The Shape of Want #4
Nothing answered in words. Marin rested her head against the bedframe.
"It yielded faster the second time."
Oliver took another drink.
"Yes."
Marin rubbed her thumb once over the mark at his wrist. "And the third time."
"Faster."
"Do you think it understood?"
He considered long enough that the storm filled the answer first.
"I think it learned what preserved access tonight."
Marin nodded and left the conclusion there. Oliver looked at her.
"Disappointed?"
"No." Marin took the uneaten corner of cheese before it could fall into the blanket.
Oliver watched her do it. "You are becoming remarkably tolerant of morally unimpressive progress."
"I work with you."
He laughed and nearly dropped the cheese. Marin took it from him before he could contaminate the blanket. The laugh drew Bhodi closer. It crossed nothing. It simply came closer.
Oliver felt it and did not tense. Marin noticed that her own shoulders had stayed loose as well, filed the fact away, and reached for the last piece of cheese.
They finished the food slowly. Oliver's color returned fully. The tremor that had entered his hands after release disappeared. Marin checked the rope marks once more and found nothing she disliked. When she set the salve aside, Oliver caught her wrist.
The rope was off him. No instruction remained between them.
"Was it what you wanted?"
Marin looked at him. The easy answer would have been yes. She had become suspicious of easy answers.
"Some of it."
His thumb moved over her pulse.
"Which part wasn't?"
"When Bhodi pushed after I moved away."
Oliver's expression lost its softness.
"Mine too."
Marin kept their hands joined. "You still wanted it close."
"Yes."
"So did I." The admission surprised him enough to show before he could hide it. Marin let the surprise remain.
"Wanting the pressure did not make the push acceptable."
Oliver looked toward the wall.
"No."
His shadow remained where the lamplight put it for once. Marin threaded her fingers through his. They sat without speaking for several minutes.
The storm reached its center over Caldris. Rain struck the windows hard enough to erase the harbor completely. Somewhere below, timber complained around the wind. A loose sign knocked twice outside and then stopped. Oliver's attention shifted toward the sound.
Bhodi shifted with him. Marin felt the old temptation to separate every reaction into categories and name them before they could become dangerous. She let the temptation pass. Oliver squeezed her hand.
"What?"
"Nothing."
His eyebrow rose.
"Suspicious."
"Current evidence is incomplete." Marin leaned against him.
Oliver rested his cheek briefly against her hair. "That is my favorite version of you."
"You have several."
"I contain multitudes." His shadow deepened with his amusement.
Marin glanced at it, then at him. "You contain a problem."
"Also true." His shoulder remained warm beneath her cheek, the rope having left a faint red line there.
The shadow darkened with the closeness. Marin watched it once, then moved deliberately. She extended one bare foot until her toes reached the edge of Oliver's shadow on the floor. Oliver went still beside her. Bhodi noticed.
Darkness gathered around the contact point. Marin did not withdraw. She had not offered more than that. Neither had Oliver. The shadow pressed against the side of her foot and stopped.
It was not quite touch. Cool absence gathered where lamplight should have been, distinct enough for Marin to feel the edge of it against her skin. Oliver watched her face.
"Still?"
Marin listened inward.
"Yes."
Bhodi remained at her foot without climbing her ankle or using contact as a route to the rest of her. Marin left her toes inside the darkness for three breaths, then moved them away.
The shadow followed half an inch before stopping on its own. Oliver's hand tightened around hers. He had given no instruction. Marin looked at him.
His expression held wonder, apprehension, and the dangerous satisfaction of someone watching an impossible door prove it had hinges.
"Do not look so pleased," she said.
"I am attempting restraint." Oliver's mouth betrayed him.
"Poorly."
"Yet observably."
She kissed him before he could become worse. When she drew back, the shadow remained beside his feet. The storm moved east.
Rain softened by degrees until the harbor lamps began returning through the glass, one blurred light at a time.
Oliver lay down first, still wrapped in the blanket.
Marin joined him. He turned onto his side and tucked one arm beneath her neck.
The rope lay coiled on the desk again. When Oliver murmured her name, no resonance followed it.
Bhodi settled along the wall behind him. Marin watched until the darkness stopped shifting toward every small movement she made and simply held to Oliver's outline. Then she closed her eyes.
Oliver's breathing slowed beside her. His hand remained open over hers rather than closing around it. Beyond the windows, Caldris reappeared wet and silver beneath departing rain. The darkness stayed close. So did she.