When all is said and done for the night, they linger awkwardly in the hallway. Yor shuffles in her pajamas, studying her slippers against the floor. He makes it a point to wait for her every time. This is what his patience says to the mute air: everything is up to you. She scratches an itch on her arm that isn’t there.
“Yor,” he calls. She looks up. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Simple words. He always says them. In truth, she does want to. There is never a moment since their first kiss where Yor doesn’t want to be under him, settled in the shelter of his body laid bare for her eyes only. It’s the second-guessing that gets her.
Their first night together, she spent a few moments lost in her head. Here she was, an inexperienced woman knocking on thirty, untouched and unlearned, naked beneath the gaze of a handsome and cultured widower. Had it not been for the sheer heat of his tongue in the crook of her neck or in between her legs that stilled her mind, she would’ve been tormented with insecurity all throughout. Sometimes, when they’re both spent to the bone and tangled together against the sheets, Yor is haunted by the idea of the late Mrs. Forger, a faceless ghost, satisfying Loid more than she ever could. It’s why she never stays the night in his room.
But he’s standing in front of her waiting for an answer, his hands at his sides, and she realizes that for her, Loid would wait there for a thousand years without complaint. She steps forward with her cheeks painted red, and plants a light kiss against his mouth. It’s how she answers in the affirmative these days. His stoic face cracks with a gentle smile, and it fans one half of Yor’s inner flame.
They litter the floor of his bedroom with their clothes, and the warm sheets feel familiar against her unclad back. A certain hunger fuels Loid’s movements this time, and Yor surrenders herself to it without a moment’s pause. He sinks his teeth into her bottom lip, hands caressing her breasts, and she moans. It’s a small sound, a squeak at best, and it triggers a curse or two from Loid.
His fingers trail the length of her body from her sternum to her mound, and he stops to look at her. On instinct, Yor wants to look away, but there’s a flash of poignance in his eyes that she wants to study. His hand slides down further, slowly, a careful torture. Loid never breaks his stare. He regards her as if this is the last time he’ll ever see her.
Yor moans louder when his fingers start to knead little circles, her eyes scrunching shut and heat spreading everywhere through her body. She feels Loid’s free hand on her jaw, firm but tender.
“Look at me,” he commands in a whisper. She does. “You’re so beautiful.”
The words come in tandem with the ache of his fingers suddenly inside her, and her back arches. Say it out loud, a voice in her head whispers as her hips rock against the rhythm of his hand. The three words.
Yor shakes her head, flustered. “I can’t,” she pants. Those three words like to hide beneath her tongue. She needs more time before she confesses.
Loid continues his watch like a hawk on edge, his pace quickening at the wrist. When Yor naturally falls to the wave of pleasure that courses through her body minutes later, he kisses her softly, satisfied, swallowing her moans.
He rests his forehead against hers, and Yor finds herself drowning in the oceans swimming around his pupils. Her body gnaws at her with want.
“Please,” she pleads softly. He understands.
It’s like a sweet drug, that feeling that spreads throughout her core when he enters her inch by slow, honeyed inch. Loid is the one who moans this time, low and thunderous, and he stays there for a second. His palms are bracketed on either side of Yor’s head, and his eyes are closed. When he returns to motion, that hunger comes back, and it’s ravenous.
His thrusts are angled, sharp, rough—it’s new, and Yor luxuriates in it. She echoes Loid’s grunts with sugared wails, and her eyes roll to the back of her head once he begins to thrust deeper. Her fingernails scrape his back, and he groans, cursing again.
Breath evades her, and she tries to capture it for her sake, but Loid’s mouth meets hers again, his hand going back to kneading circles where her legs are spread open, and she short-circuits.
Each hard thrust now blurs her vision, her eyebrows pinched in ecstasy, and all she can mutter repeatedly is, “Feels so good.”
In response, she hears: “I love you.”
It sounds hoarse, authentic and accidental. Loid exhales sharply as if an ill-kept secret has escaped from his mind without permission, but that doesn’t stop the tempo at his hips. Instead, it beats it into something carnal, and Yor collapses into herself, her throat exhausted with whimpers, her nails pressed into his skin. It takes three, four pumps before Loid joins her, falling apart at the seams.
Each time, the afterglow is pleasant without fail until Yor begins to question herself, but tonight, her mind is empty. I love you, I love you, I love you. That’s what her head sings.
“I love you, too,” she whispers when she remembers how to speak.
She’s resting her head on his chest, and his heartbeat thuds against her ear. His hands are lost in the black waves of her hair, stroking gently. The hiding space underneath her tongue dissolves. Yor was bound to admit it eventually; she never dreamed of Loid being the first to say it.
I love you, I love you, I love you. Thoughts of the late Mrs. Forger seem so silly now. There are no imaginary ex-girlfriends from college who might have been more beautiful, more normal. There is no sleek, competent coworker who threatens to take her place.
He kisses her languidly, like they have all the time in the world to stay here. Yor forgets to leave, and she wakes up in his arms the next morning. Light streaks through the open curtains, and she finds Loid staring at her again, that poignance deepening the blue hues of irises.
It’s Saturday morning. A few more hours in bed couldn’t hurt.
At the breakfast table, Yor sets a vegetable omelette before Anya. Berries and orange juice and bacon and pancakes cover the mahogany surface. The aroma is intoxicating.
“I thought you were making ay-vacado toast for me again,” their daughter says with a frown.
“Avocado,” Loid corrects, setting today’s newspaper beside his coffee cup. “And vegetable omelettes are good for you.”
Anya eyes the herbs sprinkled into the daffodil yellow half-circle on her plate. “I hate vegetables.”
Loid sighs. “Avocado is a vegetable, you know.”
Yor giggles at the face Anya makes and runs a hand over her pink hair. “You’re so adorable.”
Mornings like this aren’t unusual, especially on weekends. The Forgers will feast until the plates are speckled with crumbs, and then they will leave for an outing or for the dog park. Today, Anya suggests the cinema where there’s a screening of a new spy thriller. Yor helps her get ready, and as she wraps a scarf around Anya’s neck to protect her from autumn’s chill, the little girl recounts last night’s episode of Spy Wars. She listens actively, throwing in a genuine “Really?” and a “Wow!” at every turn.
Her life weaving into theirs is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. These little routines have become acts that she can mimic in the dark if asked—she could do this forever.
Loid waits for them in the living room, and it is then when they make eye contact that Yor wishes they’d had a real wedding ceremony. How mighty might those words have been on the tip of her tongue: til death do us part.
A telephone ring cuts through her thoughts. She’s the closest to the landline, so she answers with the standard, “Forger residence.” The next part is a new addition: “Mrs. Forger speaking.”
“Good morning. I have a client for you, Thorn Princess.”
She looks back at her family. Anya is hugging Loid’s leg and rambling about something she can’t hear. He looks down at her adoringly. It’s not so much that she continues being a wife and a mother for her contract killing. Rather, she continues her contract killing so that she can still be Mrs. Yor Forger, so that Anya can continue being full of energy and Loid can continue pulling her back in when she’s on the brink of exploding, all in a shelter of serenity.
“Monday night,” says the Shopkeeper. “Eleven o’clock. The Blue Mint. Room 6097.”