more than clear. She barely knew her husband and had expected to marry another man—Turnus—instead. She needed time to come to terms with such vast and unexpected changes in her life before welcoming Aeneas into her bed.
But even if she’d known him longer and better, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not for their first time together. Given her history, she would fear any man’s response to her angular body, her beaky nose and crooked smile and jutting ears.
To relax during bedplay, she’d require gentleness. Patience. Understanding.
But BAWN’s story was written from Aeneas’s point of view, as ever, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what his new wife was thinking and remembering, much less what she needed to relax into their lovemaking. So he blundered, exactly as Lavinia had noted he might.
Assuming Lavinia was merely shy and uncomfortable exposing her nakedness by candlelight, he snuffed out the flame of the pottery lamp by the bed.
He didn’t understand how she interpreted that gesture. Of course he didn’t.
He hadn’t spent a lifetime being sneered at for his plainness. His own father hadn’t deemed him ugly as Medusa and laughed uproariously at the cleverness of his own wit. No one had told Aeneas that any woman who’d deign to marry him would insist on darkness for the bedding, to better hide his homeliness.
Lavinia, however, had suffered those indignities, those wounds, and at the snuffing of the lamp, she froze and began to weep in the darkness of their bedroom. At his next touch, she ran, hiding herself away from his imagined scorn and disgust in order to rebuild her emotional walls.
When Aeneas finally located her again, sitting under an olive tree, drenched by a summer storm, he found a wife transformed. No longer wary and willing, but icy and disdainful.
He knew he’d erred somehow, but he had no idea how, and Lavinia wouldn’t say.
“I’m sorry,” he told her helplessly, but he couldn’t explain for what.
Lavinia simply turned her back and walked away from him.
The story ended there.
April’s phone rang as she was still mopping her own tears, and she didn’t bother to answer. She’d changed her number several days ago, so it probably wasn’t someone calling to ask about Marcus anymore, but the thought of talking to her mother—the person most likely to call—right now nauseated her.
What the gorgeously written, depressing-as-fuck story might impart about BAWN’s state of mind, she didn’t know. At the moment, oddly enough, she didn’t care.
“No Less a Man” might have been written by her former online friend, the object of her unrequited pining, but it reminded her of another man entirely.
Marcus.
Marcus, who’d burst into her life by defending her against bullies, ones who’d targeted her for her size. No one, not a soul, would have thought any less of him for ignoring the thread, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d called her gorgeous and asked her out. Held her hand. Put his hot mouth on her neck as she shivered in pleasure and sucked until a bruise bloomed on the spot.
Marcus, who hadn’t said a word about what she’d ordered and eaten during their two meals together. Even trusted friends often teased her about the amount of sugar she stirred into her coffee, but he hadn’t blinked, much less chided her.
Marcus, the man she’d cut off before he could finish speaking, the man she hadn’t bothered to interrogate further before declaring him canceled, the man who’d watched her with such confused hurt on his solemn face as they sat in silence in the back seat of that cab.
Early in her friendship with BAWN, when they’d worked together for the first time on one of his fics, he’d struggled with Lavinia’s motivations during an emotionally fraught scene. Eventually, April had broken it down for him in the simplest possible terms.
She has trust issues, she’d told BAWN. Major trust issues. They’re going to color all her reactions to Aeneas, even though she’s trying her best to be fair to him.
Shit, he’d responded. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that before. Of course she has trust issues. THANK YOU. This really helps.
Intending no harm, people often blundered.
Sometimes they blundered because their personal histories hadn’t taught them to be sensitive to certain issues. And sometimes they blundered because—
Sometimes they blundered because they had trust issues. Major trust issues.
Dammit. No wonder she was part of the Lavineas fandom. Marcus probably didn’t want to hear from her. But before she dismissed him as fool’s gold, she needed to be sure, absolutely sure, she was right. She