Chapter Text
December had historically been a gray zone in Cousins Beach.
Seasons in and out, Susannah had manufactured the summer house with her bare hands to paint colorful flowers over the dog days, down to eternity. Belly would call this pretentious, or ambitious, at least. She had known the blondest woman who ever lived well; death had only carved her premises in stone.
That vigor lost its sturdiness as months forgot the sun, beam by beam.
But in winter the place became a more distant star.
Hushed in shape, the familiar angles numbed by frost.
Glacial in ambiance, with winter settled in the seams.
Lifeless in aura, all that summer color sleeping under ash.
Belly had not planned to kidnap the world’s order by showing up in Cousins in snowy weather. Still, solitude had won.
Or, if honesty had survived inside her, loneliness had.
She was several chapters behind on the self-sufficient oracle, missing whatever lesson sold solitude as a gift.
So Christmas weekend left her alone. Laurel was traveling for work. Steven was elsewhere. Taylor was with her mother somewhere far away, each absence closing another door inside the house before Belly even reached it.
And Jeremiah.
Jeremiah had chosen his asshole father over Belly.
Fine. Family mattered, she would give him that. She did not complain that Jeremiah was skiing in the mountains with his nameless brother and Adam. There was only so much Fisher family chaos she could take at that point in life; with Susannah gone, the absence of a feminine axis in that house had opened a hole too large for any of them to name without sounding dramatic.
In that case, she knocked on Cousins’ gate instead.
She took Steven’s car, the borrowed keys frost-bitten in her palm.
Belly would have thought twice before crossing Cousins’ magical portal had she known the sleeping leviathan was about to crawl back into life.
Obliviousness often blessed humanity.
Often condemned it.
Either way, time started counting backward the second she moved past the public sign for Cousins Beach.
An hourglass fixed itself above her head, tracking every step beyond her sight.
But the skies knew.
Stars had borne witness in advance, millions of light-years away.
Susannah could have known too.
Somewhere, somehow.
Inside the house, Belly placed a ridiculously small Christmas tree above the dormant fireplace, because even sorrow deserved pretty things on such an occasion.
She had also brought Christmas string lights, those tiny blinking ones that carried the premise of turning a room more clement than its true form. They went around the living room with devotional precision: along the mantel, over the window frame, around the old shelf that still kept loyalty to Susannah’s taste, until it looked like Susannah had fixed it yesterday and left for five minutes.
Cozy, if the word squinted hard enough.
She was freezing, yes, the kind of frost that found cuffs and stayed under skin.
Emotionally sustained, for the brief grace of the lie.
The crooked tree stood above the slumbering fireplace, while the lights blinked with utter faith in their own principle of cure.
Belly smiled at that, secret and private in the blinking room.
The most cliché Christmas playlist available to human weakness came next, starting with one of the uncountable versions of Mariah Carey reminding the world, through yearly legal possession, that Santa Claus had nothing on her seasonal jurisdiction.
Belly danced alone, letting the ridiculous cheer hold the room upright for the length of a song.
The living room, long buried for months, accepted the grandiosity of Christmas with a kind of reluctant grace.
Belly accepted that as victory.
She could not start a fire, but she did turn up the lights.
It stirred the edge of an old memory.
That one.
Four years ago.
No.
It was locked in the prohibited wing of her brain.
Destroyed.
Cemented over.
Detached from her spirit, transferred over, like someone else’s experience linked to a boy she no longer knew.
And would never touch again.
By evening, she had made herself comfortable under the blanket, watching Home Alone for the forty-eighth time in her twenty-year lifetime.
It would never get less hilarious, especially with the house silent enough to hear her laugh return.
Or she could blame the baptized stuffed brownie Taylor had given her that week, from whatever Finch poorly trusted weed manufacturing.
No judgment, please.
Susannah herself would have sat beside her, happily determined. Belly’s physical integrity depended sorely on Laurel remaining in absolute ignorance of the fact.
Lucky her, the summer empire was the only witness of her late recklessness, walls loyal by exhaustion.
“Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal,” Belly repeated with holy commitment, because culture deserved respect.
She laughed badly at the same damn Kevin line she knew by heart.
Actually, to be real, she cracked with the brownie halfway to her mouth.
The piece slipped from her fingers with suicidal timing.
Belly caught it with the other hand — clumsy, a disaster delayed by two fingertips and divine intervention — then shoved it into her mouth with more urgency than decorum, trying to rescue the couch, the blanket, and her perfectly intact red pajama with white dots, preserved as a childhood relic.
Her mouth was a mess.
Chocolate smeared at the corner first, then over her lower lip, then under it, because rescue operations rarely protected the rescuer from consequences.
Belly licked what she could reach, missed what mattered, kept laughing anyway.
The door squeezed before the laughter finished leaving her mouth.
Keys twisted against the lock, trying to claim the house from the other side.
Belly stilled, brownie sweetness turning strange on her tongue.
She was not waiting for anyone.
The house, chilled and hush-bound around her, had prepared itself for no visitor either, which made the sound feel ruder than fear.
The knock came next.
Solid, certain, so devilishly alive Belly was certain it echoed disproportionately around the neighborhood.
A tremor hit the floorboards first; inside the walls, something woke ahead of her.
She got up from the couch.
Barely.
Her posture betrayed her one step before balance returned. Whatever specter or asshole was attempting to ruin her night would have to handle her first.
Too late, the house already knew.
Oblivious, she kept going.
“Shit. What would Kevin do?” she murmured to herself, looking around for the deadliest weapon available.
The poker found her eyes first.
Excellent.
She took the brass poker and crossed toward the door beneath the window line.
Before her hand reached the lock, his voice came through.
A bell rang.
Resurrection proclaimed.
“Steven, open up. It’s me.”
She frowned.
No.
A fucking hallucination sponsored by cheap marijuana would have been better.
But he was real, for the loss of her own doctrine and the possible destruction of the solar system.
The second she opened, he rose from whatever he had been checking in the bag at his feet.
Their eyes met.
A candy slipped from his mouth, too human for the scale of his arrival.
Belly shook her head twice, tiny enough to pass for denial if the world had been gentler.
Her mouth fell open before decorum reached her.
Belly went out of orbit as his skin caught her first.
Flushed by frost, untouched by the furious weather, carrying winter over his face without surrendering to it.
His silhouette landed beneath the porch lights.
The dark immensity behind him belonged to him before it belonged to night.
Belly shook her head twice, trying to restart a body already lost.
Tiny.
A young man stood at the threshold with damp hair, a brown coat, green eyes, and the rooted stillness of an ancient force that made the house remember fear.
The frost moved around him.
The wild stayed behind him.
Governed.
Wet trees stood farther back, dense and black, holding their breath under his authority. The dunes disappeared beyond him. The ocean withdrew into sound. Snow gathered on his shoulders, then melted there, allowed to exist for the length of his indulgence.
Her brows drew in while her eyes took him apart, her mind refusing to assemble the evidence.
His voice snapped the last rope of dissociation by claiming her on instinct.
“Belly,” he said.
Her name left his mouth grave, announced to the dark he had carried in.
Tamed.
The brass poker lowered in her hand.
Belly forgot why she had come to the door armed.
“Conrad.”
As she named the tempest, lightning whipped the ground miles away, flashing their faces twice.
“Hey,” he murmured, so tender it stood in exact opposition to his arrival.
The moment held them still, as if the cosmos had paused the counting to identify its players.
She shook her head, aiming for normality.
“Come here.”
She stepped forward into a terribly formal greeting.
Socially acceptable and barely useful.
He accepted it on his way inside.
His face brushed hers for a millisecond, long enough for Belly to feel his stubble against her skin.
Distressing, the rough scrape staying under her skin.
Behind his shoulders, the wild remained at the threshold, dense and obedient, waiting under his name.
When she stepped back, his face found hers with such confidence she actually thought he would condemn them both two minutes after arrival.
But his gaze landed on her mouth.
There.
Chocolate stain, damning and childish.
The back of her hand attempted pardon and failed.
It helped exactly nothing.
He forced down a smile, then let leniency win for once.
She closed the door behind him.
The house swallowed the outside with one wooden click, landing like a judge striking the gavel.
Conrad’s eyes dropped.
“To be clear,” he said, using the calmest tone capable of unsettling a crowd, “why are you holding a poker?”
Belly followed his eyes to the brass sword in her hand, then back to him.
“I thought you were a burglar.”
His mouth curved, and his weight shifted with interest.
Then, lowering his voice with narrowed eyes:
“You sure I’m not?”
Her pulse went stupid.
“Please.” She lowered the poker another inch, aiming for sovereignty with a weapon in hand and chocolate still failing around her mouth. “Good luck stealing your own house.”
His eyes took possession of the entrance lobby once.
A shrug moved through him.
“This place keeps its surprises.”
He passed close enough for his coat to brush her arm.
“Wise to keep yourself braced.”
It had to be teasing.
A decent universe would have made it teasing.
“Right.” She laughed, poorly rehearsed. “From what exactly?”
Her voice went sharper than intended.
He barely stopped, his glance cutting back over one shoulder.
“I’m curious too.”
A beat.
“You came all armed to me.”
Belly stared at him through another breath, deciding whether the edible had started writing religious threat into casual sentences, then turned around.
“I learned how to use violence over time,” she said, already walking.
“Noted,” he said. “I still have better methods for handling you.”
For a moment, her body forgot the hallway.
She forced herself to let it go.
He took the bench in the lobby, removing his shoes while she walked past him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, looking up at her.
She stopped.
Turned to him, already defensive around the wound.
“Everyone else had better company this weekend. So...”
He nodded once, his next question already changing the shape of him into attention.
Focus changed his face.
“And Jere?”
The air thinned around the title.
Listening.
“Skiing with Adam,” she pretended ordinary.
Two fingers pointed at her, agreeing, remembering, or confirming the exact location of the titleholder.
“I heard you were meeting them there,” she added.
“I was.” The corner of his mouth tipped down, dismissive. “But then—”
His shoes went aside; when he stood, he turned into a wall taller than her.
Unhurried, which made him more lethal.
“Cousins got in my way.”
One step brought him forward.
Another followed.
Not at Belly.
Convincingly, she occupied the middle of the hallway division to the living room, petrified as he moved.
She made herself a statue, all pulse trapped under stone.
Stone-still.
He stopped at the last limit civilization still allowed between two people with no bed intentions.
Her laugh came out poorly confident.
“So you changed your itinerary to annoy me in this empty house.”
She mocked him for survival.
“I didn’t.” His voice stayed easy, shoulder resting against the wall. “Plus, I would never be that inefficient with you.”
Mortal.
She breathed wrong, but shot back:
“That’s bold.”
She gathered her most confident threat tone.
“You should know I’m usually gifted at annoying people first.”
His smile brightened, delighted by the most adorable thing he had heard that week.
“Unlikely.”
Her expression locked.
“You’re way too confident. I can be ruthless.”
A tiny smirk found his face.
“Yeah?”
His eyes sharpened over her once.
“See.” He crossed his arms. “You wouldn’t need much to drive me up the wall like that, Belly.”
Like that came sharper.
Exact.
A pause.
He lowered his voice.
Then:
“But I appreciate the ambition.”
She stared at him.
The weed thing still lived in her bloodstream and betrayed her, leaving no vocabulary against that man.
Instead, she said,
“You suck.”
Tiny.
Useless.
He watched her, spared the joke. He did not smile that time.
Instead, he shifted back.
“My flight got cut because of the weather.” He paused. “I saw Steven’s car outside. I didn’t know you were here.”
Her brows arched.
“Jail to the airline company, then.” She kept mocking him. “The world remains grateful you have not claimed the weather yet.”
“Oh.”
His head tilted, interested.
“You think I might control the weather?”
A pause.
“Why?”
Behind him, the night stayed pressed against the other side, rejected but not dismissed, listening through the frame.
The question hit the root cause of it all.
He noticed.
His tone changed into something firmer.
“Drink some water.” The doctor command came firm. “This thing reddening your eyes is giving me too much credit.”
It aimed for a joke.
It only proved he would never let a single thing pass unnoticed, reminding Belly why she had made him nameless for far too long.
She left it all unanswered, returned the poker to its place, took the couch, and pressed play.
He let her have the silence.
His tone changed into something firmer now.
Belly rolled her eyes at the thought.
The screen received her defiant gaze instead.
But Conrad was exploring the Christmas spirit further now, childish joy behind his eyes as his fingers found the bright gold ornament on the tree above the fireplace.
“Wow.”
His eyes traveled along the mantel.
“This ornament.”
At first, he sounded absent.
From that specific spot, the room looked magical enough to catch him: the whole perimeter held in lights, softened by her hands.
The devotional yellow lights brightened the window side first, crossed the hallway, caught the edge, then reached the couch where Belly sat.
He smiled.
“Never seen it here like this before.”
He stopped there.
His focus returned to her.
Curiosity turned blade-bright there.
“Did you do it all yourself?”
The question caught her unarmored.
The brownie was already halfway to her mouth for another bite.
“Yeah.” She paused. “I grabbed it from Laurel’s office.”
Another pause.
“It’s nothing.”
His eyes kept hers.
“It’s beautiful.”
His voice softened into something impossibly tender.
Don’t.
“I like it.”
Her eyes closed against it.
Conrad ignored the telepathy entirely and moved another step, in front of her now, stealing the television’s authority and putting himself at the center of her sight.
“Like it a lot.”
She smiled awkwardly.
“Thanks.”
His gaze stayed tethered to her.
The smile threatened again; she had gotten dirtier with chocolate while trying to sit there like a functioning adult.
“You have chocolate all over your face.”
Her eyes went wide.
She wanted to die, preferably without witnesses and with a clean mouth.
“No, I don’t.”
“Oh, you really do.”
He paused.
“Really.”
He smiled, bright.
“Did you put your whole face in there to save time?”
“Shut it.”
She threw a pillow at him.
“Leave me alone.”
The blanket climbed higher in self-defense.
The pillow hit his chest; he lowered it slowly.
“Hey.”
His gaze narrowed on her.
“You look frozen.”
“I’m fine.”
Both hands rose in disbelief.
Come on.
“Belly.” He refused respect for God at that point. “I can see you shaking.”
She chose denial.
“I’m eating.”
Conrad looked personally attacked by the weak argument, offended by her attempt to fool him.
Him.
His exhale carried enough energy that Belly had to keep still.
His gaze searched for an exit until the dormant fireplace offered him a dangerous idea.
Their landmine site, banked under old ash.
“You want me to start a fire for you in the h—”
“Hearth,” she completed with him.
A unison evocation.
The next second, the hearth took both their eyes away.
There.
Everything else receded.
Dizziness struck Belly and Conrad with the same dagger.
Sight blurred first. Hearing sank into a dull, underwater distance.
For one suspended second, neither of them seemed entirely attached to the floor.
Memory entered in flashes.
Sight first, vivid and bright with color, as the exact shade of gold unmasked them.
Then sound returned: the walls virbrating as receiving the acoustics of their joined bodies, every small collision carried back from closeness, the old rhythm forced to relearn the language of their intimacy.
Then touch.
The sacred unraveling of skin.
Pleasure confided from one body to the other through the same glorious movement repeated into worship, the same sweet point found and found again until time lost its authority.
Finally, the holy trilogy of sight, sound, and touch became consubstantial with the same ache, stripping the social code time had imposed over them until counterfeit distance thinned like cheap fabric left too close to flame.
Four years ago reached forward and reclaimed them without sanction.
What they saw became a stage inside the room, precious as any classic romance pretending innocence had survived desire.
A hologram of their old selves projected across the hearth: the floor, the old hope, the shameless adoration, two paths turning into one with catastrophic coordination.
The frame moved first like a flag.
In waves.
A candle flame flickered.
It faltered.
They froze inside the same heartbeat.
The image lost definition at the edges, the room refusing to hold the vision whole.
Then the present returned, wintrier for having remembered.
When their eyes met again, each found the other’s face with the exact stillness of a portrait after fire, breathless for no authorized reason.
Their mutual devotion.
Once synchronized, formerly indivisible, now unpaired by aftermath and unwedded by another person’s curse.
The same bodies, grown and whipped by time, pretending they had outgrown the birthplace of every living ache.
Marked by the fact of each other, pretending not to remember the exact place where innocence had failed them both.
The hollowness on her face reached him.
Conrad retreated, desolation carrying his eyes.
His watch received one glance.
Then she did.
“Or,” he said, voice gentler now, “I think it’s late for a fire tonight.”
His head tipped toward the stairs.
“I’m gonna crash.”
Her nod came once.
Defeated, gently enough to pass for manners.
He held there for a few seconds.
Measuring.
Then:
“Merry Christmas, Belly.”
A beat.
“It’s really good to see you.”
She delayed to process such formality after fact.
“You too.”
She smiled tiny.
He disappeared upstairs.
But he left too much of himself behind with her.
His presence weighed in her chest, his voice returning out of sequence with flashes from that night and previous pious encounters long buried in her.
Burial had ended.