What I Want
MARIN
By the time Captain Kelm found them a roof, Marin had stopped pretending the rain was the reason she wanted Oliver somewhere she could close a door.
The building had once belonged to surveyors who believed a government line on a map required a house large enough to impress the wilderness.
It stood half a mile from the inland road behind a screen of fir and slate, two stories of grey stone with warped shutters, a collapsed stable and a brass survey marker set into the front step.
Kelm's people had cleared the lower rooms for the injured fishermen and claimed the kitchen for maps, rifles and a stew whose smell suggested mercy had not extended to seasoning.
Seraphine took the small room beside the stairs after three separate people insisted she needed sleep.
Oliver and Marin were given the former senior surveyor's quarters at the back.
The room contained one bed, one chair, a washstand, a narrow stove and a landscape painting so bad Marin suspected it had been left behind as a defensive measure.
The roof held. The latch worked. At present, those qualified as luxury.
Oliver closed the door behind them and leaned against it for half a second longer than necessary.
Marin noticed because she had been noticing everything about him since the ridge.
His right hand remained wrapped beneath a clean bandage.
He favored the ribs on his left when he thought no one was watching, which was irritating because everyone relevant was watching.
His headache had settled into the line between his brows rather than disappearing.
The shadow at his feet behaved itself beneath the lamp and stove light.
None of those facts explained the expression he had worn after saying he intended to keep looking. That expression had followed Marin down the ridge. She set her medical case on the washstand. "Shirt." Oliver looked at her. "You usually buy me dinner first."
"You ate Kelm's stew."
"Cruel to call that dinner."
"Shirt."
His mouth curved, but he obeyed. The movement exposed the cost before the skin did.
He protected his ribs while pulling one arm free, slowed when the fabric caught the bandage at his hand, then gave Marin the shirt rather than tossing it somewhere inconvenient.
Growth appeared in strange places. Bruising darkened his side beneath the older yellowing marks.
Nothing looked newly displaced. His shoulder had stiffened.
Marin checked it anyway, fingers moving over bone and muscle while Oliver stood very still.
"Breathe deeply." He did.
"Again."
"I have been breathing most of the day."
"Poorly."
"Critic." She pressed two fingers against the lower ribs. He hissed.
"Useful."
"You enjoy that word too much."
"Only when you make it necessary."
The answer usually earned another remark.
This time Oliver only watched her. Marin looked up.
There it was again. Not fear exactly. Fear existed in him tonight, but it had company.
Curiosity. Hunger, though she refused the convenience of using the word for both the entity and the man.
Anticipation. Something almost like relief at having finally named a thing he had been circling for weeks.
She finished the examination before asking anything important. His lungs sounded clear enough. No new crepitus. The hand wound needed cleaning because the bandage had taken rain despite the waxed cover. She unwound it carefully. Oliver's fingers twitched once when air touched the raw edge.
"Spasm?"
"No."
"Certain?"
"Yes. It stopped before sunset."
"Cold?"
"Normal miserable-weather cold."
"Nausea?"
"Gone."
"Headache?"
"Still attempting a hostile occupation."
She cleaned the wound. He let her. The intimacy of that annoyed her more tonight than usual.
Not because she disliked it. Because her hands knew his damage while part of him wanted to walk toward something she could not map.
Marin tied the fresh bandage and kept hold of his hand after the knot was finished. Oliver looked down at their fingers.
"You have a question."
"Several."
"Terrifying."
"Sit."
He sat on the edge of the bed. Marin remained standing between his knees. The position changed something in his face, not submission yet, only attention. He had always possessed too much of it when he chose to give it to someone.
"On the ridge," she said, "you told me you were going to keep looking."
"Yes."
"That was an answer about what you intend to do. I want the answer underneath it." His gaze sharpened.
"What do you want?"
Oliver did not joke. That frightened her more efficiently than if he had. He looked toward the stove. Firelight held his shadow close to the bed. Marin did not follow his gaze for long. This question belonged to the living man in front of her.
"Answers," he said.
"Too broad."
"Power."
The word entered the room cleanly. Marin waited. Oliver's thumb moved once beneath hers. "Proximity." There it was. Her pulse changed. She disliked that her body reacted before her judgment because bodies were embarrassingly efficient at truth.
"To Hunger."
"Yes."
The stove ticked as metal contracted around the heat. Marin released his hand only because she wanted to know whether he would reach after her. He did not. Good.
"Say the ugly version."
Oliver's expression altered by less than most people would have noticed. Marin had learned to measure him in smaller units.
"Part of me wants to know how close I can get before I stop being able to come back unchanged."
"That is not the ugly version." A short breath left him. "No."
"Try again." His eyes found hers.
"I want to know how close I can get while still coming back at all."
Marin felt the answer along her spine. Oliver continued before she could interrupt.
"I want to understand what it sees when it looks at me.
I want to know why it cares about this version rather than the others it keeps wearing.
I want to know what exclusion becomes if I understand it rather than stumbling into it during emergencies. "
"You want to use it."
"Yes."
"Not only when someone will die without it."
Silence. Then, "No." The honesty hurt. Marin had asked for it anyway. She stepped back far enough to lean against the washstand. Her left palm complained when she put weight on it, so she stopped. Pain remained useful when treated as information instead of challenge.
"I am afraid of that," she said.
Oliver's face softened in the wrong direction. Protective instinct. She saw him reaching for reassurance before he spoke.
"Do not make me safer by lying." The softness disappeared.
"I wasn't going to lie."
"You were going to make it smaller." He considered, then nodded. "Yes."
"I am afraid you will get close enough to understand it and discover understanding feels good."
Oliver looked at his bandaged hand. "It already does." Marin closed her eyes for one breath. Hearing it aloud tightened her chest; at least the danger was no longer unnamed.
"I am afraid you will become better at exclusion before we understand what pays for it.
I am afraid the thing in your shadow will learn your preferences faster than we learn its limits.
I am afraid one day you will tell me you can control it and be correct for exactly long enough to make the next mistake convincing. " Oliver remained quiet.
"And," Marin said, because stopping before the worst part would make the rest dishonest, "I am afraid I will love you enough to help."
His head came up. Marin hated how vulnerable that sentence felt. She had faced armed men with less exposure.
"I know what fear does to me," she continued. "It turns uncertainty into procedure. It makes me want rules before evidence and doors before danger has chosen a direction. I can feel the part of me that wants to tell you not to go near it again."
"Will you?"
"No." His breath changed.
"That is not permission," Marin said.
"I know."
"Do not say that automatically."
"I'm not." She believed him.
"I may refuse to go with you," she said. "I may refuse to participate in a test. I may leave a room if what you are doing crosses a line I cannot live beside. I may tell you I think a choice is monstrous. None of that means I get to make the choice for you." Oliver looked at her for a long moment.
"And if I go anyway?"
The question was quiet enough to hurt. Marin had imagined better answers. None survived contact with reality.
"Then you go knowing what it may cost us."
He nodded once. No promise. No dramatic reassurance. No declaration that love would make them choose correctly forever. The absence of comfort made the truth feel more trustworthy. Oliver rubbed his thumb along the edge of the bandage. "You know what I dislike most about you?"
"The list is extensive."
"You make freedom sound expensive."
"It is."
His smile appeared then, small and tired. "There she is." Marin crossed the distance between them and put two fingers beneath his chin.
"Look at me."
He did. The command settled differently than her questions had.
Oliver noticed. So did she. Neither moved.
Their history with control lived in small habits now: the pause before a hand closed, the question asked when either of them could have assumed, the way he waited instead of taking the next inch merely because he knew she would probably give it.
Marin let her thumb trace the line of his jaw.
His attention followed the touch with a stillness that warmed her more efficiently than any practiced seduction.
"Do you want me to take control tonight?" Oliver's pupils widened slightly.
"Yes."
"Why?"
His smile tried to return. Marin pressed her thumb lightly against his lower lip.
"Useful answer." He breathed through his nose.
"Because I have spent all day wanting something enormous," he said. "I would like to want something smaller for a while." That was almost good enough. Marin waited. Oliver understood.