Toward the Strait #3
"It has now." Her gaze dropped deliberately to his right side. "Sit."
He sat on the edge of the bunk. Immediate obedience changed her expression for half a second, which was one of the reasons he occasionally practiced it.
Marin came to stand between his knees. "Shirt."
Oliver lifted one brow. There were several responses available. The quiet of the cabin and the old memories in the walls made most of them feel cheaper than usual. "Medical?"
"Entirely."
He removed the shirt. Marin's attention shifted at once from lover to practitioner without ceasing to be either.
Her fingers moved along the edge of the bruising with controlled pressure, checking swelling before color.
Her hands were cool from unpacking the metal case.
Oliver felt every place they warmed against him.
Two years earlier he would have turned the moment into performance before it could become vulnerable. Now he watched her face while she worked. Being observed without the shelter of performance left him more exposed than his old theatrics had.
Marin noticed. "What?"
Oliver let himself answer without hiding behind a joke. "You."
Her eyes lifted. "Specific."
He looked around the cabin once, at the old brass hook and the narrow stern window. "You are undressing me in the room where I used to sleep as a child. My sense of chronology objects."
That earned the small change near her mouth he had wanted. "For medical reasons."
"That helps almost not at all."
Her thumb passed beneath the darkest edge of bruising. Oliver inhaled before he could smooth the reaction.
Marin stopped immediately. "Pain?"
"Some."
She changed pressure rather than simply accepting the answer. "More than this morning?"
Oliver took a full breath and rotated carefully. "No. Different because you found the exact place Jasper's bulkhead already introduced itself."
Marin watched his breathing through another cycle. "Shortness of breath?"
"No."
She pressed once more, lighter this time. The bruise hurt without producing the sharp catch that would have worried her. Oliver's hand settled loosely at her hip, not pulling. Marin did not move away.
"You are healing," she said.
Oliver looked up at her. "You sound disappointed."
Her eyes narrowed. "Do not waste a good finding."
He smiled and let the joke end. Marin's thumb remained against his side for another beat after the examination no longer required it. The ship rolled beneath them. Timber settled. Water moved along the hull. The contact stopped feeling clinical because neither of them pretended it still was.
Oliver wanted to kiss her. The wanting was simple.
Human. Familiar. The lamp flame on the desk bent away. Marin saw it first. Her gaze moved over Oliver's shoulder. He felt her body change beneath his hands. Not retreat. Attention.
"What?"
"Stay still."
Oliver did. He knew that tone. Marin moved sideways. The lamp flame remained angled. Her eyes narrowed.
"Your shadow."
Oliver looked toward the wall. It rose behind him.
Mostly his shape. Head. Shoulders. Bare torso.
Except another darkness rested over the upper back.
Two long suggestions descending from either shoulder.
Not arms. Not yet. Something closer to hands without fingers.
Or shoulders belonging to a second body standing impossibly close behind his own.
Oliver did not move. The darkness did. Barely. It settled against him. Marin's breath slowed. Not calm. Control.
Marin kept her eyes on the second darkness. "Does it feel physical?"
Oliver searched the place she was watching instead of answering from reflex. Nothing pressed against his shoulders. No cold crossed his skin, no weight changed his balance, and the muscles along his back knew only the ordinary pull of holding still. "No."
She shifted half a pace, changing her viewing angle while leaving him inside the same pool of lamplight. "Pressure? Cold?"
"Neither." Oliver watched her face rather than the wall. The questions steadied him because they required sensations he could actually report. Whatever the shadow was doing, it had not acquired the right to turn uncertainty into touch.
The firelight leaned farther away. Marin's attention tightened.
Oliver could not tell whether the darkness answered her fear, his fear, the sea beneath them, or the simple fact that both of them wanted to understand it.
He refused to choose the most dramatic explanation merely because it was available.
"Still no contact," Marin said after another breath. The sentence sounded less like reassurance than a boundary entered into evidence.
"Good." Oliver let the word carry the relief it deserved.
Her eyes returned to him. He wanted her closer for reasons that had nothing to do with the experiment and did not pretend otherwise. "Come here."
Marin was already standing between his knees, but she understood the distinction. She closed the last inches herself and set both hands against his shoulders. The shadow behind Oliver deepened without wrapping around her. He felt nothing from it and everything from her.
Marin looked past him once more. "Our standards are becoming context-sensitive."
Oliver smiled. "Modest, but adaptable." He let the joke stop there.
Marin looked at him again. He saw the decision before she made it. Then she kissed him. Not tentative. Not testing. A kiss chosen partly because something watched. Perhaps especially because something watched. Oliver's hands tightened at her hips before he remembered his ribs.
Marin remembered for him. She shifted closer without pressing his side. Efficient woman. His mouth curved against hers. The shadow on the wall moved. Marin stopped kissing him. Oliver stopped with her. The darkness continued for half a heartbeat. One stolen fraction of movement.
Then stillness. Neither breathed. The lamp flame recovered. Marin touched her forehead to his.
"Tomorrow," she whispered.
Oliver understood. Observation. Documentation. Not tonight. He kissed the corner of her mouth.
"Tomorrow."
Outside the stern window, Caldris had disappeared.
Nothing remained behind them but black water, and the safer escort Dain had offered would leave without them tomorrow night.
Ahead waited the Sable Strait. Oliver looked once toward the cabin wall.
His own outline stood dark against the timber.
The second suggestion remained close along his shoulders, silent and impossible, carried west by the same ship.
He had chosen the route while shore was still beneath his feet. Marin had chosen to come beside him. Whatever else had followed them aboard had not been asked. The Kraken sailed on.