A/N: Trigger Warnings: References to self-harm, Sexual scenarios, Substance abuse, Domestic Hardship. For readers who want to avoid these things, there is a summary at the end of the chapter so you can skip triggering details and still know what happens in the story. I don't have a lot to say about this, other than it's about damn time. Thanks for sticking it out with me this far. Thanks for continuing to read in the future. Please R/R, I live for your feedback.
Keeping Arnold: Chapter 7, The Mattress Maker Makes His Living by the Minute
"People who are sensible about love are incapable of it." - Douglas Yates
Grave-like quiet filled the still smoke-fogged rooms of the frat house, empty bottles and discarded red Solo cups crowding like ramparts on every available flat surface, and Helga and Arnold moving through the teenage dream together swirled the silence around them into a friendly companion that gladly filled the spaces between them on their journey. Arnold and Helga held hands together, neither able to speak, both perhaps afraid in their own way of the profane clumsiness of language in this sacred time and place. They were finally together, and neither could bring themselves to mortgage the present simple joy of the other's profound presence for some unseen future filled with conversation.
Helga turned her head, afraid just as Orpheus that if she turned to look upon Arnold he would be gone in a flash. Arnold's contented smile returning back at her quelled this anxious phobic thought. He's really here with me, she realized, and the impatient pace of her heartbeat quickened.
Arnold looked at his arm, extending from his shoulder out like a suspension bridge load-bearing wire, reaching out and intimately woven with Helga's own outstretched limb by the tangle of their fingers. She's finally going to tell me directly what she feels, he realized, seeing the path before him leading him right to Helga, even as she guided him there.
Still silent, Helga lead him upstairs to the room she had chosen in advance. She had selected it for its qualities in privacy; she didn't believe for a second that the instant they turned the corner up the stairs that the entire party wouldn't surge into the house to clandestinely eavesdrop on what transpired between them. We can't have the whole of creation hearing us, she chided herself privately. If her plan proceeded as she intended, she would be having trouble keeping quiet.
Arnold followed Helga up the stairs, stepping carefully and watching the strong outline of musculature honed by sports and athletic activity on her back. Why am I turned on by her back? He wondered, feeling his face grow hot and his breath quicken at the realization. Where is she taking me, to be alone? Arnold doubted very much that he would remain the gentleman he was raised to be should she sequester him into a private space of proximity.
Down the little row of rooms at the second floor loft area, past the beer pong table that had been set up, squeezed behind a linen closet and a bathroom, a door of significance loomed before Helga. She paused at its red surface, her free hand touching the wood, feeling the weight and strength in it. It's really happening. Don't fuck it up, Helga, old girl. He's right here. Don't go all hot/cold on him now, when we're so close. She gathered her courage, closing her eyes to take in a shaking breath. It was now or never again.
Helga turned at the door, loosening her fingers to completely turn to face Arnold, her hand re-engaging that affectionate tangle with gusto as soon as it was possible.
"Arnold, I have to tell you something important," she started, her voice shaking audibly. She couldn't hear her thoughts for the riot of hammering her heart beat out. In the dim light of the second floor, he looked positively angelic. Her legs almost gave out, and the instinct to run past him and out into the street to fresh air and solitude crept within her, threatening her courageous confession.
Arnold nodded in reply, his mouth too dry to offer verbal encouragement.
"I'm just really…really nervous right now, actually," Helga stammered, looking down at her feet. "I hate this feeling." Her eyes squeezed shut. She sincerely hated feeling vulnerable. It frightened her, it made her angry. She only had herself to rely on her entire life, even Phoebe had let her down plenty of times. All she had was her own strength. Facing the person that took it from her so easily frightened her.
Her eyes opened when she felt Arnold's thumb gently rubbing hers, the simple but strong squeeze of his fingers around hers. Looking up at him, she only saw the simple kindness he had always shown her, effortlessly. Because that's just who he was.
Arnold watched and waited, understanding her nervousness all too well. He felt badly that he might have had this effect on her. Though he was nervous, it was from excited anticipation. An eagerness to see what was around the corner. He only felt uplifted by Helga, and was nervous to know where he would end up next. He offered her what comfort he could, a simple rub of the thumb. She looked up at him, her large blue eyes wide.
"Arnold, I-" she began, but was interrupted by the sudden clink of a glass bottle downstairs. Simultaneously, the two reluctant confessors turned their heads to look over the loft railing.
A sea of strangers moved through the house as quietly as possible, Helga's oracular prediction vindicated with gusto. At the head of the crowd, the familiar faces of PS118, hushing Harold harshly as he struggled by a tower of bottles and cups, teetering precariously.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Helga growled. "We can't even get five minutes alone here. Criminy, it's like the whole world has to know our business!"
"Well," Arnold finally said, his voice cracking. "They did just see the whole show...and literally deliver us to the doorway." He turned back to Helga, taking her other hand and squeezing it with his. Now they were joined with both limbs, a single circuit of heartbeats racing through one of them and answering the echo call in the other. "Just say what you were going to say...quietly." He smiled at her, his eyes drooping contentedly.
Helga's face burned with embarrassment, and the default scowl of anger struggled with the goofy grin of bliss she was fighting against at Arnold's sweet little gestures of tender kindness.
"A-ah...Ah, uh, hey. Hey, uh." She stammered, the thoughts she had woven together to deliver, the practiced speech she had mentally prepared over and over leaving her immediately. "Hey, Arnold. Hey, look, let's...let's go inside." She bashfully looked away from him, her voice low and quiet.
"Whatever you say, Helga." Arnold grinned, turning to the crowd. He blew them a kiss, flourishing with his hand into a dramatic royal wave. "Sorry folks, show's over."
Helga's shoulders hunched over her ears as she sought to escape the scrutiny of everyone below them, and her now free hand fumbled with the door knob for a few frustrating seconds, before the door was swung open and the two of them disappeared inside.
Privacy at last, she sighed inwardly, the tension in her heartbeat unwinding when she heard Arnold lock the door behind them. She was smart to have chosen one of the only bedrooms with a deadbolt.
Now we'll get somewhere, Arnold excitedly thought, energized by the immediate future, extraordinarily aware of everything about her, her every movement and gesture. He wondered if he had ever seen anyone with such clarity.
"So...so I was going to say," she started, standing on the far side of the room from him. She needed physical separation if she was going to proceed. He just did too many things to her when he touched her, too many nervous things and warm things and tingling things for her to concentrate. "Maybe you should sit down, Arnold," she said with some concern. "This is gonna take a while. I'm not exactly into the whole brevity thing."
Arnold parked his butt on the bed immediately, smiling wide and expectantly at her. "Monologue away, Helga. I'm all ears...and I've been waiting a long, long time for this."
You and me both, she mused. How ridiculous it felt to her, now, that he was not only expectant of her answer, but excited to hear it. Arnold actually feels something for me, she realized with a jolt. Even if it was small, even if it was just raw physical attraction or maybe more than friendly curiosity, or even if it was some kernel of affection, she could not deny that he clearly had a vested interest in what she was about to say. He was anticipating it.
The shocking revelation that even a tiny part of her girlhood fantasies could be actually true, despite all logic and experience, made her feel light and giddy. Like she was some sort of effervescent bubbly soda, and the flavor of her heart was bounced and buoyed by the impossible lightness of being cared for. She fought off the smile on her face, but a massive wave of self-consciousness made her feel as if she was impossibly obvious in her every thought and expression. Surely, she felt with mortified silence, Arnold could read literally everything she was thinking as clearly as if she had written it down for him. Hell, he saw all those letters, she reasoned. The exposure thrilled her, just as it made her want to flee.
On the razor's edge of courage and cowardice, Helga perched prepared for her confession at last. She rode the lightning line of jagged uncertainty between the status quo of decades, silent unreciprocated longing, and an unforeseen future where she and Arnold had no guarantees. Can I really do this, after all? Doubt crowded her mind, threatening to overwhelm her courage with its clumsy, dough-like push and spread through her psyche.
Oddly, it was remembering the day she met him as she gathered her thoughts for delivery that gave her the courage to begin. The font opened up, and the deluge poured forth. Opening her mouth, Helga locked eyes with Arnold, and told him everything.
"I have been in love with you from the literal moment I laid eyes on you. We were three. You probably don't remember, I mean how could you? I won't forget it, though, ever.
"I am sorry to say that my family life has always been shit, and unfortunately even when I was a goddamn toddler that was the case. I had walked myself, in the mud and the rain, hungry and scared and sad, to my first day at daycare. I can't even remember why I was alone anymore; I just was, and when I got there I was soaked to my little unformed bones and had mud head to toe. I'd never known such misery, such blatant disregard for my very existence. No three year old child should have to wonder why they exist.
"Then an umbrella is over my head. Remember, I am three, and the whole world as I knew it was Bob, father of the year, and Miriam, a bottomless flask. The possibility of genuine human kindness literally didn't exist to me. And yet, an umbrella is just sitting pretty right over my stupid little head, like it was just obvious that it should be there.
"And a cute little boy with just the sweetest smile in the world is holding it over my head. He looks at me almost curiously, like, 'Why on Earth are you alone and where is your umbrella,' because he just doesn't have any concept of what it is like to be this miserable. And even then, there's no pity in his little green eyes, just kindness. And then, haha, pay attention, Arnold, because, this is the kicker, he just opens up his dumb little football head mouth and practically murders my little three year old heart.
"He says, 'I like your bow, it's pink like your pants,' and isn't that just the balm of Gilead? What on this bizarre planet we call home can a compliment be? To be noticed, to be validated and recognized as a person with needs and feelings? I tell ya, kiddo, I was screwed royally from moment one.
"So I fall in love. Like, love love. I certainly know damn well that's what it was because it was ten thousand times stronger than any kind of family fondness I had ever felt. I loved that stupid little boy more than ice cream and fire trucks. Do you have any idea how ill prepared a three year old is for falling in love? Like, really, though? Can I just take a minute to elaborate here, and mention that it's likely some kind of cruel cosmic joke to make children that young capable of that kind of depth? A little mind and heart so inexperienced gets swallowed up by emotions that big.
"So that's what happened. Helga became her Love. I'm sure you remember the rest, how I showed my affections, and how I masked my overwhelming, frankly frightening feelings from everybody with needless cruelty. Well I will be straight with you finally: I never ever meant any of the cruel or mean or insulting things I said about you, not once. Every word I said, I meant the opposite. I wish I could take all seven years of manic obsessive overcompensation back, because you never once deserved any of the abuse I heaped on you.
"But even as I look at your stupid sweet face while I tell you all this I can see that I was forgiven for all that a long time ago. And that's the sweetest pain of all, to know that you put water under that bridge forever ago, and I am still ruined with guilt for every single torment I inflicted.
"How I wish I could undo it all. But I can't. At least now you know.
"I built shrines to you, you know. I did. In my closets, until you left. I made them out of whatever objects pulsed with significance in my overwhelmed heart that week; once, I collected your used gum from under your seats and desks at school and sculpted it into a pretty convincing likeness. Yeah, it was exactly as gross as you are imagining it, and yeah, I feel super weird and awkward telling you this now. I must have confessed to literally worshipping you as a God so many times in those letters. I had rituals designed to attract your favor, get your attention, distract you from other girls, charms I could perform to get you to smile at me or say something nice. I had a verifiable culture built up to give the massive feelings I had structure and make being as powerfully in love I was at the age I was possible to live through. I'm going to regret those extra shots for telling you that. But my therapist never discouraged me from doing it, she said it was a healthy expression of my feelings or something. Still pretty weird to tell you.
"I was Cecile. I am still blown away that you didn't notice. How many blondes did you know with unibrows? I guess I covered it pretty good, but honestly, Shortman, when it comes to noticing me you always took your time. I'm sorry I deceived you, my beloved, and took away the reunion with your pen pal. I was selfish, and I don't regret it. I got to show you a side of me nobody had ever seen, and it felt amazing. Almost as incredible as this feels, actually.
"This is insane to me, by the way. I have to keep talking or I will realize what I am saying and seize up and die. You understand, the only thing keeping me talking is momentum, that's why I won't let you speak until I have said it all. So thanks for shutting up.
"It almost killed me when you left. Like, literally. I don't like remembering those first couple of years. I made some stupid mistakes. I...hurt myself once. I immediately regretted it, and thank God I had no idea what I was doing and didn't seriously hurt myself. The school noticed though, so did Phoebe. Then everybody knew, Helga's a cutter, and just because I tried it once that bullshit stuck with me until college. That heavily contributed to what I will refer to here as The Meltdown.
"Miriam reacted pretty bad to my little indiscretion. Olga moved back home, actually, in a misguided attempt to lead me down a better path or some bullshit, but that only made things worse. See, as long as Bob just had me around he had enough of a level of plausible deniability to ignore Miriam's problem. I just didn't care how far down into her 'smoothies' she fell, and luckily Miriam had just enough sense to never go past the point of no return. But Olga comes in, meaning well, and has all these trumpeted up concerns about my mental health and then she sees the problem with Miriam and gets Bob finally involved.
"I wish you had been here. Things were hard. Even when I was really struggling as a kid, I could talk to you and feel better and usually even end up somehow closer to my family. Not this time. You were living your boyhood dream with your mom and dad. And I was trapped in my pre-teenage nightmare with mine.
"I actually sided with Bob in the inevitable divorce, believe it or not. One night, after he'd found Miriam passed out in the fridge, nearly hypothermic, he comes into my room and sits on my bed and we stare at each other in awkward silence for about twenty minutes before he finally says, 'Helga, I'm sorry I checked out.' I was blown away. Coulda knocked me over with a feather. Big Bob Pataki, apologizing to me.
"Don't get me wrong, I didn't forgive him. Think one apology makes up for literally ignoring me for twelve years? No, Helga G. Pataki doesn't play that. I told him, 'sorry Bob, but you're about one daughter too late for that apology,' and he just stares at me with this angry, I know you are right but fuck you for being so right anyway look. Looking back, I can see a lot of him in me. That's the face I make when Phoebe proves me wrong and we don't talk for two weeks. And I kind of understand him better now. Big Bob just couldn't deal with being a family man. Not really. It wasn't something that came naturally to him. Olga's magnificence was the only thing that brought him into the whole situation with interest. That's why she was the favorite. That's why he listened to her.
"So when Olga convinces them to get counseling, after months and months of dramatic, operatic crying and heaving breasts and runny mascara, they go to one meeting and Bob comes home and announces they are getting divorced.
"Oh man, it was like the air got sucked out of my lungs. Sure, I hated Bob's guts and thought he was a bastard, but he was still my dad and a presence I was used to. Miriam barely said a word, she just upped the smoothie intake and slept a lot more. Honestly, I was so disgusted with her, and Bob had at least offered an apology to me, so when they asked me who I wanted to stay with I picked Bob. Olga and Miriam moved out a couple weeks after that. Christmas that year was kind of nice, actually. Bob and I watched A Christmas Story like six times and he called me 'Helga' all day. Miriam called and cried, then Olga called and cried, and then I read your Christmas letter and cried. It was a big day for Kleenex. Market shares went through the roof.
"So that's what happened to Helga. I moved in with Brainy when I was seventeen, not too long after your last letter. I went in to the living room and told Bob I was moving out. He only had questions about how I would pay for it all. Brainy's got a job and I have Bob's little trust fund. We've been roommates ever since. He's great to live with, and my bandmate, so it's a good setup. I can't complain. I thought my life would proceed without you in it ever again, broken into smaller pieces and not what it was when we were kids, but something I could still see myself sticking out to see how things turned out. I thought about you daily, and felt weird.
"I am mad at you, Arnold, by the way. Super pissed off. You owe me a fucking childhood. I wanted to watch you grow into a man. I wanted to see your first day at high school. I wanted to see you get tall. I wanted to hear your voice change. I wanted to be there when you became all grown up. I wanted to take you to prom, and go on your first date with you, and, and sneak into your room on valentine's day to surprise you with...well, nevermind. All of that is over. I am going to always be bitter that I never got to experience any of it.
"That anger carried me through the worst times, though. It's just as precious to me as my most tender feelings of affection. I was so mad at you for leaving, and just as bad, I was furious with myself for feeling that. I think that's the only thing that kept the fires stoked through all these years of cold and distance. Because I lost a piece of myself when you left, and I still haven't put it back in its place. I wont dare, not yet, because I feel like I am always inches away from losing you all over again. I can't survive that twice. I won't. Whether I like it or not, there is no Helga without Arnold.
"So, so I guess the point of all this, the whole reason I pulled the stunt with our old friends on stage, the paper cranes thing, the letters, the songs I wrote, all of it...is to keep you, Arnold. I have accepted it inside myself, and I am placing everything on this risky bet, this slim chance. I chase it like a ghost hunter.
"I love you, Arnold. I can't live without you. Not in the way I know I was meant to.
"Will you stay with me tonight?"
Through the roller coaster journey of Helga's speech, Arnold listened with absolute focus. He didn't want to miss a single detail of her confession. Every minute speck of her was significant to him in this moment, and he bent every cell in his body towards her to listen.
From the touching and surprising story of their toddler years, to the apology for a near decade of abuse, to the shocking and awkward revelation that she had broken down after his departure, Arnold attentively processed the pieces of the person he felt such strong affection towards. Here was the real Helga. She was finally out in front of him, unloading years of secrets, a jazz confessional free of practiced stiffness and alive with all the character and verve within her. He couldn't recall ever talking to her for this long one on one. All of their childhood conversations had been short and nasty, or even shorter when she was nice.
It was a lot to take in, to say the least. He wasn't sure how he felt about the shrines, or her dark experiments in self destruction. It made him nervous, it showed him just how intense and limitless her passions ran.
And then she destroys his thoughts, sends them scattering to the winds, and drives all logic and reason from his heart like a Valkyrie riding vanguard into battle. With her question, posed so sincerely, on the heels of her long awaited confession of truest love, Arnold found himself suddenly brought to the stunning realization that the Helga he loved and that was in front of him was not the little girl that bullied him anymore.
The Helga that walked towards him with purpose now, her eyes alive and bright and glittering, was a woman.
Helga snarled when she heard the obvious bump against their door. She was millimeters away from Arnold, her hand almost touching his face, their lips perilously close, and then the goddamn peanut gallery decides to drop in. She whipped her head around to hatefully glare at the closed door, wishing she could strike dead all the clumsy interlopers that had ruined the perfect moment she had finally pulled from the impossible jaws of fate.
Arnold rest his hand on her leg. The heat in her face made her dizzy immediately. She looked down at him, standing over his beautiful face in such terrific intimate proximity that she almost forgot for just a moment that they had unwanted observers listening on the other side of the door.
"Ignore them," Arnold huskily whispered, and Helga's knees were jelly. She found herself unable to help herself, and without defenses she fell onto Arnold like a comet.
Their mouths connected and Helga gasped in surprise at the living shock of the sensation of Arnold against her. The sound escaped her mouth, which opened wide to accept the intrusion of Arnold's tongue immediately. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his hair on either side of his head, and she pressed herself onto him as firmly as possible. If she had the means, she would have pressed her atoms into his, mingling their quantum electron shells and becoming indistinguishable as individuals. The raw, hot taste of his mouth in hers made her involuntarily let out little sounds of surprise and pleasure, and Arnold paid her back in kind with his own shaking groans.
Arnold couldn't think, he had no higher level brain function. All that he was capable of experiencing was the weight of Helga's body on his, practically poured against him into his lap and against his chest. He felt his hands splayed against her back, fingers digging into her well defined back muscles and sliding underneath the back straps of her bra. When he grabbed her hips, Helga moaned and pushed her pelvis forward, and Arnold growled automatically.
The silence of the room was punctuated by gasps and squeals, and the small sounds of lips and tongues brushing against each other. Yet in each of their lives, never had the two experienced anything so loud as the riot of passion they unleashed in unison. Their breathing was the gale of a hurricane; their moans the roar of thunder; when Helga whimpered his name because his lips found her earlobes every syllable was the catastrophic resonance of a stellar explosion.
Helga pushed her face off his, the strength in her barely enough to create a few scant inches of separation from him. Arnold's face buried itself into the plunging neckline of her shirt in response automatically, and she held onto his head for purchase on reality. She couldn't imagine anything this immensely pleasurable. Ecstasy wasn't a strong enough word for it. In some dimly lit lightpost of awareness where reason still existed, not yet overcome by the tsunami of stupefying pleasure of kissing Arnold, she knew that this was going to escalate extremely quickly, and extremely suddenly their lack of total privacy would be an unacceptable problem.
When Arnold's hand slid around to the front of her shirt, pressing against the slope of her chest, her eyes snapped open as that single thought of exposure overwhelmed her.
Arnold felt Hands on his shoulders when he boldly touched her chest, and looked up from his work of his mouth on her neck. He was panting, barely able to keep his breathing under control for the electric adrenaline lancing through his veins.
"S-something wrong?" He whispered, his throat too dry from excitement to manage anything louder.
Helga moaned when his hand squeezed her flesh, and she almost stopped caring that everyone they knew was listening to them. She bit her lip, rolling her head back and squeezing her eyes shut to focus her thoughts. Please don't ever stop touching me, Arnold, she prayed even as she was about to make him do just that.
She let him keep his hands busy for a time, however, wondering how it was he seemed to be so experienced and talented with his hands on a woman's body.
"We can't do this here," she finally gasped, arching her back and curling a leg around his waist. She very much wanted to keep going, she had nothing but an all-consuming desire for him burning her up from the inside. The firestorm of a lifetime of need felt like every cell of her was alight and glowing. She felt her body rocking against his, turning her hips flush against his abdomen automatically. "We-ah!-" Helga gasped when Arnold's hand slipped under her bra and touched her sensitive flesh for the first time. She instantly burned that memory into her brain, the first time that Arnold's hands had touched a place on her that nobody else had ever seen.
Arnold listened, but found it hard to comply. His fingers couldn't bring themselves away from her. Every part of him wanted to touch her. He had never felt anything so consumptive and obsessive. He needed to know every part of her. He would forsake anything for the chance, even his own privacy and pride.
But she was the final arbiter of when and where he would finally get to experience her love in it's most physical expression.
"Where?" was all Arnold was able to force out, his hand reluctantly leaving her shirt and just gripping her hips. Helga looked disappointed when he stopped.
"Your room. We can't at my place. Brainy," she started, but stopped herself. It felt profane to say another name than his now. She bit her lip in embarrassment.
Arnold nodded, and gently pushed her back off of him by the pelvis. Helga steadied herself and climbed free, standing awkwardly, trembling and alert just six inches from him. It felt like she was as far away from him as when he was in San Lorenzo.
His hand reached out and took hers, and they trembled in excitement and anticipation together for a moment, just looking at each other with silent consensus of the heart. Standing, Arnold took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out from his mouth in a single pressure-releasing rush. A hand pushed his hair out of his face, and back.
"We'll run out. I'll lead. Don't look at anyone but me. Look at me." Arnold found that he meant what he was telling her a lot more than mere instructions for the mad dash to freedom from the house. He was talking about forever. "Just look at me," he reiterated, meaning it with everything in him.
Helga nodded. She hadn't ever done anything else. It was all she knew to do.
Arnold and Helga rushed out the door, pulling it open and dashing out in the crowd of people pressed into the little second floor hallway to listen to their encounter. Past faces familiar and strange, Arnold and Helga escaped the press of bodies and ran out the front door, out into the night together, and towards their shared destiny. Two pairs of footprints ran the same narrow path, mingled and sharing a trajectory towards the same moment in time when two souls would finally join into a greater whole.
Long ago, Helga had come into Arnold's room for the first time to steal something of his to add to her shrine. She waited until Arnold and his grandfather left their boarding house to go to a baseball game, so that she would have plenty of time to spend surrounded by Arnold's world. She intended to bask in the pieces of his life and learn everything she could.
She still remembered the strange fear and excitement of breaking into his skylight roof, and lowering her wiry, skinny frame into the boy's extremely modern and, she thought, incredibly cool room. She delighted at every detail. She submerged herself in his sheets and looked at all his books and toys, trying to memorize each one. Every trinket and curiosity an item of interest. Every corner a boundary of his existence, and thus the shape of her own life.
She was seven the first time she stood in Arnold's room. She had no way of knowing as she walked the room from wall to wall, counting the paces and memorizing the way the moon looked from his bed that it would be the place that Arnold would show her what his soul looked like some stupid Summer day thirteen years later. She couldn't have imagined the nearly religious beauty of connecting to him, sharing breath and sweat and spit like one body. She had no idea that she was standing in the same room that her beloved would lay with her, and where they would learn what their bodies were made for together.
"What's this one?" Helga poked a dark line on Arnold's naked abdomen about two inches above his pelvic bone. She was laying against him, their bare bodies clinging skin-to-skin. Her legs wrapped themselves around his, woven like two braids, and she leaned on one arm slightly above her beloved to look down at his beautiful body.
After what seemed like a lifetime, but really was only a couple of hours, the two of them had finally been too physically exhausted to continue their passionate work. Now they lay together in Arnold's bed, Helga's hair down and poured out behind her like a golden wave. Arnold rest his head on a hand behind it, his shoulders propped up by two pillows folded in half. The room was hot, and smelled like bodies.
"That's...a knife." Arnold sounded hesitant to talk about the scar she was asking him about. For the past ten minutes she had been exploring the nooks and crannies of his body she had not yet poured her passionate attention on, eager to learn every secret.
Her eyes widened and her strong eyebrows twisted in hesitant disbelief. "A knife? What the hell?"
"Yeah. I don't like remembering it. It's still a little stiff, so don't poke too hard." Arnold really wished Helga would move on.
"Well don't hold back on me now, Shortman. Recall that I am naked and laying on you. Let's hear the knife story."
"I got stabbed by a Zetas human trafficker at the Texas and Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo when I was sixteen." The phantom pang of the knife wound in his gut made him feel slightly sick. It was not a good memory.
"Wait a minute. Let me repeat back to you what you just told me because I'm not sure your sweet little head understands what you just said. You got knifed by a Zetas coyote? How in the fuck did that happen?"
Arnold sighed. She really wasn't going to let it go. She had been grilling him on every scrape and blemish. The cherry-colored clot of the long snakelike scar on his thigh and inner pelvis from the fall with Lila was the last thing left on him she hadn't asked about. He saw the conversations coming on the heels of this story, so he decided to make it good. Hopefully enough to distract her.
"Mom and Dad got wind of some traffickers that were moving some Native tribespeople across the border to work for cartel backed farmers in California. We flew into Neuvo Laredo on the trail, basically just trying to save as many of them as we could. Mom and Dad had some support from the Mexican feds, but, only minimally. The Zetas had bribed their way pretty deep into the command structure, so all we had was a couple of fresh agents and a single detective that had been in charge of the case for the area.
"Well one night the trail leads us to this house where we were told a family of the Natives were being held before they were loaded into trucks and processed into their network, and once that happened they would basically be beyond anyone's reach. They would get filtered out into an extremely dense and complicated network of traffickers and end up all over the state of California. We basically had that night to get them out.
"I was scared out of my mind, but I wouldn't let Miles or Stella leave me behind. See, I knew one of the girls that was taken. Rosa. She was fourteen. Native Argentinian. She was taken from her family when she was thirteen, so she'd basically lived a full year in captivity, moving from country to country. I don't even want to think about what her experience was like. Pretty much the worst thing you could imagine.
So I'm sixteen and in a cheap bullet proof vest not sized for me, and in the van waiting. Mom and Dad had gone in with the agents. There was basically nobody in the house there to guard the captives, just two guys with sidearms. They kept them in place with fear, really.
"So I am waiting and I have knots in my stomach 'cause I don't know, anything could happen in there. I could lose them again. But then they walk out, each holding the arm of these cartel Zetas, and the agents are coming out with the Natives on by one. I'm pretty much overjoyed to see them okay. Then I see Rosa come out, and she looks really scared and thin, so I rush out of the van.
"I didn't see the third Zetas, but he was around the back of the van in the blind spot. He was basically waiting for his chance, and as soon as I jumped out of the van he's on me. We struggle and I hear mom shout my name and then I heard dad yell 'knife!' and then I feel something hit my gut.
"I read somewhere that getting stabbed doesn't hurt like you think it should. That's a fucking lie. It's…" Arnold touched his scar, remembering the feeling with too much clarity.
"It fucking hurts. It hurts, Helga. I am pretty much down on my back curled over the hole in my belly instantly. I don't remember what else happened. They told me that he turned on them, and that I grabbed his foot and he fell and they got him right away. I don't remember that, but I do remember sitting in a hospital bed for two weeks in Austin recovering.
"Rosa visited me once, before Miles and Stella flew her back home to her village in the Andes. She thanked me for saving her, and kissed my hand. I felt pretty phony, because I didn't do a damn thing except get knifed immediately and accidentally trip the guy. Mom insists I saved her, maybe saved them all, because that guy with the knife could have hit most or all of them before they were able to get him down if I hadn't tripped him. I think she's just saying that to make me feel less stupid.
"And yeah, it's still kind of painful. It went deep. It missed all my vital organs but it nicked my lower intestine and they had to sew me up with a robot arm and put me on vicodin for a month. That was, uh, kind of a fun month." Arnold grinned up at Helga, who was watching him tell his story with a predatory readiness. The look sent goosebumps up his arms and down his neck and back.
"You saved her," she whispered reverently. "You did."
Arnold shook his head with a smile. "I just got lucky. Mom and Dad saved her."
"No, no, I'm afraid not. Arnold the hero saved her. And got this terrible little mark for his bravery," she smiled, touching the rim of the tough scar with her fingers. "I think you deserve a reward." There was trouble and mischief in her eyes when she looked back up at him, teeth showing in her smile.
That look interested Arnold. He grinned automatically. "Oh yeah? What do you have in mind? A medal? maybe a ticker-tape parade?"
"Actually," she said, moving her body down with a grin. She answered him with her mouth. Arnold closed his eyes and fell into helplessness when he felt her smile from the inside.
She stopped suddenly, leaving Arnold, and he grumbled with frustration. "Why'd you stop?"
She was sitting on his knees, looking down at his body with concern and surprise. Her hands rested on either side of his hips. "What is that one?" Genuine dismay and worry etched itself in her features. She was looking at the long scar, still ruby red and raised as it trailed through his legs and across his inner thigh. "I can't do sexy things on you while I am face to face with that. What is that? What happened? It looks fresher than the other ones. What is that?" She looked up at him, and Arnold's heart pounded to see her so concerned, and nervous from the stress of having to answer her. "Arnold, what is that?"
He recalled the terror of the fall. Hitting the rocks with his groin first. Feeling the bone in his leg with his fingertips, sticking out of his thigh. The cold panic, wondering did it go through my artery? Passing out. Waking up cold and his leg tight and hot and throbbing with agony in a cast. Hearing of Lila's heroics. The overwhelming guilt. Two months of recovery and physical therapy to walk right. Something Lila would never get to do.
"I fell." He was far more terse than when he initially spoke of his knife scar. "Helga, I really don't want to talk about that one tonight."
Helga shook her head, putting her hands on his chest. "Sorry, bucko, that thing looks fresh. It's huge. What on Earth did that? were you gored by a boar or something?"
"No. I told you, I fell." He felt himself closing off, a reflex to protect the experience. A wave of guilt started to swell up under him, rising to his teeth and floating in his eyeballs, making him feel ill. He was naked in bed with Helga, after hours of passionate lovemaking, when the girl who he owed his life to was paralyzed in a wheelchair with her heart broken by him less than half a day ago. What kind of person am I to do this to two people? He suddenly wanted clothes on, so he curled his legs up to his chest under Helga and rolled off the bed to start putting on clothes.
Helga watched him, terrified of what was happening. She felt suddenly very cold, and was very aware of her nudity. She held the blankets on his bed to her chest, covering herself for protection.
Why wont he tell me? What could upset him this much? Helga was afraid to ask him anything else. He was already putting his jeans back on, facing away from her. I've fucked this up, she thought with despair. He's going to kick me out. This was a mistake.
Suddenly, her cell phone started buzzing from a text. The sound echoed in her mind, bringing her back to a similar moment earlier in the night. When Phoebe's phone had been buzzing in a purse. With Lila on the other line. Lila.
Lila had mentioned circumstances she didn't know. Arnold was hiding something from her, was putting distance between them after they had finally shared their bodies and souls together. Lila said she was in love with him. Arnold had known how to touch Helga so expertly. A thousand imagined scenarios instantly unfolded in her mind. Suspicion towered within her with juggernaut force.
"When are you going to talk to me about Lila," she started sourly. "You already got me in bed, what's left?" She surprised herself with the force of her bitterness. She hadn't meant to say that. It came out of her mouth automatically.
Arnold turned around abruptly. He looked surprised, but also a little angry. "What are you talking about? And I didn't get you in bed, Helga, we shared something together. We shared each other. Don't cheapen this with your jealousy." Arnold shut up immediately, instantly realizing he'd said the wrong thing.
"Jealousy? What do I have to be jealous of, exactly, Shortman? Why don't you enlighten me? I didn't know there was anything to be jealous of until you just told me. I just guessed it was her because why wouldn't it be? She always found ways to ruin things for me when it came to you before. So tell me, do tell me, oh sweet, sweet Football head. What does that scar have to do with Lila and why should I be jealous?"
The level of threat in her voice was terrifying to him. He was suddenly very aware of her physical presence, the well defined muscles of her arms and shoulders. The way her tendons moved and shifted in her forearms as she clenched her fists. He desperately wanted to avoid rousing her anger to the point that she became physical with him.
"Alright, alright, I'll...I'll tell you, but you need to calm down." Arnold sat on his desk shirtless, holding up a hand. "And...you should get dressed."
Helga narrowed her eyes at him, slowly standing from his bed and letting the sheets fall off her body. She stood in front of him, completely nude, her feet shoulder width apart and arms held at her sides powerfully. She defied his suggestion, no longer feeling anything except an aggressive level of anticipation. "Go ahead, Arnold. I am totally calm. Tell me about Lila." Her tone was flat.
Arnold swallowed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I fell in San Lorenzo because I was climbing down a waterfall face without a partner. My climbing equipment was rusted out and failed. It was stupid. I broke my femur right beneath the ball joint. Compound fracture. I am really lucky the bone missed my arteries, but I still lost enough blood that I passed out. Lila was there, in San Lorenzo," he paused, watching Helga's black eyebrows raise dangerously. Her fists clenched so hard they were white.
"Lila came after me when one of the guides saw me down the escarpment, getting hammered by the waterfall. If I fell the rest of the way I would have been a goner. Stella and Miles were out on research, so she was the only one with climbing experience in the village that could help.
"She made it down to me and put my leg in a splint. I was unconscious. She somehow made it all the way back up with me on her back, and got me over the rim before she fell, too."
Helga's mouth was an angry thin line, her jaw clenching and moving in anger. Arnold wasn't sure why she was so mad Lila had saved him, but he continued telling her the story.
"Stella and Miles had to save her. I woke up in a hospital in Rio with my leg in a splint. Several surgeries later I could walk with a cane. Physical therapy took away my limp. Lila wasn't so lucky, she," he stopped. Helga was crying. She was staring him down, fury on her features, but tears streaming down her face. Arnold felt sick, but pressed on.
"Lila was paralyzed from the waist down, with partial mobility in her feet and sensation up to half the calf on her right leg. She didn't break her back, but suffered permanent nerve damage. She's been at the farm in a wheelchair since. She saved my life, Helga. I owe her my life. I owe her a lot more than that."
Helga's voice was high with emotion when she spoke, a bitter smile creasing her face. "Like your body? Maybe your heart, something like that? The farmhouse? I'm not stupid, Arnold. The way you touched me," she forced a dark chuckle, tension and emotion knotted in her throat, "there's just no way you've never put hands on a girl before. I can imagine it all too clearly. She saved your life, so you give her yours? Sound about right?"
Arnold narrowed his eyes, shaking his head hard. "No, it's not like that, Helga. Listen,"
"No, I'm done listening to you tonight. I should have known this was too good to be true. After ten years apart there's no way we could just pick up where we left off and be together. I was stupid. Lila called Phoebe at the party. I knew about Lila. Now I know why she was in such a panic, and why she begged me not to seduce you tonight." Helga felt all the fury and betrayal she felt flying out of her mouth, each a little knife designed to cut Arnold as deep as she could. "What, are you two dating? Am I your little side piece, back at the old stomping grounds? This some kind of twisted game for you, Shortman?"
"What! Helga calm down, you don't know the whole story! I am not two timing you or Lila or anyone."
"Oh really, do please explain that one to me, Arnold. Because Lila made it seem like she was pretty scared of me taking you from her. You can't take what isn't possessed by someone else."
"No, Helga. Lila and I are not together."
"So explain yourself!" Helga shrieked.
Arnold hesitated, his green eyes searching Helga's for understanding. Her blue eyes were red with tears, squinting with hurt and fury.
"I was engaged to Lila." He finally said, his guts cold and his limbs heavy.
Helga was a blur, her blonde hair flashing behind her as she closed the distance between them in an instant. Arnold felt something hard and heavy hit the side of his head, and stars exploded in his vision and his world flipped sideways.
He shook the ringing from his ears and the blurriness of his vision, seeing Helga hastily throwing her clothes onto her body, her hands shaking violently. His head pounded, immediately swelling on his cheek and temple where she hit him. The familiar fire spreading in his cheek worried him that she had cracked his cheekbone with her punch.
"Helga, wait-" he started, struggling to stand up.
"Save your breath, Arnold. Don't ever talk to me again." She turned to look him in the eyes after she jerkily pulled her shirt down over her head. "I never want to see you. Get out of my town. Get out of my life." Her voice was quiet, shaking, and tight. Arnold felt a tear push itself out of his eye and roll down his cheek.
"Helga, please." All he could do was beg her.
"Goodbye, Arnold." Helga left his room, avoiding looking at him as she pushed past him, whispering her final words to him as she slipped out the door.
Arnold stared at the empty doorway, his face throbbing. Helga was gone. With her left the world, and everything in it.
A/N Summary: Arnold and Helga share an intimate moment and confess their feelings for each other. Helga reveals her teenage self-harm, her parents' divorce, and how life was like for her when Arnold left. They share a kiss which becomes very physical and passionate, and they go to Arnold's room to consummate their feelings. Afterwards, Helga listens to Arnold tell a story about saving a girl in Nuevo Laredo and getting stabbed for his trouble, and then Helga notices the scar from his fall. She interrogates Arnold, who finally confesses the truth about being saved by, and getting engaged to Lila. Helga lays him out with a haymaker, and furiously commands him to never speak to her again. Thanks for reading!