17 June, 1892 — Crouch Home, Swallowbury

Ben woke the next morning with a throbbing headache, which was expected, and a warm body tucked under his arm, which was very much not. If he didn't have the confirmation of his senses — the warmth of her body under his hand, the texture of her hair falling against his cheek, the scent of her hair mixed with sweat from a night's sleep — he might have thought he imagined her there. He remembered coming back home last night with the intention of waking her up to talk to her, but he had never expected that it would work. He'd taken the advice from Dionisia with the same attitude of a sulky teenager determining to run away from home. Fine, I'll do it, then you'll see. There had never been a moment he considered that this would not have ended in disaster. He didn't really remember most of the night after he'd gotten back home, but this... did not seem disastrous. He wanted to know how they'd gotten here, but at the same time he didn't want to rock the boat by asking questions. At the moment this felt fragile, as though he might shatter the bubble and break the moment just by moving the wrong direction.

But he did need to move at least a little, because right now he was facing the windows and the sun was going to burn a hole in his head. Gingerly, Ben disentangled his arm from Melody's sleeping body and rolled over, away from the light. There was a glass of water on the nightstand — his doing or hers or just something leftover from another night, he had no idea, but he sat up enough to drink it all the same. He felt Melody move on the bed next to him and he tried to muster up something to say in greeting, but — Merlin, his head hurt. He managed to turn his head back towards her, but then gave up and buried it in his pillow instead. The best good morning he could manage was "Mmphf."

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Melody Crouch

  

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Melody hadn't slept well.

First, it was the anxiety of his reaction to her being here in the morning that kept her from restful sleep. Her thoughts turned over and over every possibility until she'd become reasonably certain he was going to start shouting at her to leave. Then, she had to head into the nursery for Nora twice, after both which times she considered heading back to her own room. She nearly followed through the second time, too, but was then nervous of his reaction to waking up alone.

All this to say, she had finally fell into a deep sleep when he began to stir. Melody grumbled at the loss of his arms and unknowingly shifted closer as if to follow him across the bed. By the time he fell back into the pillow her eyes were slowly opening, her lids feeling as though they were burdened by heavy weights. Merlin, she was exhausted.

She inched backwards when he grumbled, unsure of what to make of it. "Are you alright?" Melody quietly asked.

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Lying down again and having the light blocked from his eyes was helpful. Ben was certainly still hungover, but not feeling actively nauseated the way he'd been when he forced himself to sit up to drink the water.

"Mmmh," he mumbled into the pillow. "Do you see my wand anywhere?"

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His wand? Of all reactions she expected of him, asking for his wand was not high on her list. Thankfully, the light colored wand wasn't difficult to spot as it dangled precariously on the nightstand. Carefully as to not jostle him too terribly, Melody reached for it and handed it over without further comment.

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"Thanks," he managed as she handed it to him. Had he been planning any new or complicated spells he would have been in no condition to be casting, but fortunately the two he wanted were ones he had honed through years of practice at dealing with hangovers. He pointed his wand at his temple to cast a general pain relief charm, which would take the edge off the headache. Next, he turned his attention to the remaining water on the nightstand and cast a spell that turned the water pale blue. He propped himself up on his elbow just long enough to down it, then put both his wand and the glass back on the nightstand.

"Give me five minutes for it to set in," he said, burying his head in the pillow again. "Then I'll be fine."

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While Melody recognized the pain relief spell with moderate ease, her brows furrowed in confusion at the water. It's sudden blue quality was unlike any she'd experienced outside of potions. She wondered briefly if he'd tolerate her picking up the glass to sniff it, but that seemed a bit too invasive for the moment. Maybe later he'd tell her what it was.

"Do you want me to head inside?" She asked with a certain degree of hesitancy. He was obviously struggling this morning and her being here likely wasn't helping matters. Besides, Nora would likely be up for the day soon and Melody preferred to be dressed for the day by then.

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Ben lifted his head slightly to peek at Melody with one eye. "No," he said, with a quick, cheeky smile. He may not have remembered exactly how they'd gotten here, but he had no qualms admitting he didn't want it to end so soon. Hangover or not, it was nice to just have someone next to him for a while. It had been months since they'd been in each other's company without a knot of nerves accompanying it.

"Unless you'd rather," he added as an afterthought. If she was all nerves at the moment, he didn't want to force her to stay. He had assumed that her being here meant they'd reconciled, at least somewhat. That was the case, wasn't it?

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"No," she answered a bit too quickly. For all her nerves and worries for what the morning would bring, his smiling at her for what felt like the first time in months was enough to keep her rooted in place. The tension rolled off her stiff form until she felt comfortable enough to lay back down besides him. They weren't touching as a married couple might, but there also wasn't the ocean of space between them as there usually was.

Five minutes. She could handle laying here with only her thoughts for five minutes.

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Ben grinned at her again, then pulled the blanket up over his head. He thought and nearly said It's nice waking up next to you, but held off. This wasn't normal for them. Even when things had been going well, after Nora was born, they hadn't routinely been sharing rooms, or staying all the way through the night until the next morning. He could probably have counted the number of times it had happened throughout their entire marriage — not on his fingers, but close. To the best of his knowledge, she'd never slept over in his room. So this was uncharted territory, and though her agreeing to stay was a positive sign, he needed a bit more information on how they'd gotten to this point before he committed to sharing his feelings on it.

"What time did we go to bed last night?" he asked, which seemed like an innocuous enough way to start the conversation. Less damning than how much of last night do I not remember?

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MJ made this <3

It was as though she was transported back to their wedding night as she awaited his recovery. She was suddenly able to vividly recall laying down to sleep that night and the fear of what she'd awake to. Then, just like now, there had been no way to gauge how much he'd remember or what his reaction would be. Ben seemed reasonably content that she had stayed the night now, but his moods could change with one misspoken word. Who was to say what he would do if or when he realized how awful the fight last night nearly became?

She felt as though she was vibrating with nervous energy despite her body remaining perfectly (almost unnaturally) still, that when he finally broke the silence she unknowingly flinched. "It was late, I didn't get a look at the clock. Sometime after midnight maybe? Nora was up twice, so it couldn't have been early dawn." Melody explained.

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Ben closed his eyes and tried to remember what time he'd left the Three Broomsticks last night. Probably close to midnight, if he'd had to guess. This didn't narrow down the window of time he was missing very precisely, but it did indicate that it hadn't been terribly large. That made the fact that they had ended up sharing a room for the night all the more baffling. He hadn't expected the conversation to go well at all, but he certainly hadn't expected it to go well in an hour or less.

He pulled the blanket back down so that he could look at her. "Did we talk about everything we were supposed to?" This question was very deliberately phrased to not include any direct references to what they were supposed to talk about, because he didn't necessarily want to reopen any conversations. The question, really, was whether those conversations were really closed or whether he'd passed the point of sensibility somewhere in the middle of them. He hoped it was the former, but given the magnitude of his hangover this morning, he couldn't really bank on it.

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Two roads instantly appeared before her. The first consisted of lying, of smoothing everything over and acting as though everything had been fully resolved last night. However, it was the exact thing he'd taken when she had lost her memories, and as much as she dreaded working through arguments and the resentment that was bound to come with it Melody knew she could do no such thing.

Which left the second, more uncomfortable road. "We touched on a lot of topics." She began a bit uncomfortably. Rolling onto her side to face him, she frowned slightly before continuing. "There's a lot we need to work on if we want to be happy together. It was ... it was a rough conversation. I take it you dont remember much of it?"

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Ah, fuck. Ben had known this entire morning was too good to be truth — hangover notwithstanding — but now he'd gone and poked it a little too hard, and it was starting to fall apart. He was still confused about how he'd managed to talk her into his bedroom if they hadn't resolved anything, when from his perspective it seemed she'd started off the evening hating him. How had they gotten from point A to point B? He didn't know, and couldn't ask.

He didn't want to retrace their steps through whatever twisted paths they'd tread last night. He had the sinking feeling that whatever leaps they'd made while he was drunk and tired wouldn't make as much sense in the clear light of the morning. If they started backtracking, they might never get back to the same place they were currently standing in. And he liked being here. He was confused, sure, but it was a hell of a lot better than being convinced she hated him over the past few weeks, or the widening gulf of mistrust two years ago, or the blaze of resentment before that. Why couldn't they just stay here? Why couldn't they just be the sort of couple who slept in the same bed and exchanged meaningless banter while they dressed in the morning?

"Bits and pieces," he responded with a frown. Not very many, but he didn't want to tell Melody that. Tentatively, Ben reached out his hand to stroke her upper arm. "But the important thing is how it ended, right?"

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Melody was momentarily rendered speechless. How was she to tell him that their staying together wasn't the result of a positive ending, but a rather depressing one? To follow him down that path would be deceptive, wrong, and everything she knew they had to change about their marriage. They had to end the cycle they were perpetually trapped within.

"Yes and no," Melody reluctantly said as she reached for the outstretched hand to hold. "You said you thought -" Merlin, it was too early to start rehashing the conversation from last night. Especially when it was her awkwardly explaining the different things that were said. "Can we make time to talk about this? Maybe when we're both fully awake and dressed?" Melody then asked earnestly.

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Ben's stomach sank. He'd been hoping for something positive in response to that question, if small. A muted smile, a hopeful shrug, something. Instead, she was acting as though he'd opened the door to a minefield. He'd said he thought what? The fact that she couldn't even finish the sentence certainly didn't bode well. But if he'd insulted her or offended her or otherwise done irreparable damage to their already fairly damaged relationship, how had she ended up in his bed with him?

"I say a lot of things I don't mean," he said, pulling his hand back. "I say a lot of stupid things." The unspoken implication: so can we just forget about them? He couldn't apologize for something he didn't even remember, but if he could have said something to keep the peace between the two of them, he would have.

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"No, no. Ben, please. That isn't what I meant." Melody insisted, reaching across the bed to try and hold his hand again. They hadn't even made it twelve hours without everything dissolving again. How were they to survive a lifetime?

"We both have said things we haven't meant. Okay? I didn't mean to make you think I was upset." She couldn't think of how to explain last night now without making everything all the worse, but they had to talk about it. Just as they had to discuss every other conflict they'd had, or at least the major ones. "You were emotional last night, you said that we hate one another and that you're not good enough for me. It was an emptional conversation and one we really need to have sober. Okay?"

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