Archive of Our Own

Lee turns the key and kills the engine, tapping his pointer finger against the aged rubber of the steering wheel. From her place in the passenger seat, Kayla watches him with a furrow between her brows.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

Kayla huffs, crossing her arms over her chest stubbornly. “Is it because I’m a bad driver? Because then you’d be a bad teacher.”

“No.”

“Whatever. You’ve been a real asshole since you came back, Lee.”

Lee glares at the steering wheel. He doesn’t want to lash out at Kayla. So he bites his tongue and prays to holy hell that he’ll swallow it, anything to stop him from speaking.

He doesn’t trust himself to not be cruel.

“What happened to that girl you were with?”

The muscle in Lee’s jaw tenses. “She left.”

And for once, Kayla doesn’t push Lee further than she knows he’s willing to go. She leans forward, and turns the radio, and The Trooper fills the car. It’s almost loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

Lee is skipping rocks into the lake when he senses her. Like a gazelle senses the Lion before it attacks. Lee turns around, neck craning in an attempt to search the crowd of heads.

It’s the Fourth of July, many families and people alike are out to celebrate. Lee has chosen to set up camp in the more populated area of the lake.

He isn’t far from where he grew up. Just a couple of miles out of town. But Lee couldn’t be further from home if he tried.

Home couldn’t be further from him.

Lee swears that he catches her scent. It’s a subtle redolence, native to Maren. He’d know that smell even in death. Especially then. Scanning the crowd for another minute, he turns back, dejected. It’s been months. And yet his body still jumps at anything vaguely resembling Maren Yearly.

Like a war veteran, hardwired to jump at the sound of fireworks, Lee’s insides respond before his mind has a chance to when it comes to Maren.

Even now, she blindsides him.

Lee sits down by the Lake. His legs pulled up to his chest, his ankles crossed.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

Maybe he’d go sulking back to Kayla. Maybe he’d give it all up. Say fuck it, drive north until the new wheels give out. Hitchhike. End up in some ramshackle bunker. Off himself in a speed overdose.

“Lee!” He hears his name, in that unmistakable voice—and he stands, turning.

And then, Maren is there. He was so angry at her for leaving, for being gone when he needed her, for coming back when he’s so close to convincing himself that he no longer does. But all of the anger, the fear disguised as indifference, it dissipates when Maren runs into his arms.

He spins her around, and he almost fucking laughs. 

She’s home. He never wants her to leave again, but he knows that he can’t stop her if that’s what she truly wants—he hopes that it isn’t.

Lee tightens his grip around her waist, as if to be sure that she’s there, that she won’t slip away again.

He doesn’t want to tell her that he’s missed her. But he has. 

See, the thing with being alone for virtually all of your life, you start to like the quietness. It’s easy to fall into step with yourself, to pretend as though only you exist. To crave the silence, until a sound you’ve never heard before, and likely will never hear again begins to play in your ears. Lee didn’t realise how much he loved the music until it was no longer playing.

But she’s here. She’s back, and he loves her. He’s so fucking in love with her that it’s almost laughable. That he, of all people, could feel so much goodness. That’s all he cares about. He doesn’t ask about where she’s been, who she's been with, why she left. He doesn’t care. Maren is back, and her fingers are digging into the skin of his neck, and it’s all so overwhelming and Lee has missed her so much.

She smells different. It isn’t the heady, tangy sort of smell that Eater’s have. It’s Maren’s scent, beneath the layers of soap and cheap perfume she’d managed to pocket. He leans in, smothering himself against her neck. He inhales and exhales her.

“I’m sorry, Lee. I’m sorry.”

He lets her cry, he lets her talk. He listens. He has missed the gentle lilt of her voice, the way her tongue curves the pronunciation of his name. Nobody says it the way she does.

Maren apologises, and cries some more. Lee holds her as she does, cups the back of her hair as she grips onto him tightly. He wants her to crack open his ribs, to crawl inside the cavern of his chest and be welcomed home.

Lee doesn’t say that it’s alright, because it’s not. He’d let himself be vulnerable with Maren in ways he rarely lets other people see. That means something. For him to have let her in, truly, to let her peer inside of him—and for her to leave, it hurt more than he’d ever admit.

The funny thing about pain is, no matter how much of it you suffer, there will always be more. 

Lee thought that he understood what it meant to suffer. And then Maren was gone, as quickly as the sea washed away sandcastles, as gentle as a May morning breeze.

But she’s back, now. He has her in his arms, and he wants to fucking weep against her.

“You’re back.” He almost whispers. His voice is so quiet he doesn’t think that she hears him, but she does. She unlatches from him a moment later, straightening out her yellow rucksack over her shoulder. Her eyes drop to the ground.

“I’m back.” She responds, just as quietly.

They spend the night swimming around in the lake, laughing and splashing at each other. Maren wraps her legs around Lee’s waist and he kisses her as the fireworks begin.

They look up at the sky, and back to each other.

Thank you for coming back. He doesn’t say, but Maren knows. She knows.

Where else would I go? Is her silent reply.

They kiss until their mouths hurt.

They’re in Lee’s tent. The fireworks are still going off outside, the celebrations haven’t dulled. But they’re sequestered off together in their own little piece of utopia.

Maren traces the tattoos on Lee’s fingers. She’d always known they were there, but like many things, didn’t think they were worth noticing until she couldn’t see them anymore. She plays with his fingers, asks about the little scar above his pinky finger.

He was seven, left alone with a hunting knife.

He’s lucky that he didn’t lose the digit.

Lee lets her do it, he answers all of her questions, and he watches, an arm hooked around the back of his head. Maren’s hair tickles his ear. 

He listens to her talk, basking in being able to just hear her voice. 

Sleep finds them that way, wrapped up in one another for warmth. It’s July, but the air still nips at Lee’s skin. When he wakes, Maren is reading. She puts down her book when she notices him. It’s new, she didn’t have it before she left. He tries to peek at the cover but he gives up.

“It’s late.” 

“I’m not tired.”

“Okay.” She gives a knowing smile.

Maren has his head on her thigh, her deft fingers gliding through his hair, tugging lightly at the overgrown roots. The brown bleeds through the red, showing the natural color beneath. Lee’s eyelids flutter closed at the touch.

He needs to dye it soon—and cut it.

Maybe Maren will do it for him.

He smiles up at her with the mouth of a man etched upon his boyish face, and Maren knows that she loves him from that one look alone.

“What?” She asks, her voice soft. She runs her thumb over Lee’s bottom lip. Pulling at the flesh. His tongue darts out to lick her.

“You’re beautiful.”

“So are you.” She replies.

“Read to me.”

Maren’s hand stills.

“Read to me, Maren.” Lee whispers. 

Maren does. 

She reads him two chapters of 1984 before he loses interest. She pretends to hit him with the book.

“Maren?” He calls, looking up at her. His throat bobs as he swallows. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back.” 

“I.. didn’t know if I was going to come back, either.”

Pain flashes in Lee’s eyes. Maren wishes she could take back her words. But they’re true. She had almost chosen to not come back. She was tired of being a burden, and after everything that happened with Janelle.. Maren just wanted to run. As far and as fast as her feet could take her. And they’d taken her back to Lee. 

Home.

He is now someone she wants to run to, hand in hand, and someone to run with from everyone else.

“Where would you have gone?” He asks, voice dropping to a whisper. He kisses the tip of her thumb, down the side of her hand, her wrist.

He lets go when she huffs out a breathless giggle. Still ticklish.

“I don’t know. Far from Minnesota. What about you? If I hadn’t run into Kayla, I probably never would have found you.”

“I would’ve gone back to Kentucky eventually. Shit, Mar. If you had never come back? I don’t know. I’d probably be floating facedown a river somewhere. But first, I would’ve gone back to see Kayla. Maybe drift from place to place and settle if I could. And if I couldn’t..” Lee makes a throat slitting motion.

“What, you’d be married with kids and a dog?” Maren means for it to be a joke, and it is—just one that doesn’t land quite well. If the joke had legs, they’d be broken.

Lee huffs out a quiet laugh, he’s staring at his fingers. “Not a dog person.”

“What about marriage?”

Lee mumbles something that Maren doesn’t catch. She asks him to repeat it, and he does—grudgingly.

“I wouldn’t marry anyone if I couldn’t marry you.”

Oh.

Maren’s heart squeezes in her chest.

“You’d.. marry me?”

Lee fiddles with the straps of his sleeping bag. He’s still not looking at her. She caresses his jaw, and immediately his eyes snap to hers, “Never saw myself as the type, to be honest. But yeah, Maren, I’d marry you.”

When Maren doesn’t respond, he looks up at her through his eyelashes. “You wouldn’t marry me?”

“No, I would. I just never thought about it.”

“I have.”

“Can you tell me?”

Lee nods, settling back against Maren’s thigh. Her fingers scratch at his scalp.

“I’d just lie here in this tent for days and just.. think. About everything. About all of it. And I’d think about what would’ve happened if we’d just said fuck it and got married in some shitty chapel. Get real jobs like normal people. You’d go to college. I’d probably be a mechanic. We’d have a place of our own. Small, but ours. I don’t know.”

Maren is quiet for a few minutes. Lee looks up at her.

“If we weren’t.. this. We could have it.” She says.

“I don’t care what we are. So long as we’re together. I’d marry you no matter what, Maren.” Lee’s voice is choked with emotion, genuine and real. “I don’t know how to be a husband. But I’d try, for you, I’d try.”

“I know. I’d try for you, too.”

Lee’s eyelids flutter closed once more. When he opens his eyes, his heart thunders. Maren is looking at him in a way she never has before, or, if she has—he’s just never noticed it.

Maren leans down and kisses him. It’s a proper kiss, and after so long, Lee is starving. He makes a sound between a cry and a groan when Maren pulls away. She smiles down at him.

“Let’s try, Lee.”

“Let’s try. I love you, Maren.”

Maren smiles. “I know. Show me how much.”

Lee does.