They relocate to the living room with fresh beers after cleaning up the kitchen. Erin plops onto the couch, Jay beside her, and Mouse moves towards an armchair before Jay tugs him onto the couch beside them. They deliberate about watching something or playing something, bantering back and forth before Mouse thinks of something.
"You know," he begins slowly. "There's a 'How to Train Your Dragon 2', and it's on Netflix." Both Jay and Erin laugh.
"It's settled, then," Erin says, reaching for the TV remote.
By the time the movie is done, they're all beginning to fade, trading yawns in the dim limbo post-movie feeling as the credits slide along the screen.
"You staying, Mouse?" Jay asks sleepily. Mouse looks at his watch, groaning at the thought of getting back in his car.
"Hadn't been planning on it, didn't bring my stuff."
"What do you need that you don't have here? You know I've got stuff of yours in my closet."
"Mmm, fair enough. M'kay." Mouse pushes up off the couch, gathering up their beer bottles and taking them to the kitchen, followed by Jay, who grabs glasses and fills them with water while Erin leans against the doorway. Mouse tosses the beer bottles in the recycling then heads to the closet where he pulls out the stack of extra bedding and starts setting up the couch. Jay passes by, setting one water glass on the coffee table and continuing on to the bedroom with the other two. Erin lingers in the living room, and Mouse knows what's she's going to say before she says it.
"You know, I could-"
"You're not taking the couch, Erin." She looks at him for a moment before nodding.
"Okay."
Mouse wakes still in darkness, only disoriented a moment before he realizes why he woke up, shifting up automatically to let Jay sit on the couch beside him. He grabs the remote off the table, clicking on the TV and handing the remote to Jay while he repositions himself more comfortably. Jay scrolls through the channels before landing on an old documentary about the owners of two pet cemeteries. They watch in silence for a while.
"His dad died in Afghanistan," Jay says suddenly.
"Ethan?"
"Yeah. He asked me the question. How I dealt with it."
"Is there something wrong with that question?" Erin's voice drifts softly from the doorway, where she stands disheveled from sleep. Mouse watches Jay carefully to see how he'll react. Mouse wants to tell Erin to come join them, but this is Jay's choice.
"Hey," Jay says quietly, hesitating before continuing. "Come sit." Mouse fights back a smile as Erin pads over and they shuffle to let Erin slip under the blankets on the couch beside Jay. Jay doesn't say anything more for a little while, but Mouse is pleased to see that Erin doesn't press. "I just don't like that question. Neither of us do."
Erin lets that sit for a moment.
"Why?"
"Because people only ask when they're in pain. And they want a roadmap or an easy answer that I don't have. And…" Jay trails off, frowning, and looks over at Mouse.
"And sometimes it's like they're assuming that we've moved passed it, like we're over it and that feels a lot like being put on a pedestal where we're not allowed to still be hurting." He can't see Erin's face, but she doesn't say anything for a long time.
"What are we watching?" she asks finally, staring in confusion at the screen. Jay chuckles slightly.
"It's a documentary about pet cemeteries."
"Huh." Erin falls silent, and Mouse imagines her making a bewildered face at the screen.
"What did you tell Ethan?" Mouse asks after a while.
"That I try to remember that they made a sacrifice so I could come home, and live."
"Not what you told me when I asked," Erin says softly. Jay chuckles.
"You don't tell a 15 year old kid that you took it out on people who didn't deserve it. But they're both true." They all fall quiet again, snuggled into the couch and watching the screen. Mouse tangles his fingers in the blanket, trying to figure out how Erin's presence has changed, or not changed, the feel of these kinds of nights. The words he's had waiting on his tongue from the moment Jay sat on the couch press up against his lips in the dark.
"I was dreaming about the little girl we found the week after Collins died. The one who'd been raped and stabbed and left to die." He's almost whispering to the dark and he hears a sharp inhale from Erin. Jay gently takes his hands, untwisting them from the blanket. He wonders what Erin thinks of this – not Jay holding his hands, not even really what he said, but all of this, he and Jay and the way she must know that these nights of long silences and fragmented confessions are their strange norm.
"I thought…" Erin hesitates, takes a deep breath and goes on, barely above a whisper herself. "I thought that it should have been me. In Nadia's place. And I think… I think part of me felt that if I couldn't die instead of her, maybe dying with her was the next best thing." Her voice shakes as she gets to the end, knees pulled up to her chest, and Mouse hears Jay's breath catch in his throat, and he closes his eyes for a moment at the swell of emotion her words cause. They all let the words hang in the air for a moment, adjusting to their weight.
"Do you still feel like that?" Mouse asks tentatively.
"No."
"I'm glad."
AN: Review!
