Had he not said? Surely he must have said, or mentioned, at some point—
But try as he might, combing back through his considerably accurate memory, Stephen can’t remember breathing his family’s names even once, in the year-and-a-half that he’s been here. It’s an unsettling realisation to have about himself when it’s not something that he did on purpose, just— it was a black hole in his history that he had automatically and unconsciously walked around, skirted, avoided.
He buries his face in the mattress more fully, temporarily holding his breath and not breathing. Just anchoring himself in this: the physical sensation, the warmth of Gwenaëlle’s lips against the nape of his neck, the heat and weight of her sprawled over all of his limbs.
Perhaps it’s a little easier this way, to speak without looking her in the eye, without having to gauge and watch her expressions at the same time as he peels back the layers, picks at the scabs. He readjusts slightly as he comes up for air again, drawing both arms up to fold his forearms beneath his chin, shoulderblades stretching and rippling beneath her. (There’s an offended mrowl from Small Yngvi, before the cat settles again.)
“Besides all the barnyard animals,” said dryly, obfuscating, he’s never actually realised until this moment how very much he obfuscates this exact topic and so she probably has a point,
“A father, a mother, a younger sister and brother. Eugene, Beverly,” there is the briefest pause before the next set of names, “Donna and Victor. Despite the surname, we Stranges were all tremendously, horrendously normal. No millionaire inheritance, no secret ancestral magic, no being bitten by radioactive spiders and granted superpowers. Just a lot of cow dung and hard work and early mornings and fire-and-brimstone church sermons on Sundays. Closed-minded. Pastoral.”
Some people might say pastoral with a touch of dreamy nostalgia, a longing for a simple rural existence; Gwenaëlle can hear the faint bitter derision in it instead. Closed-minded.
no subject
But try as he might, combing back through his considerably accurate memory, Stephen can’t remember breathing his family’s names even once, in the year-and-a-half that he’s been here. It’s an unsettling realisation to have about himself when it’s not something that he did on purpose, just— it was a black hole in his history that he had automatically and unconsciously walked around, skirted, avoided.
He buries his face in the mattress more fully, temporarily holding his breath and not breathing. Just anchoring himself in this: the physical sensation, the warmth of Gwenaëlle’s lips against the nape of his neck, the heat and weight of her sprawled over all of his limbs.
Perhaps it’s a little easier this way, to speak without looking her in the eye, without having to gauge and watch her expressions at the same time as he peels back the layers, picks at the scabs. He readjusts slightly as he comes up for air again, drawing both arms up to fold his forearms beneath his chin, shoulderblades stretching and rippling beneath her. (There’s an offended mrowl from Small Yngvi, before the cat settles again.)
“Besides all the barnyard animals,” said dryly, obfuscating, he’s never actually realised until this moment how very much he obfuscates this exact topic and so she probably has a point,
“A father, a mother, a younger sister and brother. Eugene, Beverly,” there is the briefest pause before the next set of names, “Donna and Victor. Despite the surname, we Stranges were all tremendously, horrendously normal. No millionaire inheritance, no secret ancestral magic, no being bitten by radioactive spiders and granted superpowers. Just a lot of cow dung and hard work and early mornings and fire-and-brimstone church sermons on Sundays. Closed-minded. Pastoral.”
Some people might say pastoral with a touch of dreamy nostalgia, a longing for a simple rural existence; Gwenaëlle can hear the faint bitter derision in it instead. Closed-minded.