Both Marcelle and Tessa were glad Cerys was there, when they finally reunited after that party. It’s hard to be awkward around someone like that, who’s standing in Tessa’s tiny kitchen with all the cupboards open, simultaneously trying to find coffee, any coffee, even that nonbranded rubbish, and checking Tessa is eating well, and “Cerys come on, I don’t even like coffee, and I wouldn’t keep it with fruit and vegetables.”
Cerys steps back, holding half a bag of apples, “This is the only thing that counts as fruit or vegetable in this here.”
“Well, there’s no coffee, get over it,” Tessa says, snatching the apples back and putting them away, “I have tea, cocoa, juice.”
“Wine?” Cerys asks with a sly grin.
Marcelle snorts, “Not at four in the afternoon.”
“Not ever. You want coffee or alcohol, bring it yourself,” Tessa says, stepping back against the counter.
Cerys had, of course, planned this get together as soon as she got back from her job, just the girls, according to her, and who was Tessa to argue now that everyone was back on speaking. It felt unspoken that the topic of the drunk kiss was not to come up, not yet and not with Cerys around. Maybe they’d talk about it some other time.
Instead they were indulging Cerys in every avenue possible. Marcelle would buy wine in an hour, once it became socially acceptable to drink, and until then she’s have to make do with tea.
“Why do you have half a bag of apple, but an entire shelf dedicated to tea?” Cerys asks while the kettle boils.
“If I admit I’m a pretentious hipster will that suffice?” Tessa asks. In actual fact she has so much as her own form of medication. Before magic came into her life, she made do with whatever, and if she drank an extraordinary amount of chamomile tea before the full moon, well that was her business.
Cerys laughs and hugs her. “I missed you. Both of you. Come on, tell me what happened when I was gone. How has Oscar embarrassed himself without me?”
They head over to Tessa’s sofa, squish themselves on together. Tessa’s heart almost bursts. She’s missed Cerys as well. She would have sorted everything out immediately, and then told Tessa something strong and confident about how useless boys are, and Tessa wouldn’t have cried into her pillow a straight week after the party. She almost wants to tell her now, but Marcelle is here, and she can’t go talking about this crush in front of her.
So she puts her legs across theirs, and laughs as Marcelle talks about some blunder, because for now, this is fine.
Tag: Siren
At this moment in time, Oscar’s brain is solely devoted to regretting his choice of cardigan. It was knitted with thick needles, and as such, leaves plenty of holes for someone to hold on to, say a siren surprisingly stronger than him.
His brain is devoted to this because if he thinks about why Marcelle is clinging to his knitwear and dragging him along the street, he panics.
They are on the corner leading to the Little Bean. Marcelle has been muttering under her breath every street, and Oscar has been struggling uselessly.
“Why are you even doing this?” he asks, clawing at her hand.
“Because you haven’t seen her since the party, and even if it isn’t weird and a little unhealthy for you to suddenly stop, I can’t see her until you see her,” she says, slapping at him with her free hand until he leaves her alone.
He frowns, “That makes no sense.”
“Look at this guy, thinking he’s in love, doesn’t even know her,” she says to the space next to her, before facing him, “She’d tear herself up with guilt if she saw the girlfriend of the guy she kissed, or ask me about you, and I don’t know what you want to say to her, so you’re going to smooth this out first. For instance, are we broken up? I don’t fucking know?”
He sighs, and lets himself be dragged along until just before the window. Marcelle must have anticipated the revolt because he only trips up a little but before she stops, and lets go of him.
“Problem?” she asks, hands in hips.
“I just, well, what if she just wants to forget about it?” he asks.
“Then you come to mine in an hour and we get silly drunk and forget about it,” Marcelle says, shrugging.
He looks as if he wants to laugh, but there’s already another question, “But what if she liked it?”
Marcelle smiles, claps her hands in his shoulder and pushes him in front of the coffee shop. “My friend, that is the opposite of a problem.”
He flails helplessly, frowning and shaking and trying to open the door without moving his arms, until he notices Lina looking at him, sharp eyebrows cocked. This settles him somehow, and he adjust the sleeve of his cardigan, and pushes open the door.
Oscar does not yell. The coven is, in general, a loud place full of yelling, but never in an angry way, unless directed at a misbehaving client. Oscar has never had to raise his voice. He’s unused to confrontation, and usually just avoids it.
Usually, with Marcelle, there is no confrontation, because they accepted long ago that there are no mistakes they can make that really affect anything. Everything is one big mistake, and the only benefit of this is the lack of conflict.
He did not expect that tonight, of all nights, to be the end of all that, though perhaps he should have.
They were on a date. Marcelle wore a dress that made her look more like a being of the ocean than usual. It did not feel quite real. She could not meet his eyes, and she held his hand with the precision of a factory worker, and the conversation was lightly pleasant.
And then she told him where she’d be the day of Cerys’s party. It was not, as Oscar had expected, at his house. She was going to her family for the weekend. She would not be there.
He didn’t raise his voice as he told her he needed her there. To his credit, he barely even sounded desperate. At this point, he almost felt confident about his chances.
Marcelle knows how to be angry. Not the cold, sharp way Cerys can go, or the roundabout way of his sister, but properly angry. She is much more used to confrontation.
She doesn’t yell immediately. She’s better than that.
They bicker, almost good-naturedly, whilst leaving the restaurant. Oscar cannot drop it. He goes from saying he needs her, to saying he needs Tessa, to saying he needs help for this crush. Marcelle says he doesn’t need her, or Tessa, and that help is not a person to bring to a party.
The yelling happens in the middle of a street, when he tries to kiss her. She has no problem with the kissing, and truth be told, would like to kiss back, but she can’t let him. She is under no illusions as to what this relationship is, but she thought they were at least still friends. Friends treat each other with respect. Friends do not act as if one if only there as a crutch for how ridiculously heart sick the other is.
She tells him as much.
He does not reply, which just makes her louder. She is used to saying her concerns, loudly, into a void of noise that doesn’t listen. The space to speak, properly, only makes her worse.
And Oscar is stuck, not understanding that this woman just wanted to pretend for one night like they didn’t fuck everything up when they kissed that first time, just needed to tell him about something she was dreading and get sympathy.
But instead she yells and he twitches out excuses and not even pretending can stop this train wreck.
Although Marcelle knows about the garden, she has not seen it. Oscar talks about, in a roundabout, way that makes it pointedly obvious that he should not be talking about it, usually to Cerys, who has a similar, way of smiling that is not smiling. Sometimes, he passes her tied bundles of dried stems, and she tells him that she could be getting better quality stuff for less money, this is strictly because of friendship, which Marcelle knows is her way of telling him it’s good.
She has been in the rest of his house. She has done things in every room in his house, but the one time she put her hand on the doorknob, he shook his head, once, and that was the end of that.
The way their relationship works, she has no right to be offended and she knows it. It’s not that they keep secrets from each other, not at all. She mumbles secrets to him in the corner of his mouth and he responds in kind.
It’s that she knows that he would let Tessa in there, and kiss her. Not the way he kisses Marcelle, all teeth and hands and losing balance. He would do it shyly, with his hand holding hers gently.
Marcelle has her own collection of off-limit topics. It’s not just places, though there is a tiny pub that sells a chocolate cake that Marcelle can only imagine with Cerys. Family is to be talked about only superficially. Childhood memories Oscar wouldn’t quite understand. She has no doubt he has cordoned himself off just as much.
She thinks of taking him to the pub, talking about her birthday, trying to make this work. He might even try to reciprocate. But then she can’t. What sort of a bastard would she be to take this boy, who’s so broken with love already, and add to it. He can barely stand to look anyway but her lips.
Maybe Cerys, for all the pain she’s accidently caused, has it figured. Maybe romance is overrated.
Oscar hasn’t been able to say no. Marcelle waited to tell him until Cerys was present and judging, and seriously, how did she even manage that, she usually tried to avoid being with Cerys without an appropriate buffer, of which Oscar was not.
He had managed to sit on a dining chair instead Tessa’s sofa which would have squished him against someone, probably the werewolf herself, by claiming to be a gentleman.
Tessa had noticed him glancing over to the bundle of women on the sofa, so close they were indistinguishable in the bad lighting, and assumed he was longingly pining for Marcelle. She had smiled at this.
Between Oscar staring at Tessa, and Marcelle forcing herself to not look at Cerys, and Tessa misinterpreting everything, Cerys was the only one to pay sufficient attention to the actual movie. When the credits rolled, and Oscar got up to switch on the lights, there was a slightly dazed atmosphere as if everyone had blinked in unison and all of a sudden here they were.
“I’ll be round tomorrow with my newest charm, and all the instructions. It’s pretty complex this one. I feel confident about it,” Cerys says, the most lucid of the lot.
“Thanks. You guys are so great,” Tessa says, and goes to stand up, and clear away the half empty plates of snacking food. The attempt fails, and it takes Oscar, already standing, to help her, grabbing her elbow gently.
Marcelle stands too, and refuses to let Tessa actually clean up, with her shaking hands. She gathers everything up, with Oscar helping, trying not to go back and hold her hand again, pretend she needs someone to lean on just to feel the heat of her hip against his.
When everything is done, not just the dishes, but putting the DVD they had watched away and a general tidy of Tessa’s living room, her friends leave. Tessa sighs with closed eyes. She hadn’t meant to fall back down, but the truth was, she had been feeling worse than she let on. Knowing this would happen, she had worn baggy sweatpants and an old hoodie, and when she gets into bed, as soon as the house is empty, she’s wearing them, and still when she falls asleep so much later.
When Marcelle enters The Little Bean, she immediately raised one eyebrow. She has grown used to all Tessa’s quirks that mean the full moon is coming, and those thick rimmed glasses that makes her face seem rounder shouldn’t be out in public yet.
Despite this, Tessa still seems cheery. She spots the siren with a perky wave.
“You look like a hipster so much right now,” Marcelle says as she’s being served, “Hot chocolate with orange syrup, plenty of cream.”
“It’d be so much easier if you had a single order preference,” Tessa says and then the sound of the machine halts the conversation while she works. “You know, Lina told me the same thing. More derisively though.”
“I like a bit of change. Are you alright? Do you need a break or anything?” Marcelle asks, breathing in the thick fumes of her newly presented mug.
“Oh, yeah, I just didn’t get the greatest night sleep, errant fire alarms and all that, and everything is just slightly fuzzier than it should be. I’m okay, really,” she says, then bites her lips thoughtfully, “I might have to cancel dinner tomorrow though. I just want to curl up under blankets, maybe watch a few movies. Quiet, and unpresentable to the general public.”
Marcelle nods, “If you’re not too against the idea, we could do movie night.”
Tessa likes hanging out with Marcelle and Cerys. She wasn’t aware people could not only accept her condition, but want to help her with it. But even if Cerys didn’t take regular DNA sampkes for charms, they were good company.
“Hey, yeah, that could work. And, if we’re doing that, do you think Oscar would come along? Being broke is no reason for missing this,” Tessa says. Although Cerys had exaggerates her concern fir Oscars disappearance, she did miss her friend.
Marcelle furrows her brow and then shrugs, “We can try. His excuses will probably suck.”
Tessa grins, and pushes her glasses up. The faintly pounding headache was, even in her state, well worth seeing a film with friends, especially Oscar.
They are a couple in love. It would take a close eye to realise that although this is true, it is not actually each other that Oscar and Marcelle are in love with.
If not innocently, it had started out with good intentions. They wanted to focus their affections on someone who could reciprocate. They went on dates, they held hands in public, they put effort into making it work.
The first time they had sex, it felt ashamed and hurried. They didn’t talk for so long, Tessa got worried that her dream couple had split up. Neither wanted to tell her it was because her name had been at the tip of Oscars tongue, bitten but so visible. They couldn’t tell her the fumbling desperation of his fingers, or Marcelle’s hesitance because this was not really what she wanted.
So for her sake, they made up. For a week, it seemed like it could work, like they could have something positive and real between them. They spent time in Marcelle’s cramped bedroom, leaning against blue walls, and talking.
But the kisses grew desperate again.
Oscar is a good person. Marcelle is a good person. Together, they are only good at acting good. Around Tessa and Cerys, they are not even good at that.
The rain had been sudden and unexpected, but most of all it had been thick. When Oscar turns uo to the Little Bean for his mod-morning coffee, he’s not just hung-over and tired, he’s sodden. Tessa tosses a tea towel at him, and as Lina makes him a drink, fetches her sweater and tosses that at him as well. He ends up at his table wearing a top that fits him surprisingly well, groaning into steaming coffee and shivering.
As Marcelle enters the shop, sunglasses pushed right up to her nose, he perks up slightly. “Please say it went better for you?” he asks. Beside her, Cerys Carlisle frowns and heads to the counter.
“When I lost you, I panicked and went to Cerys’s house, because I thought I didn’t have my keys,” she says, sitting next to him with her head lowered in shame, “That’s Tessa’s sweater, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he says, lowering his head, “How could you tell?”
“It’s the only dry thing about you. You’re literally dripping,” she says, and laugh. The hangover they’re both having isn’t as bad as the utmost failure they can’t help but experience.
Oscar shakes the water droplets out of his hair. “Maybe I should run away back to Taiwan. If I go now, I can keep the sweater,” he says, and looks over to Tessa, laughing with Cerys as she tales the order.
“You told me you’ve never actually been to Taiwan,” Marcelle points out, “And if you’re gonna be like that, give her the top back right now.”
Oscar considers, and then stands up. Tessa looks over at him, just in time to see her balled up sweater flying towards her, she catches it easily, and frowns at him but by now he’s leaving, with his coffee still on the table. Marcelle looks at the counter, at Cerys and Tessa looking puzzled, and then follows him out.
“I can’t do it,” he says, hearing the siren behind him, “I can’t sit there while she’s being so goddamm nice without even trying. I am a train wreck.”
“You’ve just got to ignore it,” she says.
“It’s very hard, Marcelle, when I’m so tired. I don’t even want to, like, kiss her or anything, I just want to tell her how perfect she is, but if I even try to compliment her, I’m scared it’s all going to slip out. I need to go home, and get into warm clothes that I own, and concentrate,” he says, spinning round to face her.
Marcelle storms closer to him, so he’s backed against a wall. “I have a plan, but it’s not very clever, and it could go very wrong,” she says.
“Well, that sounds about right,” he says and even when he’s so angry and in love, he sounds faintly amused.
She takes a deep breath and takes a hold of his wet t-shirt collar. For a moment, that’s it, her arm resting against his collar bone, her fist tightly curled as he breath hitches. Then she pressed herself into him. His confused lips resist only for a second.
“You’re not going to sing to me, are you?” he whispers, as his hands find her hoodie and cling to it.
“That never ends well,” she whispers back, and kisses him again, forcefully.
With less than two months living in the city under his belt, Oscar still feels like a tourist sometimes. The city is foreign after a few blocks walking.. So when he calls Marcelle, he feels completely entitled to ask her out to dinner, and let her pick the place.
She agrees, of course. She knows there’s no romantic intent, and she does have a good knowledge of the food scene in the city.
They meet in a park that Oscar hadn’t previously known about. He arrives early to explore the meandering paths. Marcelle finds him sitting in a tree next to the bench they agreed to find each other at.
Oscar talks idly about nothing much until they’re seated, at a seafood place that borrows Cerys sense of style. “Could you be any more stereotypical?” he jokes.
“I could be wearing seashell bra instead of a hoodie,” she replies, flourishing the orange striped garment.
He waits until they have drinks to start talking about things he’s really interested in. “So when did you and Cerys meet?” he asks, innocent expression on as Marcelle takes a sip of water. He didn’t take her out entirely to find out about Tessa’s suspicion, but it’s been stuck in his mind, and he’s curious.
For a second she doesn’t reply. “Is there a reason you’re asking?” she asks calmly.
“Tessa thinks you like her a lot more than you’re letting on. I’m just curious, if you do, why don’t you make a move?” he asks, shuffling. In his head, this situation had been less uncomfortable silence, and more sarcastic repertoire with a hint of inspirational speeches. Maybe he should have gotten her drunk first.
“I thought I told you, I know when people are in love. I know you like Tessa more than she likes you. I know I like Cerys more than she likes me,” she says, and then laughs sadly, “I’d know it even if I wasn’t a siren.”
“Do explain?” he says, leaning forward. It can’t be obvious, or Oscar would have picked up on it, or he thinks he would have.
“We met, to answer your question, quite a while back. The exact situation is irrelevant. I was there for private reasons, and Cerys was there because she doesn’t fall in love. Not ever,” she says, folding her napkin carelessly.
“That must suck,” he says, his face creased with sympathy.
“No, it’s why we’re friends. I can sing in front of her, and she just tells me what I’ve done wrong. It’s pretty great, apart from the whole unrequited crush thing,” she says.
“It still sounds like it sucks,” he says, “We should go out and get super drunk, find a cute girl who’ll like you back. Maybe one for me too.”
“I’ll settle for a cute guy, if it helps me,” she says, a helpless beginning of a smile starting, “I’m not picky.”
“I can’t argue with that. Honestly, so would I,” Oscar says, and the smile blooms fully.
“Let’s do it. After we eat, we’re doing this. We’ll find someone to like that isn’t our respective best friends,” she says.
Oscar knocks his glass against hers. “I’ll drink to that.”
While Tessa works in The Little Bean coffee shop, she listens to the radio. It’s not by choice. The dusty radio has sat on the far side of the shop, with its dials constantly tweaked by the coffee-drinking patrons. It’s unusual for Tessa to hear something she like playing, but as long as the volume is reasonable, with no profanities, the customers love it.
Sometime she glances at the customer fiddling with the radio with exasperation, but at least she doesn’t act like she has a personal vendetta against most pop songs, like Lina.
She hands a customer a large hot chocolate with the smallest blob of hot chocolate she could manage, like he always orders, and looks over to the window sill the radio sits on. The noise wavers around, whines of static with snippets of songs escaping from the noise every now and again.
“Pick one station, then leave it,” she yells over, with a glare, then retreats into the storeroom to refill the milk jug.
While in the cramped room, she gets distracted stacking bags of coffee which Lina has thrown higgledy-piggledy onto a shelf. By the time she reappears, the coffee is organised, the three o’clock rush has started, and the indecisive customer has been replaced. Marcelle Dubois, who’s started to spend more time sitting in with her drink, leans over a notebook as the radio plays sad quiet songs.
“I like this,” she says, bemused.
“It’s good enough,” Lina agrees. The only music Lina actually likes is loud, angry and old so good enough is a victory for the radio.
The Little Bean works like clockwork. The rush lasts just over twenty minutes before it slumps and Tessa can approach Marcelle.
“Hey there,” she says, swiping a damp cloth at the table, pretending to clean.
“I’d say it’s a surprised to see you here, but it’s not,” Marcelle says quietly. As she looks up, she throws one arm over the small notebook, careless in a fake way.
“Yep, if I’m anywhere, it’s here or home,” Tessa says, smiling nervously, “What’s that you’re doing?”
Marcelle frowns, not moving her arm. “Just writing a song. It’s what I do.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Tessa says.
“I’d sing it to you, but…” she says, sighing.
“Yeah, no, I get it. I’ll just presume it’s good,” Tessa says and Marcelle smiles. It’s the sort of smile that feels like an accomplishment.
“Can I get another one of these?” Marcelle asks, gesturing to her empty cup, after a few seconds of silence.
“Yes, you can. I’ll go do that right now,” Tessa says, hurrying back into professional mode and grabbing the large mug. She doesn’t know Marcelle’s order, which changes slightly every so often, so Lina will have to be consulted.
Tessa never expected to want to be friends with anyone, especially not a cautiously quiet siren. She has no idea how to make Marcelle like her, and two people who’ve lived their lives trying to fade away don’t make great conversation. But at the same time, she doesn’t want every interaction to be buffered by the extroversion of Oscar or Cerys.
Like usual, friendship continues to baffle her.
The Witches Son & The Werewolf Girl 
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