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The upper class tends to frown upon touch, constructs pointless rules around it. Maxwell’s not smart enough to speculate why. But Gotches, for the most part, ever abiding by rules, claim their distance, maintain their space, keep their gloves on.
In the ring, of course, gloves come off. Touch is the goal, but the touch is forceful, harsh, violent. He enjoys it, craves it at times. There’s artistry to it, if you’re watching close enough, if you have the eye for it, exactly how to shape your touch into something that will hurt.
Things are different, with the Wind Riders, in Zood, away from Gath society altogether. Van claps him on the back or slings an arm over his shoulders. Monty checks everyone over carefully for injuries after a fight. Marya pats at his arm or accepts a light hand on her shoulder to ground herself back in the present. Daisuke… nods at him sometimes.
He’s one of them now. It’s an absurd truth that he confronts every morning, as he fixes his hair in the mirror and buttons up his shirt and places his Wind Rider pin on the breast of his coat before putting on his gloves. He wakes up from dreamless sleep into a dream, the dream actually, the one he was never allowed to fully have.
And that means things, that means a level of camaraderie and trust and touch, unviolent but just as brief.
Brief, except for Olethra.
She’s careless with touch. It doesn’t mean the same thing to her, he knows. It’s a given, it’s an instinct.
Olethra props her elbow against his shoulder to stand casually. Olethra grabs his hand to tug him towards the nearest sight. Olethra gives out hugs like they cost nothing.
Her hands are ungloved, her touch is bold and unapologetic and easy and gentle.
They grow closer, more conversations, more slow walks in unfamiliar lands, more nights under the stars. They grow closer in words and then, like it’s natural, like there’s nothing to it, he finds it in him to… reciprocate.
Her touch is casual. His is anything but. He can feel the gravity of it every time he reaches, it’s always deliberate and front of mind. It feels scandalous, when he dares to make contact.
It starts small of course, pats and hugs and nudges. Things that must look like nothing, things that must seem thoughtless, second nature, even as in his head it takes minutes to have the thought and build the courage and then actually reach out.
One morning he leaves his gloves in his room.
And taps her elbow when he passes her in the kitchen.
And realizes for the first time what her blouse feels like, somehow simultaneously soft and scratchy, not the silk he’d expected, but something worn and homely. His hand lingers without thinking, rubbing slowly at the fabric, and Olethra turns to him, still bleary from sleep, head tipping curiously.
“Um, good morning,” he stammers, drawing his hand back slowly and clearing his throat. “Would you like some coffee?”
She nods emphatically. “Oh god yes. Thanks, Max.”
It’s strange, feeling the world unfiltered. In the past he’s taken his gloves off often, more often than a man of his standing should. But it had been for a violent purpose, not for this, gentle discovery and interesting textures.
His hands feel clumsy, blunt objects, not trained for finesse. He’s careful as he reaches out, but he does reach out and Olethra interestingly is usually within reach.
He runs his fingers repetitively over the worn fabric of her skirt, the sleek shape of her curls, the soft skin on the back of her hand. She lets him, without question or comment, like it’s natural, like it’s not improper for him to be making such direct contact with her, like it’s not unbearably strange that he can only do so in such a small way. (He has to hold his body far from her when he does reach out. He’s not sure why. She’s certainly bundled her way into his space countless times, but he can only ever dip his toe in, needs to contain the touch to only one small point at a time.)
Her nightgown is rough hewn, her jacket is surprisingly soft but also stiff and sturdy, her hand when it grabs his is always cold. Or maybe his is always hot.
It’s a whole new world. But one that was always there for everyone else, only out of his reach. He’s in it now though, and can’t find his way back just yet.
—
Wealwell is the one who notices.
He and Olethra are sneaking around the kitchen after midnight, making the most disgusting aiolis they can think of and daring each other to try them. It of course was her idea.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna throw up,” Olethra reacts, far too loud, collapsing into his side dramatically.
“Shhhh,” he hisses, ducking toward her as if to insulate the sound and shooting a glance at the door. “You’re gonna wake everybody up, you maniac.”
She mimes retching but reaches for another swipe of the peanut butter aioli.
“You’re disgusting,” he says, wrapping one arm around her waist to tug her away from the bowl.
“This is disgusting,” she says, face screwing up.
“Then stop eating it!” He’s being loud too. He can’t help it.
“I can’t.”
He fights hard to stifle his laughter behind his fist, the effort bringing tears to his eyes.
Olethra makes much less of an effort to stay quiet, her cackles echoing off the hard surfaces of the large kitchen. He shushes her again, god knows if they get caught he’ll be the one who gets in trouble.
“Oh, I have one!” she says, scrambling back towards the pantry and returning with a banana.
“You’re sick,” he says.
“I’m a genius,” she protests, plopping it down firmly on the cluttered cutting board, rattling various bowls and utensils.
“You’re the loudest person in the world.”
“It’s fine.” She’s somehow found a masher in the tangle of tools in the drawer. He tries to grab it from her but she dances out of his grasp and sets to work in front of the counter.
“I’m not eating that,” he says, sliding up next to her, but settling, hip checked against hers as she works.
“Then you lose.”
“I can live with that.” She’s undeterred, turning the banana into a paste. “You can stop.”
“Nah, I gotta know now.” She reaches for their stolen bowl of the aioli base, slightly out of reach from the cutting board. He shakes his head but passes it over, their fingers brushing for a moment against the ceramic.
“Sick,” he mutters under his breath, but watching with a horrible fascination as she finishes her grim work.
“Where’s your whimsy, Max?”
“Whatever you’re doing right now has absolutely nothing to do with whimsy, I know that much.”
He watches, laughing breathlessly as she struggles to incorporate the banana mush and the mayo. When Wealwell finally clears his throat from the entrance to the kitchen, it feels like he’s been there for ages and something about the whole thing breaks. He sees this little scene from the outside, him and Olethra laughing and moving around each other in the middle of the night.
“You two are going to get in trouble,” he announces. Olethra just hisses like a cat and sticks her tongue out, hugging her horrible horrible concoction to her chest. Maxwell feels something close up in his throat though, feels the weight of his brother’s gaze like an albatross, is reminded suddenly that he’s not just Max, he’s Maxwell Gotch again and trouble used to mean something far worse than just Van yelling at them.
“We’re just grabbing a snack,” Olethra lies. “Here, do you want some… pudding?”
“D-don’t,” he protests, waving Olethra off. “Wealwell, don’t eat that.”
“Jokes on you,” he says. “I already had all the pudding.”
Olethra gives up on him and turns to corner Max instead, holding the bowl out and swaying enticingly, pressing far into his space in the way she has been all night.
“C’mon, somebody’s gotta try it.”
He’s itchy, the weight of Wealwell watching even from far away, but still there’s that thrum in his chest, the new simple pleasure of being in on the joke with someone for once.
“Absolutely not,” he says. It’s flat, performantive. She’s giving him that look, wide-eyed and insistent. He’s going to give in. “That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting.”
She grabs the spoon and licks it.
“It’s not that bad,” she says, in between grimaces and gags.
He rolls his eyes. “You’re lying. You’re obviously lying.”
“No, it’s good,” she says weakly. “I think we should show Bert, it’s really…” She chokes.
He doesn’t glance back at Wealwell, he just tries to forget about Wealwell, tries to just be Max again and takes the spoon from her, pops it in his mouth defiantly, like it’s all to prove her lie, like it’s not to cling to their stupid little joke.
It’s not worth it either way.
“That is foul,” he says, wincing at the mix of discordant flavors. “Christ.”
Olethra doubles over laughing, arms hugging her stomach like maybe she’s about to be sick as well.
“I don’t think it can get worse than that,” she says.
He’s still leaning back, like movement can get him away from the taste of it. “I think it’s the texture really.”
She snaps a couple times and points at him. “You’re so right. You’re so right, it’s the banana lumps in the mayo that really...”
A groan is punched out of him. “Don’t say banana lumps!”
Wealwell throws up.
They clean up, both the floor and the counters. He rinses the bowl down in the sink, struggles for a moment with the variety of supplies and how exactly to use them. He’s never really done dishes before, but Olethra swears she can fix the aioli supply in the fridge in a way that will make it look like nothing’s missing and he’d much rather struggle through working out which is the right sponge than have to deal with Van’s wrath in the morning.
“Careful, Maxwell,” his brother says, behind him suddenly, sipping on a juice box they’d gotten him to settle his stomach.
“I’m pretty sure this one is not the hand soap.”
Wealwell tuts gently and pats his back.
“I’m glad you’re happy, of course,” he says. Max feels his stomach turn in a way that has nothing to do with the horrible aiolis. “I’ve never seen you like this. It’s very nice. But we have to go home eventually.”
It’s not exactly what he was expecting and he presses his lips together.
“I know that.”
They’ll go home and they’ll have proof of Zood and they’ll have a return on investment for MacLeod. He’ll have been right, and the Gotches will continue to fund adventures and inventors, and improvement and discovery in Gath will have their name attached.
And he will…
Get his feet back on the ground.
“Just be careful, dear brother,” Wealwell says. “A young woman’s honor still means something in Gath. So does yours.”
“It’s not like that,” he says, without thinking, more reflex than anything else. And it’s really not. What it is, if he lets it be anything at all, is something entirely innocent, is a warmth, a fondness, is…
Wealwell hums and wanders off.
He watches water swirl down the drain for a second.
It’s not like that. It’s not like the scandals that would whisper their way across gatherings of Eisengast’s most wealthy, which pompous aristocrat was cheating on their spouse, which eligible bachelor was caught with his pants down in an alley downtown. It’s not the opposite either, the innavigable maze of courting rules and chaperones and hefty prenuptial contracts. It’s not Samwell and his wife inheriting some of the Gotch properties in Bellenuit and always living in different ones to never see each other. It’s not Johnwell and his engagement to the son of some smog baron, tastefully attending public events across town.
It’s just him and Olethra. It’s earnest and simple. It’s relaxing enough to laugh with his whole chest. It’s throwing pebbles off the side of the Zephyr just for fun. It’s coaxing a single mild complaint from her about the later LaMontgomery books. (“They maybe have a couple moments that lightly strain credulity.”)
It’s her hand on his and her voice soft and deliberate and asking, “Are you happy?” and the entire sky holding them.
“I think that’s hand soap.”
He nearly drops the bowl, blinks and moves to study the sponge. She hipchecks him out of the way and rolls up the sleeves of her nightgown.
“That should be labeled,” he protests, pointing for lack of anything else to do. “How is anyone supposed to tell?”
She snorts, leaning forward to scrub.
He takes her in for a second, the frilly formless shape of her nightgown, the thick braid he made sitting between her shoulder blades, the flat cushy slippers that hover in the air as she pushes up to her tiptoes.
It’s not like that, any of it. But he’s always hated all that. That’s maybe what’s really concerning. That it’s something better.
—
When it does happen, it’s not him at all, because of course it wouldn’t be.
They’re out on the deck and the sun is setting and they’ve been talking again about nothing, about a good fisting match he saw back in Revington, about a time she saw one of her family’s chickens fight a raccoon.
“Ow,” she says, her head jerking as her hair gets caught in the chain of her necklace. He reaches out without thinking, attempting to untangle her albeit indelicately, growing increasingly alarmed at how her curls have woven into the tiny loops.
“Um, I think I’m making it worse,” he admits with a grimace.
And when he meets her eyes, she throws herself forward, arms suddenly around his neck and face crashing into his. Something cracks unpleasantly as their noses slam together and if their lips actually touch he can’t tell because of the sudden rush of pain radiating from his face.
Just as quick, Olethra jumps away from him. But his finger is still twisted in her necklace and stops her short with a yelp, jerking her forward again and hitting her forehead against his chin.
“Shit!”
He draws his hand back, gratefully managing to not pull any harder on her hair or her neck. “Sorry! Are you—?”
Her face is paler than he’s ever seen, eyes huge and horrified. She looks up at him for barely a second before she staggers a step back and runs.
“O-Olethra?” he calls after her but she’s gone before he can even blink, ever fast and slippery.
He glances around but there’s no one else on the deck, no one who saw and can tell him what exactly just happened, no one who can tell him exactly what he did wrong, no one who can tell him what he’s supposed to do now.
He reaches up and touches his nose, slightly sore to the touch, the skin hot and likely red. The sun is still setting, orange and pink smearing across the sky.
—
He doesn’t see her a full day. He’s not sure how it’s possible, the ship is not nearly that big.
To be fair, he doesn’t look for her. Not directly or diligently because he doesn’t want anyone to ask what he’s doing and he doesn’t want to have to ask anyone if they’ve seen her. The thought of talking to anyone about what happened on the deck before he asks her about it feels crazy.
It’s fine. It’s maybe better this way. Take some time and distance. Cool off.
It’s a bad idea. They live together and work together. Romantic entanglements are messy and unpredictable. They have a clear mission here in Zood. They shouldn’t jeopardize it. They’re friends. They shouldn’t.
When he does finally bump into her, grabbing dinner from the kitchen, it feels like seeing a ghost. Her face goes red immediately, and her eyes dart to the door.
“Olethra!” he says, before she disappears again. “Hello.”
They just need to act normal. They just need to talk again, like nothing happened.
He misses her. A lot.
She plasters a wide inorganic smile across her face. “‘Sup?”
He does his best to smile casually back, tries to remember how close to stand to her in a way that will communicate normal and casual and fine.
“Um,” he says. “Do you—?”
“I should—”
They both freeze. Everything feels different now, like she’s a stranger again, like his back must be ramrod straight and his gloves are tight.
She swallows and her head ducks. It’s the first time he’s seen her balk in the face of danger.
“I should go,” she murmurs, shifting her weight nervously between her feet. “I—”
He reaches out, catching her arm in the loosest grasp he can manage.
“Olethra,” he says. It’s unsettlingly desperate. He clears his throat and tries again. “We should talk. Can we… find some privacy?”
Her brow furrows.
“Please?” he says, leaning in slightly.
Her teeth sink into the inside corner of her cheek. “Alright, Max.”
He should be glad to get his way but instead the sinking feeling worsens.
He straightens. He pulls his arms behind his back, laces his fingers tightly together.
They head up to the deck by the front of the ship, far from the engine room. He almost wishes they wouldn’t. He has so many fond memories of being up here with her, long talks and beautiful sights.
He wants to watch the clouds for a while, the way that she taught him, just being calm, just letting go. He wants to watch the wind play with her hair. He wants to watch her smile and laugh and become a natural wonder all her own.
She looks small instead, unhappy, squirming.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Her face is still flushed and she keeps pressing her hands to her cheeks like she’s trying to get them to stop. “I’m…” She shakes her head. “It was really stupid, and… ugh, I dunno, in books it always just seems to work when you just…” She gestures explosively with her hands. He can’t feel the place where her nose crashed into his anymore. He can’t really remember what it felt like, so subtle compared to the innumerable times a blow has landed in the same area on his face. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t realize it would…”
“I know,” he interrupts. He can’t stand to watch her like this. “It’s fine. It didn’t… hurt that bad.”
He winces. She does too, hides her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she says, even, solemn. “It’s not like the books, I know that. I got a little caught up in the…”
The books.
He nods absently. It makes sense of course. What he knows about her. Her big ideas, her idealism, her rose-colored view of adventure even still. Between the sunset swallowing them whole and the ship cutting through the clouds, he’s sure she would have felt so inclined even if she’d had Torse for company.
“It makes sense,” he says, around the odd lump in his throat. “The, um, atmosphere is very… I mean it’s only natural that you would think to…”
She lets out a slow breath. “Y-Yeah,” she says. “It was… it was just a lot, and you’re, like, so hot.”
“Oh.” Something lurches in his chest and his face feels hot.
“Sorry,” she says, grimacing again. “Sorry. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable again. I know that you don’t… I mean, if-if you don’t…?” She looks at him finally, peeking up from beneath her hair, hesitant and maybe a hint hopeful.
Does he?
His pulse is in his ears, a rush of blood. That’s the question isn’t it, beneath it all, that he’s been avoiding since she left him on the deck. Does he?
But no. That’s not the question. That’s skipping steps. Can he? That comes first, logically. And he’s been avoiding this question as well. Because the answer, quite obviously and immediately, is no. He can’t.
Eventually he’ll go back to Gath and he’ll be Maxwell Gotch again, the seventh Gotch son. They’ll find the professor and Olethra will go off on a million adventures with her as she’d always dreamed. Maybe they’ll write, like their grandparents had all those years ago. He’ll fund her discoveries, maybe they’ll see each other in brief moments when she returns to the ground, maybe they’ll speak fondly of all this, of Zood, her first adventure, his only one.
No, even with a clear end in sight, even if they were to begin… something, knowing the end, the only thing the original Wind Riders had expressed any caution over was this, was entanglements between the crew.
They can’t. Simple as that, so there’s no need for examination of if he does.
“I’m— I’m not uncomfortable,” he says, as earnest as he can. “I just think it would be, um, unwise to pursue such a matter. We… we shouldn’t incur unnecessary distractions. Not when we still need to find your grandmother.”
He doesn’t know how she reacts to that, because he can’t bear to look at her as he says it, staring instead, blankly and intently at the line of the horizon.
“Right,” she says. He ignores the little waver in her voice. “Yeah, no, of course. You’re right. We should… stay focused.”
He nods, glances out of the corner of his eyes at her folded shoulders, her small determined smile.
“Well,” she says quietly. “Goodnight, Max.”
His stomach drops an inch. He reaches out on an instinct, his hand on her elbow.
“O-Olethra,” he says. “I… I enjoy the time we’ve spent together.” It sounds so conclusive and he winces. He struggles for a moment to phrase the rising feeling in his chest. And she does wait patiently for him. There’s no way to find a neater way to say it, it comes out raw and unpolished and exactly what it is. “My grandfather is the only friend I’ve ever had. Before-before you.” His chest is tight, his muscles tense. “It’s nice not being lonely here. This would be unbearable without your… company.”
She smiles, soft and crooked, nose wrinkling, like she always does, like nothing has changed.
“Yeah,” she says. She loops her arm around his, bumps their hips together. “I… I get what you mean. Growing up I didn’t really… it could get a little lonely sometimes on the farm.” She shifts, planting her feet like she’s not going to walk away anymore. The unbearable tension twisting up in his body releases and he exhales in slow relief. “I love my parents, but they don’t really get it. They're just so happy being exactly where they are and not changing anything and it felt like I couldn’t even talk about it with them.” She shrugs. “And I dunno, I didn’t really spend a lot of time with the other kids in town. They thought my dad’s whole thing was weird. I got bullied a little bit.”
He frowns, pressing into her side carefully in a show of support. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. He’s surprised to hear it as well. She’s strange, she says the wildest things, but it’s all so charming. She sees the world in such a wonderful way. She’s funny and wild, and even when it’s annoying, it’s just Olethra.
She waves it off. “It is nice. Having someone who gets it, for real.”
He smiles tentatively. “Yes. It’s nice having a peer.”
She rolls her eyes. “A peer.”
The silence settles but it’s not uncomfortable, it’s familiar and easy as ever and he feels so relieved that he might tear up.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” she says after a moment, in the rare serious way she can be sometimes, like she’s never meant anything more. “That must have been really hard.”
His eyes do sting for a moment. Nobody had ever said it so kindly, after it happened. Grandfathers die. He’d gotten condolences but no sympathy for the months after where he wanted to do nothing but hole up in his bedroom.
“Thank you, Olethra,” he says. Too formal but he doesn’t know how else to convey the depth of his earnestness.
Her head falls against his shoulder.
“You’re right,” she says. “We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t screw this up. This is good.”
He shifts easily, wrapping her in a loose hug, his limbs more familiar now than they’ve ever been with affection, mostly because of her.
“Yes,” he says, chest full. “This is good.”
—
As far as he knows none of the others have any idea of their… slip up. Everything goes back to normal.
(Except of course for the memory of it sitting heavy in the back of his mind almost all the time he’s with her. The urge to ask what exactly she meant when she said he was hot. An endless replay of the look in her eyes, tentative and questioning, like maybe there could have been another way for that conversation to go.)
He tries to spend some extra time away from Olethra now. Not because of it, of course. They’re normal. They’re fine. She’s been perfectly respectful of their mutual boundaries. And he feels… good about that.
“Gotch,” Marya calls as he takes a lone stroll around the deck while Olethra is busy elsewhere. “Come sit.”
She and Van are in lawn chairs, passing a bottle of something back and forth and watching the sunset.
He does make his way over and sit without complaint, the way he wouldn’t if any other figure of authority asked. There’s an easy comfort being around the two of them that he’s rarely felt. He sits, crosslegged on the floor near them and feels young but in a good way for once, not the forceful respect demanded from other adults in his life, it’s a choice well-earned and his.
“Put ‘er there, kid,” Van says, passing him the bottle. He takes a sip and it’s disgusting and it burns but he doesn’t wince and passes it back up to Marya.
He listens quietly as they reminisce about past adventures and finish off the bottle, and he has nothing to contribute but it doesn’t feel like a failing, it feels like that’s what he’s there to do, to listen.
“Alright,” Van says eventually, after the bottle is finished and they’re all more slumped. “I gotta ask you, Gotch, what is it that you’re so afraid?”
He frowns. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m not afraid of anything.”
Marya clicks her tongue. “Everyone is afraid of something. Anyone who isn’t will be soon enough.”
“You worry too much,” Van says, poking his shoulder. “Worry is like the garlic in fear’s aioli.”
“Oh, wow. That’s beautiful, Van,” Maya says, earnestly.
“Thank you, captain.”
He shrugs. “There’s a lot to worry about. It’s very rational.”
“Fear can seem rational,” Marya says. She grabs the bottle, but it’s still empty no matter how far she tips it. “Can be rational. Doesn’t make it not fear.”
“What… what are you afraid of?” he asks, near pointlessly. Marya is the rationality behind his worry. Adventure can be dangerous. You have to do it right and careful.
“The dark,” Marya says.
Van lets out a huffing laugh. Max can’t tell if she’s lying or not, caught between her wry smile and her haunted eyes. He nods anyway, and glances down at his knees for a second before he glances up at Van.
Her laugh trails off and she sighs, eyes trailing down her prosthesis for a second, opening and closing the fingers of that hand.
She clears her throat. “Most scared I ever was was my wedding day actually.”
He starts slightly. “What?”
“Near had a panic before walking down the aisle,” she continues, nodding. “Thought about running all the way to Bellenuit.”
“But you seem so happy,” he says without thinking.
“Exactly,” she says. “That’s fucking scary. Doing something you think is gonna make you happy.”
Marya hums solemnly.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he says.
“Makes perfect sense,” Van says. “Makes more sense than being afraid of dying or something.” She shifts forward a bit, meets his eyes. “It’s bloody terrifying to really do something you think will make you happy. Because what if it doesn’t?”
“What if it goes away?” Marya adds.
“Well, that’s a rational thing to be afraid of, I think,” he says.
“Maybe,” Van says. “Until you stop yourself from doing anything you want at all. That’s not very rational then .”
“Sure,” he says.
She nods, eyes down on her other hand now, using her thumb to rub at the ring there.
“Best thing I’ve ever done,” she says, sniffing and screwing up her face the way she does when she gets too emotional. “That’s for sure.”
They don’t press him anymore to answer the question. He wouldn’t know where to start. He would know how to say it to them either, these figures larger than life and braver than him and made of adventure for better and worse. Van goes into describing the rest of the wedding day instead, her dress and the food and the nice flowers.
He wishes they would press him though. He wishes someone would just tell him what he’s so afraid of.
—
They’ve been following this thick river upstream for about an hour, near the bank but moving through the trees. It’s very peaceful for once, the soft sound of the running water and the sunshine refracted through the branches.
“Ugh, my socks are wet,” Olethra whines.
“Well, you shouldn’t have stepped in it,” he says, feeling justifiably smug. He had warned her.
“Do you have a spare?”
“Spare socks?”
“I dunno, you seem like someone who’d have a spare pair of socks.”
“What?”
She shrugs, but they’re cut off with a noise from Monty up ahead.
“Well, now that’s certainly something!” They push forward and find themselves at the edge of a small cliff, about twenty feet, a large basin of water below from which water is shooting up and into the river.
“Reverse waterfall,” Olethra says eagerly, smacking his shoulder a couple times.
“But this makes no sense,” Van says. “The map doesn’t show a cliff here at all.”
“I was wondering about this map,” Marya adds, shifting next to her and leaning over the worn paper. “Because where is this mountain, huh?”
It’s familiar, and he should pay attention to the conversation, to get a sense for how they’ll get around this and back on track. But he’s struck suddenly, by the waterfall ahead, finds himself drifting over towards the edge and taking it in.
It might be one of the most beautiful sights he’s ever seen in his life. The white crests of the crashing water, the arc of it shooting into the air before joining the rushing river, the green sprawl of the brush below spreading from the banks and out beyond. This place is vibrant and alive, and the sun is bright, warming his face, and the breeze tugs at his hair.
He always thought the LaMontgomery books spent far too long waxing poetics about nature, pages of description of the sights that ground the pacing of the action to a halt.
But for a moment he gets it. It’s just beautiful.
“Do you see something?” Olethra asks, coming up next to him.
He shrugs. “I— no, it’s just… really nice here,” he stammers.
“Oh,” she says, following his gaze out over the landscape. “Yeah. It is nice.”
And that should be it. This should be his call back to action. Pay attention to what’s really important.
But he doesn’t want to shake it off just yet.
He glances over, sees the wind blowing up Olethra’s hair, that shiny awe-full look in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he says slowly and grins, feeling slightly manic. “Alright.”
He shucks his jacket off, bends slightly to tug off his shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“Not getting my socks wet,” he says, stuffing them into the heel of his wingtips, before taking a breath and charging forward, launching himself off the edge of the cliff and towards the water below.
He’s slightly to the side of the water, but there’s no gravity that shoots him up. He leaps, and feels his stomach lurch and for a moment the whole world is in front of him and he’s flying over it under his own power. A fraction of a second. And then he falls.
Beyond the sharp rush of air in his ears he hears a few sounds of surprise but then he’s heading down. He plummets, the wind pulling at his hair and limbs. He crashes into the water and it’s cool and refreshing and shocks his whole system awake and alive. He holds his breath for a second, feels the pulse of the reverse waterfall thrumming next to him.
He breaks the surface, gulping air in and staring up at the hyper blue sky.
There’s the tickle of doubts in the back of his head. There’s no way to get back up without taking some unforeseen risk with the waterfall. His pants will certainly feel uncomfortable for the rest of the day as it dries. There could be dangerous animals abound, parasites in the water.
But the water is cool on his skin. He floats easily. The sun is shining bright.
Moments later another shape falls from above with a joyous shout. Marya breaks the water feet away and surges back up, splashing a huge wave at him.
She laughs brightly and punctuates it with a solid punch to his shoulder.
“Wonderful, Gotch,” she says, throwing her arms out and sinking into the water. “How lovely!”
Another figure drops, Van sending up a huge splash from a cannonball. And Monty with a shout, hitting the water and immediately diving back down to get a better look at the plant life on the bottom. And Daisuke, his hat still staying perfectly on his head even as he falls and swims his way back up to the surface.
Olethra stands at the edge, peering down.
“Come on then,” he calls.
“I don’t know how to swim,” she confesses, cupping her hands around her mouth.
“Why don’t you know how to swim?”
“I don’t know!”
“Alright,” he says. “Well, I’ll catch you then.” It's deep but not too choppy. Some of the others are already moving to the nearby bank, aiding Monty as he begins his study of the area. “Just take your—”
She’s already jumping. He stays close, so when she hits the water he can grab her quick before she sinks too far beneath the surface. She comes up laughing, shoving her wet curls out of her face.
“I was gonna say take your skirt off so it doesn’t drag us both down,” he says, struggling for a second to get a good grip on her elbow and her waist to keep them above the surface, countering the weight of her now heavy wet layers.
“Whoa,” she says, squirming and wriggling around, slipping a little until he finds the right leverage to pull her back up.
“Kick your feet. No, ow, you’re kicking me, stop kicking me.”
“I’m just kicking,” she protests, craning her neck to keep above the surface. “You said to kick.”
He shakes his head, but clasps their forearms together and tugs her along behind him towards the bank.
“Here,” he says when his feet can touch the bottom. They’re still up to their shoulders, and her hair floats around her in an elegant circle. It’s about as gorgeous as the waterfall itself. “You should still take some layers off, it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous like jumping off a cliff,” she says, raising her eyebrows. Water drips along her face, small drops clinging to her long eyelashes. She splashes a small handful of water at him. He splashes back. “Gotta say that was pretty adventurous, Max.”
Her nose is scrunched up cutely, smattered with freckles that pop under the sun, that big crooked grin lighting up her entire face, teasing but also predictably beautiful.
He feels lit up from the inside, he feels the water and the wind and the sun.
Yeah, alright.
“Well, I am an adventurer,” he says, and gives into the wild spirit of it again, of doing something he wants to with reckless abandon. He tugs her towards him and into an adventurous sort of kiss, his hand on the back of her head, dipping her as best he can in the water.
She gasps, her mouth immediately open against his, which is a shock, which sends those currents of panic pulling at him again. He pushes through, opening his own mouth against hers and meeting her sudden eagerness with his own, bubbling up from somewhere deeply repressed. He tastes the lake water on her skin. Her hands dig into his shoulders. She nips at him, teeth sinking into his lip a couple times, unexpected but oddly pleasant, a sharp sting that says this is real.
He releases her carefully, ensuring she has her bearings before he draws back. She stares at him for a second, eyes wide and sparkling, before it drops into a petulant scowl.
“That’s not fair,” she whines. “Why did that work for you but it didn’t work for me?”
“Well,” he says. “I didn’t smash my face into your face.”
“I wasn’t trying to smash my face—”
“You could have broken my nose.”
She splashed him again. “Like you wouldn’t have liked that.”
He splutters for a second and splashes her back. They’re definitely not having that conversation right now. “You’re a very bitey kisser, did you know that?”
“Bitey?”
“It was very teeth-forward. Like surprisingly.”
“Oh,” she says, face falling. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No, no,” he corrects quickly. Shit. He’s still so bad at this. “Just an observation.”
She tucks a wet curl behind her ear, still looking uncertain and concerned, and he panics a bit, ducking down to kiss her again with none of that grandiose sense of adventure at all, just a soft brush, maybe the gentlest he’s ever touched anyone.
“See,” he says. “There. It’s fine.”
Her cheeks are red and it’s very cute. He doesn’t know what to do now, now that he’s in the water, now that he’s kissed her.
This is what’s always stopped him, the logistics, the consequences, the ambiguity between success and failure. A fight has a winner or a loser, an investment either returns or tanks.
Olethra presses the backs of her hands to her face and stares at a spot in the water and says, “Yeah, okay. Cool.”
And he has no idea what that means.
“Yes, well. Cool,” he echoes, stupidly, and dives back into the water, swimming out towards the place where the water shoots up, where the whooshing sound of it drowns out his pulse in his ears.
When he dares to glance back again, as casually as he can, she’s still by the shore, floating idly, her hair starfished out around her in the water, moving gracefully like a creature all its own.
He drops beneath the surface and holds his breath for as long as he can and tries to think not in terms of winning and losing.
When they gather and refocus, his fingers are pruny and his lips feel dried out from the water. Olethra rings out her hair into the dirt. She catches him looking and they both look away.
—
They meet on the deck after dinner as they so often do. He can’t tell if they stand closer to each other than usual. That should be telling in and of itself.
Olethra bounces slightly on the balls of her feet. Her eyes dance away from his, wide and sparklingly, and she's barely suppressing a smile, lips pressed together but the apples of her cheeks prominent.
“Max,” she says, sniffing and nodding casually.
He clears his throat and clasps his hands behind his back.
“Olethra,” he says, and is surprised by how his voice sounds, low but gentle.
He’s awash with adrenaline, like from right before a fight, but different, slower, energized but patient.
She turns towards him slightly. “Pretty fun day, huh?”
Not really. Once they’d gotten back on track, they’d been beyond lost. Daisuke had almost fallen out of a tree and they’d gotten shit on by some birds with leaves instead of feathers and barely made it back to the ship before the heat became dangerous.
“Ah, yes,” he says, turning towards her as well. “Very—”
She lunges at him and this time he at least has the preparation to dodge, ducking away from what would surely be another nasty headbutt. He catches her around the shoulders before she trips over herself, and maybe so she won’t run off again.
“You need to stop doing that,” he says.
She frowns. “Oh, come on! It worked for you.”
“You’re throwing your head at my head with your eyes closed.”
“You’re not supposed to kiss someone with your eyes open,” she says, like he’s the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
He sort of doesn’t. But he knows he’s right about this.
“You have yet to successfully kiss me,” he points out.
Her face flushes in splotches. “I’m trying,” she mutters, eyes dropping away from him.
His heart thrums like one of those little leaf birds in his chest.
“Here,” he says. He holds his breath and lets his hand slide down her arm and find hers. He guides it carefully up to rest on his cheek. Her hand is cold still, but her fingers are gentle as they unfold against his skin. “You just need to aim better. If you… if you move your hand first you can just, um, follow with your…”
He barely has time to swallow before she surges up, eyes open this time until she makes contact. Their teeth clack together, almost painful, but she corrects quickly, less forceful but no less eager. A groan punches its way out of his chest. He slips his hand down to splay wide against the middle of her back, the lace pattern of her nightgown imprinting across his bare palm.
Her mouth coaxes his into a delicate dance, her teeth sinking into the tip of his tongue, the swell of his bottom lip. Her other hand curls into his hair and tugs him impossibly closer to her. He is swept up in it entirely this time, she’s a current and he is washed away.
It takes a while, lost in her, before he catches himself, remembers why he came up here in the first place.
“Wait,” he says, pushing his nose into hers to make some space between them. “We should slow down.”
“Why?” she asks, tipping back in for another quick kiss, sweet and messy in a way that’s almost childish. That knot beneath his chest tightens in such a good way.
“I’d like to… I’d like to share my perspective on the situation,” he says anyway. “Before we come to a decision.”
Her whole chest moves with a deep inhale and exhale. She drops to her heels, and he draws his hands away and behind his back again.
She blinks up at him, smiling like she’s getting away with something incredible.
He swallows hard and takes a small step back.
“This is the way I see it,” he says, far too stiffly. “We are adventurers, of course. And we are on our adventure.” She nods slowly, brows furrowing. “And I would hate to see you denied any- any aspect of adventure that you would desire, or that would make the experience most complete for you.”
“Sure,” she says, strained like she’s barely holding back a giggle. “I think I’m following.”
He nods aimlessly for a second, pulling the rest of the words back to himself.
“But…”
“But?” Her head tips, smile fading slightly.
He takes a deep breath. “You are wonderful,” he says carefully. “And lovely and we are in an incredible place. You are sure to meet any number of interesting people everywhere we end up who would be more than grateful for your attention.” He shifts slightly. “On the other hand, of course, we are always moving and so certain connections would be fleeting or difficult to maintain.” He nods at her, but she just looks confused. “Um, so… you have many options, and so, um, depending on the type of adventure you are looking to have, you can… you can do that.”
“Right,” she says, with a slight frown. “Sorry, I think I’m… maybe missing something, but, like, do you wanna do like an open thing because… I guess I’m not opposed to that, just maybe we can talk about it later if it comes up.”
He clears his throat again.
“I’m only trying to say that this is our adventure. But I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of you having the adventure you’ve dreamed of,” he says. “You have many options to make that happen for you.”
“And, like, are you… one of them?” she asks, testing and tentative.
He thinks of the moment of jumping into the water, the second of suspension before the fall begins.
His grandfather was afraid of heights.
“W-well, yes,” he says.
Her shoulders relax and she smiles.
“Oh,” she says. “Cool, then, yeah, it’s you.”
He jerks slightly, like a flinch, his heart skipping a sudden beat. “Wait… you, um…”
“C’mon, man,” she says easily. “I mean, no question. It’s you, Max.” He doesn’t know what to say next, his clarity over the situation slipping away. She plows on. “You’re, like, so hot. For real, it’s distracting sometimes.” She waves a hand casually. “Sorry, sorry, it’s not just that. I… I really care about you. I love that this is our adventure, I want it to be our adventure.”
She’s looking at him with that familiar glimmer in her eyes, like he’s the sky, like she sees something awe-inspiring even when she’s just looking at him.
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I have to go back to Gath,” he says. “I have- I have a purpose here, but then I have to go back to Gath.”
He can feel her move closer.
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you want to?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t see a way around it.”
Her hand lands on his elbow, familiar, comforting.
“Sometimes, if there’s not a way around, you find a way over,” she offers slowly.
He opens his eyes. She’s smirking proudly and he knows she wishes Monty was around to put it in the book.
He raises his eyebrows. She continues to smile.
“Either way,” she says. “For the time being, you are an adventurer. What do you want your adventure to be like, Max?”
She’s standing so close to him and she’s so beautiful, the sky in her eyes and her freckles deeper from a day in the sun and her face twisted up with her subtle joy.
He nods.
Her hand lands on the side of his neck first and then she leans in, meeting his mouth perfectly. He sighs and sinks into it again. He tips her chin up with a knuckle, skin on skin, and her hands come up and latch onto his, hugging it to her chest.
“I never really liked the romance in the books,” he confesses against her lips. “It always felt sort of forced, over indulgent.”
She opens her eyes enough to roll them. “The books are overrated.”