Selcouth

Raine (ae/aer) and Thatcher (he/him) enjoy a day in the park in the small town of Pebble Creek. Raine reminisces on their relationship.

It was a golden afternoon in the middle of September, and it was Raine’s definition of perfect. Ae and aer boyfriend, Thatcher, were laying in the grass. The leaves overhead were just beginning to turn brilliant shades of fiery reds, oranges, and browns, and they danced on a warm breeze that ruffled Thatcher’s hair. Raine’s hair was secure in pretty French braids.

Thatcher had done the braiding. He had learned for the express purpose of braiding Raine’s hair, and he had told aer so himself. Apparently, one of his friends’ siblings had taught him.

All of this was so new to Raine. Ae was used to being by aerself, used to caring and fending for aerself, used to finding creative ways to keep aerself alive. But then, out of the blue, along came Thatcher with his magnificent need to care, and care he certainly had. 

Raine had found a home with Thatcher, and somewhere along the way, they both realised that their relationship wasn’t entirely platonic. 

There wasn’t a distinct moment that either of them could pick out and say “this is when we became partners”. There was no single point in time before which they were friends and after which they were lovers. But there had been many firsts, all of them strange―at least, they seemed so to Raine―and all of them marvellous.

There was the first time they had slept next to each other.

It had only been half a night, but Raine held the memory dear. A storm started up around midnight. The lightning was ethereal, of course, as it always was: leaping across the sky in brilliant, white-hot arcs of beauty. But the thunder was deafeningly loud, or so it seemed to Raine’s sensitive ears, and the heavy rain lashed at the windows mercilessly.

Raine didn’t want to bother Thatcher with aer “silly fears”, as ae thought of it. However, only a few minutes after the storm’s racket had woken Raine and sent aer into a panic, Thatcher appeared suddenly in the room and asked if Raine was doing alright. Ae quite obviously wasn’t, so Thatcher laid on the bed next to aer and tried to talk for a while. The storm made it difficult, so he shortly lapsed into silence, but it didn’t matter. Raine felt his presence calming and eventually fell back asleep. 

Thatcher didn’t want to wake aer back up, and after a while, he fell asleep too. In the morning Raine woke to find Thatcher’s arm around aer torso and barely dared to breathe for fear of waking him up. He was just so serene.

Raine stared up at the richly azure sky and the alabaster tufts of cloud floating lazily across it. Ae threaded aer fingers through Thatcher’s soft hair. It was a deep, earthy brown that suited Thatcher well; he spent much time in the garden and often smelled like dirt and fresh air. It was one of Raine’s favourite little details.

It was also what led to another one of the firsts that Raine held close to aer heart: the first time Thatcher had stolen one of aer shirts. Well, to be exact, it was a sweater.

It was one of the coldest days of the year. Thatcher and Raine chose, wisely, to spend it on the small, worn sofa in their cosy apartment, under several layers of blankets, with hot chocolate and books. It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon: sitting in silence, reading their own books, just enjoying each other’s company. Occasionally one of them would share a funny scene or bit of dialogue from their book or get up to get more cocoa, but mostly they just cuddled and read and existed. 

At some point (Raine wasn’t sure exactly when, but ae knew ae had been about halfway through the fourth chapter of aer book), Thatcher got up to replenish his supply of cocoa. In the process of shuffling out from under the myriad layers of blankets, he managed to spill the now-cold dregs of his last mug of cocoa on his sweater.

“Aw, man,” he said disappointedly. “This was my last clean sweater.”

“I still have one or two clean ones,” Raine said. “You can borrow one of mine.”

“Thanks!” 

Thatcher disappeared into the bedroom - there had only ever been one; Raine had slept on the sofa until that one particular stormy night - and returned shortly wearing a dark green and bright orange plaid sweater that clashed horribly with… well, probably with anything Thatcher could’ve worn it with. It clashed with itself.

“Why the hell do you have this ugly thing in the closet?” Thatcher asked. The question sounded more incredulous than it did rude.

Raine looked up from aer book and snorted.

“I have absolutely no clue. When did we even buy that?”

Thatcher shrugged. “Heck if I know. Hey, you know those cute scenes in books where someone steals someone else’s clothes?”

“Yeah?” Raine said, somewhat unsure.

“There is no way in hell I am keeping this.”

“Completely understandable.”

Raine did, in fact, find the sweater back on aer side of the closet later. It smelled like dirt and fresh air. (It smelled like Thatcher.)

Raine sighed contentedly. 

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Thatcher asked.

“Us,” Raine said simply.

“I like that word. Us. It’s a good word.”

Raine wholeheartedly agreed.

“It certainly is.”

There was, of course, the first date. That was one of Raine’s fondest memories, one ae turned to when everything else felt like it was going to s**t.

Raine walked over to the kitchen where Thatcher was preparing dinner and leaned awkwardly against the counter. Ae was too tall to lean comfortably against the counter, but ae felt weird just standing there, so ae leaned. It felt weird, too. Just less so.

“You’re not trying to cook, are you?” ae asked worriedly. Thatcher had tried to cook before. It had not gone well.

“Well, it’s the third anniversary of finding you, so I thought I’d make something special.”

“I have a better idea,” Raine said with more confidence than ae felt. “How about we go out somewhere?”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know.” Raine hadn’t given that part a lot of thought yet. “Somewhere not too expensive, obviously. Maybe somewhere… nice-ish.”

“Nice-ish?” 

“Yeah. Nice-ish. It’s the third anniversary of finding me, after all,” Raine said, a smile playing across aer face.

Thatcher smiled too. “Is this a date, then?” 

“Oh. Um.” Raine paused to think for a moment.

Thatcher’s smile dropped as he hurriedly tried to correct what he thought was a mistake: “I’m sorry, it’s okay if you don’t want-”

“No, no, it’s fine!” Raine was quick to assure. “It’s fine. You just startled me, is all. Sure, we can call it a date.” 

A moment’s silence.

“...if you want, that is.”

Thatcher’s beaming smile returned, more brilliant than ever. “It’s a date, then.”

Raine nodded. “It’s a date.”

They didn’t end up going to even a nice-ish restaurant; they didn’t have the budget at the time, much to Thatcher’s dismay. Not because he thought the date wasn’t good�"quite the opposite, in fact�"he’d just been hoping to treat Raine on their first date. He’d been hoping to ask Raine out soon anyway. 

But Raine didn’t care in the slightest. They got burgers, in the end. They shared a milkshake. Raine thought it was perfectly cheesy and perfectly wonderful.

‘Us’. It was indeed a good word. But Raine had found a word, once. Ae’d only seen it briefly, but as it was an unfamiliar word, ae’d decided to look it up. It was a word ae thought described what ae had with Thatcher very well.

Now if only ae could remember it.

“Look, that one looks like a bee!” Thatcher exclaimed excitedly, pointing up at the sky.

Raine stared upwards and nodded, despite knowing Thatcher couldn’t see it.

“It does,” ae said. “And that one’s a pig.”

“That one looks kind of like a cherry bomb,” Thatcher said in a completely natural tone of voice, and Raine remembered the word.

Selcouth. Unfamiliar, rare, strange, and yet marvellous.

It was the perfect word for the two of them. Everything about exploring their relationship had been unfamiliar at first. Neither one had any prior relationship experience. 

Also, they were a strange duo―Thatcher, with his odd excitement about all things flammable and especially explode-able, and Raine, with aer oversensitivity to loud noises and particularly strong flavours and all things extreme, made an unconventional pair. 

And of course, they had a rare sort of bond, each one completely and wholly trusting the other, because how could they not, after all the months they’d spent together since that fateful day when Thatcher had insisted on giving Raine a place to stay despite already struggling himself.

“I’m struggling less than you are,” had been his argument. “Maybe we can struggle even less with our combined efforts,” he added, and despite aerself, Raine had chuckled.

“Maybe.”

Perhaps the part of the word that described them best was the “marvellous” bit because even the hard parts had been even the tiniest bit more marvellous with Thatcher around.

So, Raine believed wholeheartedly that if their relationship could somehow be summed up in one singular word, it would most certainly be “selcouth”. 

~Fin.~