September 30th, 1893 — Melody's Cottage, [place holder for town]
Reuben Crouch

Melody had gone home for the first time since the dragon attacks only the day before to prepare the cottage for Nora. She opened every window despite the chill to air out the rooms, she dusted every surface and begun the endless task of laundering the bedding. They'd only lived here for two weeks before the terror that had overtaken their lives, the proof of which existed in the few unpacked trunks stacked against the wall in the parlor. And so, with the knowledge that Ben wouldn't leave their daughter's side until her return, Melody begun the task of fully settling into the cottage.

Nora would return home to a home. Not the dusty shell that the Irvingly house had become in the later months. A warm and inviting home, that was her mission. It would be the home that Irvingly never was. It would be the small space she'd always dreamt of even before her marriage. Nora deserved that much.

(Melody needed the cottage to be as such.)

It wasn't until the next evening when Melody stepped through the floo followed closely behind by Ben carrying a snoozing Nora, that she realized her mission had been fulfilled. The cottage had become as close to her dream of home that the few short hours she had been able to work on it allowed. Later, there would be more paintings perhaps up on the mostly sparse walls, but that was her only complaint. Everything else finally felt right. Or, as right as it could be without any of Ben's influence.

Not that he would have much influence over a home he didn't live in.

Not that Melody held any such hope that he would one day claim this place as his, too.

"This way, her room is through here." She murmured softly to him as she walked towards one of the two bedrooms just off the single hallway. Once at the doorway, she stepped to the side to allow him in first and paused only a few feet into the room. "I'll go start on supper, the kitchen is at the end of the hall." She continued in her soft tone before slowly backing out of the room to hopefully allow for a smooth transfer of the still sleeping Nora.

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Ben hadn't been to the cottage before, despite having handled all the arrangements to rent the place. Melody had sent him the address, and he'd just handled the paperwork side of things. It had seemed potentially invasive to go to her, when she had already fled the house they had shared together in Irvingly. Melody didn't want to live in a place full of memories of the pair of them, that much was obvious. And she'd never minded bringing Nora to him when it was his turn to have her, up until the day where they'd been waylaid by dragons.

It was smaller than he'd expected, though he should have known how big it was based only on the price of rent. Small, but cozy. It occurred to him as he came in through the floo and looked around the place, with Nora cradled against his chest, that this was the first place Melody had chosen to live. He had mentally associated her with her old bedroom in Wellingtonshire, where he used to sneak up to her window to talk to her when her parents were asleep, and of course he'd associated her with the Irvingly house, but the Wellingtonshire place was her parents' first and foremost, and the Irvingly house was something Aldous had found for them while they were in Paris. This was a place she had chosen, and Ben found himself noticing all the little details and wondering which ones had made her pick this place. Did she like the look of those window shutters more than what they'd had in Irvingly? Had she always wanted a fireplace with a mantel like this one? He didn't recognize the pattern on one of the chairs — had she picked the fabric?

Little details that didn't matter. Ben didn't know why he was noticing. He was probably just tired.

He took his time setting Nora down in her bed. The whole time they'd been at the hospital Ben had been thinking how small the big hospital bed made her look, and now when he laid her down he was struck by how big she'd grown. You'll pull through this, kid, he thought, and he was glad that Melody had stepped back out of the room because for a second he was overcome by how much he loved his daughter, and how proud he was of her. She'd been through so much, but he had faith she was going to make it out the other side. So long as he could keep them all afloat in the meantime.

"It's a nice place," he said when he joined Melody in the kitchen, after taking a moment to compose himself.

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Melody didn't know what to expect from Ben going into this evening. They'd never discussed him staying over again, nor had she felt comfortable enough to even approach the subject. He was seconds away from retreating fully that night, seconds away from abandoning whatever tentative peace Nora's hospitalization had established between them. To lose that so abruptly over what ought to have been a simple request was beyond disheartening. In many ways, losing the single shred of hope remaining to them would be worse than the night he left for the first time.

She was busy setting the kettle to boil and the pie (generously left by the cook) to heat in the oven when Ben joined her in the kitchen. "Thank you." She answered with a tired smile. "We walked by it most mornings this summer. It ... it just felt right, I suppose." There were more details she thought to share - like how Nora and Henry had taken off running into the garden and how when Melody saw the way the light shone into the kitchen she just knew it was meant to be her home - however without knowing where they stood she wasn't sure how much he even cared to know the details. She refused to pressure him into staying - into picking back up some of the pieces they'd dropped this year. Would more details make him uncomfortable?

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   Philomena Sprout

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Ben had to take a second to contextualize that bit of information and determine whether it was surprising or not. They'd talked here and there over the summer, but every conversation had still been fraught, heavy with the emotions of all the things they weren't talking about; honestly, he'd forgotten most of what they'd said to each other. She'd mentioned staying with a friend on a few occasions, and presumably that friend was somewhere near here if she'd been walking by the cottage in the mornings. He probably should have known more about what Melody had been doing with her time since he'd left her behind, if only because she shared nearly all of that time with their daughter. But like visiting this cottage, it had felt invasive to feign interest. Better, he had thought at the time, to just let her have something that was hers, and hope she never asked any questions about his own life that went beyond the superficial.

"With, uh — Diana," he said. The name of the friend she'd gone to visit so often since he'd left. Look, see? I am trying. Trying to do what, he wasn't exactly sure yet.

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   Philomena Sprout

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He remembered Diana's name.

It shouldn't have been surprising, husbands were meant to know the basic details of their wive's lives. However, in their nearly four years of marriage Ben hadn't shown to have enough interest to even remember her birthday, nevermind a friend's name. For him to remember Diana's name felt significant, even if he likely only remembered because Nora was also involved.

"Yes, Diana." Melody confirmed, her surprise evident in only the slightest raise of her brows. "Her son, Henry, is a couple of weeks younger than Nora. They loved going for walks to the village." Usually because the walk concluded with a sweet treat of some sort. Merlin, would they ever be able to return to their walks? Would Nora ever babble away with Henry again? Melody leaned against the counter, the stress of the future a heavy burden to be constantly reminded of.

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Ben remembered that Diana had a child, but he hadn't known Diana's son was so close to Nora's age. He could still think back on the kids he'd played with when he was a child, prior to his Hogwarts days, simply because they'd been similar ages and their parents had been friendly. He didn't have anything in common with most of them these days, but he still knew all their names. This Henry was probably someone Nora would remember her entire life, and Ben had never met him. That felt strange — he felt negligent — but he didn't know that it was anything he could change. Diana probably hated him, he had to assume, if all she knew about him was based on rumor or what Melody said. She wouldn't want him to meet her son. And he wasn't around; this probably wasn't the first or the last important small detail of Nora's life he would miss out on.

He swallowed and leaned against the same counter Melody was leaning on. "What time has she been waking up in the mornings?" he asked, wondering whether he should leave until then.

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   Philomena Sprout

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Deep down within herself, Melody had known he wouldn't accept her invitation to stay. It didn't matter that she had made the offer solely for his and Nora's sake or that she was beyond terrified to be truly alone with her daughter after having hospital staff a shout away for weeks. Nor did the progress they'd made at working together appear to make much of a difference in his considerations. Everything always went back to his leaving - to New Year's Eve and the terrible mistake she'd made and even beyond that. He was lost to her, and she'd been a fool to ever hope for anything else.

"Oh, uhm - " Melody answered, her disappointment and surprise evident in both her tone and how she seemed to visibly deflate. "Around eight most mornings, sometimes earlier or later depending on how she slept." Nora wasn't yet back to sleeping sound throughout the night, something Melody was beginning to fear would never return. She herself was in sore need of a decent night's sleep - something she knew she would never achieve if (when) Ben left.

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Ben saw the impact of his question on her posture and visibly winced. Why was everything the wrong thing to say with them? She hadn't wanted him to stay stay, or at least she hadn't given that indication when they'd talked about it at the hospital. Granted, that had been a week ago, and with the pair of them sometimes it felt as though they were starting from square one every morning. Her feelings could have changed. She certainly looked disappointed now, and it seemed to him that there was more to it than just being disappointed he might not be there the exact moment that Nora woke up.

Her body language seemed to imply that she wanted him to stay. But even if that was true, even if she'd changed her mind in the last week, that didn't mean it was a good idea.

Then again, Ben had never been known for good ideas. And it hurt, seeing her crumple in on herself like that. It hurt to see his own feelings echoed in her posture, and it hurt to feel at least partly responsible. Almost losing Nora had thrown into stark relief for both of them all of the other things they'd lost in the last year, or were in the process of losing — and at least for Ben, it had driven home again and again how many things he had chosen to lose. He'd had a home where he lived with his daughter, where he saw her every evening, and he'd walked away from it. And his marriage with Melody had never been perfect — it had probably never even been good — but it was someone who cared about him, who needed him, and he'd walked away from that. He'd walked away from any possibility of a future together, and back in January it hadn't seemed like he was walking away from anything at all because it had seemed impossible to think there would be anything in their future. But seeing her giving so much to Nora over the past few weeks had him reconsidering, and feeling the loss of all those things they'd never have, because he'd walked away.

"Hey," he said, softly — half a whisper, just enough to get her attention — then leaned in to kiss her.

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Melody had already begun steeling himself for his departure. She wouldn't — couldn't — ask him to stay again, she couldn't bear to hear the rejection outright when she'd been so ridiculously foolish as to hope he might stay. Instead, Melody would keep her spine stiff and her emotions shoved as far deep within herself as she could manage with such short notice, and watch as he chose to leave them again. After all, hadn't she been determined to listen to him better this time? Hadn't she forced herself to accept his choices with whatever shreds of dignity that remained to her? No. Ben would leave and Melody would allow it without a single complaint. It was the least she could do for him after all the pain she'd caused.

Only, as she turned to face him with her goodbye already forming on her lips, the opposite happened. Ben hadn't chosen to leave at all, he wasn't set to sink the final nail in the coffin of their marriage. No, Ben had chosen to stay, however reckless a decision it was.

Her surprise lasted long enough for her to feel a shred of panic that he might think the kiss was unwanted before she began to move in time with him. Months of frustration and grief fueled her as she pulled him closer. Weeks of uncertainty and desperation guided her as she pushed up enough to sit on the counter behind her.

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   Philomena Sprout

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It had never occurred to him to worry that he was misreading what she wanted, and even when she didn't immediately return the kiss that wasn't on his mind. It was obvious that she wanted him to stay, and equally obvious that she wasn't going to come right out and ask him — maybe for the same reason that she hesitated to kiss him back. Maybe she'd thought it through and had decided the cons outweighed the pros, and she was determined to maintain a logical decision in the face of raw emotion. Maybe she was going to pull back and say something like Ben, we can't, and if she did he wouldn't have been able to argue with her. There was no logical argument for what he was doing right now, because it hadn't been a decision based in logic. It was based in impulse, in need; if she pulled back and tried to talk about it, he wouldn't have even known where to start trying to explain himself. Her hesitation lasted just long enough for him to frantically wonder if this was a mistake too far, but it was too late to take it back. So he kept leaning in, and then she melted into him. Thank god, he thought, because this whole thing might still be a mistake, but at least now it was one they'd committed to making together.

And then she pulled him closer, and Ben didn't have room to worry about whether they were making mistakes they would regret in the morning. He put one hand on her cheek as he kissed her, reveling in the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips after so long. His other hand went to her waist, feeling the contours of her body and struck at once by how familiar she felt, and how strikingly sensual; as if he'd never touched her before in his life but had always dreamed of it. He gasped, breaking the kiss just long enough to catch his breath before diving back into her. Closer, Ben thought — he wanted to be closer, but he already had his body pressed up against hers as she sat on the countertop. There was only one way to get any closer than this.

Still kissing her desperately, Ben moved his left hand from her face down to her leg. He ran his hand up her thigh, pulling the skirt of her dress up with it.

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Melody felt as though she was suffering from sensory overload. A minute ago she was preparing to face devastation once more and now ... now, it was all Melody could do to keep from moaning into his kiss. It'd been months since she was last touched so intimately, and longer still since the hands to do so were ones she was this familiar with. Every touch of Ben's hands on her — on her face, on her legs (god, her legs) — set her blood on fire. More, Melody would have begged if she was willing to sacrifice even a second of his lips upon hers.

Desperate hands blindly worked on the buttons of his shirt as she sighed into the kiss. She no longer remembered every contour and muscle of his chest, his body as foreign to her as it was the first time he kissed her. Soon she'd remember, or so Melody hoped. What she didn't remember she would eagerly learn, taking only as much as he'd allow her in these next few minutes. (Hours? Days? Weeks?) Even with his shirt undone and her dress hiked up, there were still far too many layers to contend with, for Melody could scarcely breathe with how constricted her corset now made her chest. "Bed," she murmured into the kiss. "Take me to bed."

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Ben didn't want to take her to bed, because he didn't want to sacrifice even a few seconds of time that he could have been touching her (and maybe somewhere, distantly, he knew that injecting some air back into this heated exchange would give him enough time to think better of it). He had an impulse to pick her up, let her wrap her legs around his waist so that he could keep kissing her while he carried her that direction... but realized as he imagined it that he didn't even know which direction to go. He hadn't been here before, and so far he'd only seen the front parlor, Nora's nursery, and the kitchen. It wasn't a large cottage, so it wasn't as though he ran the risk of getting lost, but he might end up opening the door to a linen closet instead of her bedroom, which would have been... well, not a diversion particularly well-suited to the mood of the moment.

"Show me," he said, taking his hands off of her long enough to wriggle his arms out of his shirt and coat, which he discarded thoughtlessly on the kitchen floor.

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Reality seeped back in at too alarming a pace for Melody to feel anything but regret for making her request. Of course Ben didn't know where her bedroom was (even if there were only two doors in the hall and one led to Nora's room) because he had never been here before. And he hadn't been here before because he had left them for occasional visits. (He hadn't even chosen a place near them, he'd run all the way to —)

Melody slid from the counter, her breaths coming in pants as she leaned up to kiss him once more before gripping his hand. Perhaps if she wasn't so hopelessly lonely, she might have decided different. Perhaps if he wasn't standing there flushed and wanting her (Melody had only ever wished to be wanted by him) she would've been able to allow their reality to take over fully. They could have tonight, whatever mistake it might be. They could have it and enjoy it as husband and wife were meant to, and tomorrow would bring what it would.

Even if all it brought was furthered devastation.

"This way," she replied, still gripping his hand as she led him down the hall and into her bedroom.

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Ben just nodded and followed her down the hall. He kept his mind busy on the short trip down the hallway looking over her dress and rehearsing how he'd get her out of it, and once they were in the bedroom he lost little time taking it off. The biggest delay to undressing her was that neither of them could keep their hands (or mouths) off of each other, once they'd crossed the threshold of her room; he had to keep pausing so that they could finish a lingering kiss before he pulled his undershirt off over his head, or before he turned her around to undo the corset laces.

The sex was — amazing. Maybe Ben was biased, because he hadn't had any in nine months, but he felt as though this was objectively great sex. By the end he was breathless and sweating, and feeling vaguely disoriented, as though he'd just been dropped into this bedroom without having walked here himself. He stretched out on the bed next to her.

"Ask me to stay," he murmured, and what he meant was probably say you don't regret that.

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Melody would have been content to remain as they were for the next eternity, their obligations and realities be damned. Her limbs felt like jelly, her body already deliciously sore from their intense coupling. The only other time she could remember feeling this completely satisfied was in the minutes after the first time - back when she had no inkling of what intimacy was or how it incredible it could be.

Melody laid on her stomach, her arms folded beneath her head. Sleep tugged at the corner of her eyes, though she knew she ought to at least check on Nora before succumbing to the growing exhaustion. She'd intended to spend the night in the nursery, her anxiety too rampant still to be far from Nora for long. Only now, the thought of sleeping safe in Ben's arms was too alluring a prospect.

Or, at least she thought it was a prospect, his question had her suddenly thinking otherwise.

"Stay." Melody softly answered, her tone and expression equally genuine. She didn't pose it as the question he requested, didn't know if she could bear the possible rejection of him still leaving after she'd asked. "I want you to stay."

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Ben's mouth twitched towards a smile, a flicker of the boyish charm that had been his mainstay back when they'd first met. Before Canada, before betrothals to Americans, before Witch Weekly speculating on everything they did. Back when it had just been the two of them, catching moments here and there where they could. He leaned over and lightly kissed her forehead.

I love you, he nearly said, but those three words had a habit of ruining the moment.

"I'm here," he said instead, and wrapped her in his arms.

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