What I Want #3
She stood and held out her hand. "Up. Slowly." Oliver rose. Marin kept him close to the bed until she was certain the change in position did not worsen his ribs or dizziness. The rope remained around him, not trapping, simply present.
"Sit back." He did. Marin moved between his knees again.
"Now ask me something." Oliver studied her.
"Do you want me to stop looking at Hunger?"
The question struck harder because of where he asked it. Rope around him. His body following her instructions. The temporary imbalance could have made agreement easier. Marin refused the convenience.
"Part of me does."
"That was not the question." She almost smiled. He had learned from her.
"No," Marin said. "I want you to keep looking if looking is what you choose after understanding the danger.
I want you to stop if the evidence says continuing requires taking choices that are not yours.
I want you to tell me when wanting starts writing the conclusion before we have earned it. " Oliver absorbed that.
"And if I still choose to continue?"
"Then I decide what I do next." His hands tightened slightly on the blanket beneath him.
"That answer scares me."
"Good."
"Cruel woman."
"You like me."
"Tragically." Marin touched his face.
"I love you," she said.
The words no longer frightened her because they were new. They frightened her because they were established fact and therefore capable of being used badly. Oliver's eyes changed.
"I love you too."
"That does not make either of us right."
"I know."
This time she let him say it. Marin untied the first knot. Oliver glanced down. "Am I dismissed?"
"The scene is ending."
"Different thing."
"Yes."
She removed the rope slowly, checking skin as each loop came free. Faint pressure marks crossed his torso and thighs, temporary and harmless. The last length slid into her hand. Oliver flexed his shoulders.
"Color?"
"Still green."
"Any numbness?"
"Only philosophical."
"I cannot treat that."
"No one can."
Marin coiled the rope and set it aside. Then she handed him water.
Oliver drank because he had learned that refusing aftercare only resulted in more aftercare delivered with hostility.
Marin made him finish the cup, then gave him half a piece of bread stolen from the kitchen and an apple that had survived the day's travel with only one bruise.
"Luxury," he said.
"Eat."
He bit into the apple. Marin cleaned the rope marks where grit from the road had caught against skin, checked the ribs again, then rewrapped his right hand because the earlier knot had loosened during movement. Oliver caught her wrist gently when she finished.
"Your turn."
"I am not injured." He looked at the bandage around her left palm.
"An audacious theory."
Marin surrendered the hand. Oliver changed the dressing with his left hand and the careful assistance of his bandaged right.
He was slower than she would have been. Marin let him take the extra seconds, watching concentration replace the earlier heat without pretending the tenderness belonged to a different part of the night.
"Pain?" he asked.
"Three."
"Strain?"
"Residual. Better than yesterday."
"Vision?"
"Normal."
"Nausea?"
"None."
"Desire to issue me legally binding instructions?"
"Chronic."
"Concerning."
His thumb touched the inside of her wrist after he tied the bandage. The gesture was so gentle Marin almost resented it.
"How are you?" he asked.
Not medically. Marin looked toward the stove. Their shadows fell across the floor together. Oliver's remained one shape. Nothing leaned wrong. Nothing reached. She realized she had stopped checking it after the first few minutes and had simply been with him.
"Afraid," she said. Oliver nodded.
"Still?"
"More accurately."
"That sounds like you."
Marin sat beside him on the bed. The room had cooled while neither of them paid attention. Oliver pulled the blanket around both of them without turning the gesture into rescue.
"And you?" she asked. He considered.
"Relieved."
"Why?"
"Because I kept expecting honesty to make the wanting uglier."
"Did it?"
"No. More dangerous, perhaps. Less shameful."
Marin leaned against his uninjured shoulder.
Oliver was quiet long enough that she could hear voices moving below them.
"I still want it," he said. "The answers.
The power. The part of me that wants to see what happens when catastrophe is not choosing the timing for me.
I want to stand close enough to Hunger that it has to show me the difference between what it wants from me and what I want from it.
" Marin's stomach tightened. She stayed where she was.
"And?"
"And I want to come back to you afterward because I chose to."
The admission landed more softly than it deserved. Marin felt the instinct to turn it into reassurance and refused that too. She lifted her head.
"You may not." Pain moved across his face.
"I know."
"Not because Hunger takes you. Because you may choose something I cannot follow."
"I know."
"And I may choose not to wait." His jaw tightened.
"I know." She touched his cheek.
"Good."
Oliver laughed softly, without humor. "You have a remarkable gift for making devotion sound like contract law."
"Contract law exists because devotion is unreliable."
"There she is again."
Marin kissed his temple. They stayed like that while the building settled around them.
Voices moved faintly below. Someone laughed in the kitchen.
A chair scraped. Outside, rain thinned against the shutters.
Ordinary sounds. Marin had come to distrust any life that lacked them. Oliver's breathing slowed.
"Do you regret telling me?" she asked.
"No."
"Do you regret wanting it?" Longer silence.
"No."
Marin accepted the answer. She did not like it. Acceptance did not require liking.
"Do you?" Oliver asked.
"Regret asking?"
"Yes."
"No." He looked at her.
"Even now?"
"Especially now."
The stove gave one quiet pop. Their shadows jumped with the flame and settled again.
Marin had spent much of her life believing knowledge reduced danger.
Sometimes it only removed the comfort of pretending danger belonged somewhere else.
Tonight she knew exactly what Oliver wanted. Nothing in the room had become safer.
She reached for his hand. Oliver turned his palm carefully beneath hers, injured fingers closing without pressure. The uncertainty between them remained frightening, warm and chosen enough to face without inventing a promise neither could keep.