Chapter Eighteen

For some time we just ... coexisted. In Orion's bed. With Scraps curled up against me. We hadn't had sex (though that prospect now seemed more than likely). We'd kissed a lot, and slowly, like we had all the time we'd ever need, like this was the only communication required.

We'd left the light on. For long stretches of time we just looked at each other, our fingertips tracing facial features, our lips mapping a geography of skin and muscle and bone. I'd never experienced anything quite like this elongated period of ... it wasn't foreplay. It was its own thing entirely. The kissing would intensify, our bodies pressed together, still clothed, and then Scraps would make a ridiculous sound in her sleep, or one of us would fall back a little to the looking , or we'd just slow down again.

Time changed, flowed, bent, rose up, then melted back down again into something that carried us along without weighing us down.

Maybe this was making out, which I'd always just assumed referred to the kissing you did when you were about to fuck. Or maybe this was making love, which I'd always just assumed was an outdated euphemism for fucking that was mostly used by the type of people who ascribed way too much bullshit to sex.

This felt like a thing we were inventing that was neither and both and a lot more besides.

"I do have all the necessary supplies," Orion said as we lay on our sides, sharing one pillow, our fingers touching between us. "In the event we want to do something that requires condoms or lube." He paused. "Or sex toys."

"I'm in favor of all of those things." And I was. "I'm also in favor of doing this some more. I mean, if you don't mind."

He exhaled. "Oh. Good. I mean, I am also theoretically in favor of doing other things. But this is nice."

"Nice" seemed inadequate, and I thought he was reconsidering the word, so I drummed my fingers against his. "I'm not even sure what this is, to be honest."

Orion's eyelashes fluttered. "I've decided not to overthink it."

"Oh, is that an option? I had no idea. I'm learning so much right now."

He smiled. "My old therapist would not be thrilled with this as a thing I am role modeling."

"I always thought therapy was overrated," I said.

"If you find the right therapist and you're in the right frame of mind, it's life changing. If you don't meet those conditions, it can be anything from damaging to ambivalent."

I shook my head. "Sounds terrible."

"What? Deciding you want to change the way you deal with things and consulting a professional for help doing that?"

"See, that makes it sound very rational."

"It is rational."

"Nope. I've decided it isn't. The last thing I want to do is relive all the stupid shit I've done in my life."

This time he drummed my fingers. "Even if talking to someone might help you understand it better?"

"Understand what?"

"Yourself. Who you are. What you want."

"Maybe I want, I don't know, a career in finance and perfect teeth."

For a long moment he didn't say anything. Then: "You really can't get over the teeth thing, can you?"

I groaned. "If I start kissing you again, will it distract you enough to stop talking about therapy?"

"Hmm." He gave this a lot of deep thought. "I'm not sure. You might have to test that strategy and see what happens."

I huffed. "I require absolute certainty."

"No risk, no reward." He drummed my fingers again, and not to be mushy or romantic or any of those things, but even just that, this light pressure of his fingertips on my skin, made little tingling buzzy sensations travel through me.

"Is that the new ‘No pain, no gain'?" I asked, fighting to keep from just kind of dissolving into a puddle of lovey-dovey goo.

"‘No risk, no reward' is more accurate across contexts. ‘No pain, no gain' has really broad metaphorical applications, but it gets confusing when people also use it for its limited fitness applications, which are arguably not that helpful."

"Like you can't run a marathon without pushing through the first twenty-five miles in agony?" I suggested.

"If you can push your body through twenty-five miles of agony just to run a marathon, you should definitely go to therapy."

I gasped. "You don't embrace marathons as milestones of physical fitness?"

"That is not what marathons are." He stretched out on his back. "I'm not sure I believe there are generalized milestones of physical fitness. Everything I can think of that might qualify really doesn't actually matter."

"Like push-ups and pull-ups?"

"Or running a mile in nine minutes, or having a specific resting heart rate, or a particular body fat percentage. I know a lot of people who can meet all those criteria but aren't really healthy . I could actually make the argument that it's impossible to reconcile actual mental health with a lot of those fitness metrics, now that I'm outside that world."

"Huh." I had to shift closer to roll onto my back because Scraps had snuggled up behind me, so by the time we were both looking up at the ceiling, my arm was lying on top of his.

And our hands were lined up.

And he turned his over so we were palm to palm.

And I sort of slightly curled my fingers through his.

And then we were ... holding hands.

"I guess it depends on how you measure health," Orion went on, as if he was still deeply contemplating this dumb thing I'd said about running a marathon. "Can you really divorce physical health from mental health? If you have five percent body fat and perfect cholesterol, but you're a walking ragemonster, can you really call yourself healthy? Which isn't even taking into consideration all the medical evidence that seems to show how flawed a lot of our markers for, say, ‘healthy body weight' are. So I'm not sure. I used to think that if I was in good enough physical condition, I could kind of ignore all the rest of it, but now I think that's just a really toxic message that we deliver through the medium of professional sports."

I leaned up on my side and kissed him. "You're like really fucking hot right now."

He blinked up at me. "Why? Because I overthink things?"

"Because you think about things at all."

This time the kissing lasted longer, and might have shifted into a form of kissing that naturally extended to other activities ...

Except that was when the power went out. Because of course it did.

I absolutely did not panic. No matter what anyone claims. It was not necessary for Orion to pin me back against the bed, bring his lips to my ear, and whisper, "If you freak out, I can't ethically have sex with you, so if that's your objective, take some deep breaths."

Having said that, and despite the under-no-circumstances panicking, the idea of sex later was supremely focusing.

"I'm fine," I said, in my definitely-not-panicked voice.

He pressed his cheek against mine. "I've been here through a lot of blackouts. I've got plenty of candles. And we chopped a ton of firewood."

"I like that ‘we,' buddy."

A huffed laugh, warm against my skin. "Do you want to stay here while I go do things?"

"Oh, hell no, no fucking way am I staying here in the dark. Do you even realize how fucking dark it is in here? I can't see anything ."

"Your eyes will adjust somewhat, but until then, you can hold my hand."

"I guess that's okay," I grumbled, too legitimately relieved to pretend I wasn't.

The first thing he did was guide me into the doorjamb.

"Ow! Fuck!" I stumbled into the other one, attempting to escape the first one. "Jesus!"

"You okay?" he asked, his tone suspiciously bubbly.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"Noooooo."

"You're a horrible person. You just led me into a wall! If this was a trust exercise, you'd fail it!"

This time he went behind me and wrapped his left arm across my chest. "Is this better?" he rumbled against my back.

"Did we decide to have sex instead? Because the answer is yes; I'm just not sure about the position."

"Focus, Cleary."

"Yes, sir."

Another laugh. "Oh, is that how it is? Am I supposed to be threatening to take you over my knee if you misbehave?"

I nudged my butt back into him. "You'd have to catch me first."

"Okay, okay. We're going to move forward, and I'm going to lead."

"You're ... leading from behind? Is that like topping from the bottom?"

He growled and bit my ear. "Candles."

"Right."

"And lighting a fire."

I sighed. "Fine."

So that's how we moved through the hallway and into the kitchen. I'd pulled off my socks (because I can't stand having socks on in bed, I don't understand it, it's terrible), and now my bare feet were numb against the floor, but Orion did a reasonably good job at navigating us through to the far drawer, at which point he put my hands on the counter and moved away, to my regret.

We hadn't even actually fucked yet, and I missed his touch like we'd spent months sleeping in each other's arms. It was so disorienting. I was glad to be able to stand still while he got out candles and matches and conjured light from the dark.

"Better?" He handed me a candle.

"Uhh, yes. I'm going to put on my socks."

He looked down. "Yeah, good priority."

By the time I returned, he had also made fire. Good to have a skilled person around to do these things. I wasn't at all certain I could just put some wood in a stove and make it produce more than a match-flare.

"Is it psychological or am I already freezing?" I asked, propping my still-cold feet nearer the woodstove.

"The thermostat goes down to fifty-three at night."

I stared at his shadowy face. "Fifty-three? What are you, a polar bear?"

"There are a lot of studies about the positive effects of cold on sleep." A flash of teeth. "Just be grateful I'm not making you do an ice water plunge."

"An ice water plunge ? What kind of masochistic crap is that?"

"Evidence-based masochistic crap. Good for the metabolism."

"I call bullshit."

He swooped down to kiss me. "And that opinion is based on all your medical knowledge?"

"Uhh, that humans can die of freezing in ice water? Yeah, yep, I think that's my medical knowledge, and, furthermore, I don't think you can argue with it." I grabbed the back of his neck and held him there in kissing distance. "Can you, Dr. Broderick?"

"And the studies about the positive effects of—"

I kissed him. And then again. "Funded by Big Ice, trying to get some good publicity."

He laughed. And god, it was good to make him laugh. It was good to feel like he thought I was funny, and clever.

I shoved him away. "Now what? What do we, like, do ?"

Orion sat down in the chair beside mine. "The normal things people do at"—he checked his fitness watch—"just after one in the morning."

"Can't. No internet for porn and/or YouTube videos about hoof abscesses."

"Sorry, what? The porn I caught, but what was the other thing?"

I sighed with extreme drama. Then, because I hadn't been quite dramatic enough, I inhaled and did it again, with better results. "There's this Scottish dude whose channel is all just him going around to different farms and addressing all these hoof issues? It's great. He's fantastic. Lots of draining things and scraping things and inflamed tissues and pus."

In the candlelight, he looked curious but not disgusted. "That's what you watch on YouTube?"

"I mean, it's one of the things I watch on YouTube. I get into stuff and then I move on. Like wood turning. I watched all wood turning for like a month last year, and now it's been so long it doesn't even come up on my recommendations anymore."

"I don't even know what wood turning is."

"It's—look—it's just what it sounds like. You have some wood, you attach it to a thing I forget the name of, which spins it super-duper fast, and then you sorta chisel it at high speed until it becomes a vase or a lamp or whatever else you want it to be."

"Wild."

"It's really cool." I could tell he wasn't convinced. "Why? What do you watch on YouTube?"

"Oh, you know. The science of ice water plunges. How the brain learns new skills. Instructional design."

I just gaped at him. "You use YouTube to like ... enrich your knowledge about the world, or some shit? Who does that?"

"More than just me, judging by the number of videos."

"Yeah, but ..." I couldn't wrap my head around this. "YouTube is where I go to relax . How can you relax if you're watching ... what the hell is ‘instructional design,' anyway?"

"It's basically a way of talking about how to teach new materials to people in the most effective way to meet their goals."

"Ugh. I can't even with you. Give me some pus-filled abscesses any day of the week."

He laughed. Then I laughed, because yeah, good line, me.

"On YouTube," I clarified. "I don't want to actually see them in real life."

"That seems fair. So. Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"We never went to sleep in the first place."

The wind picked up outside, howling more intensely. I shivered, even though I wasn't cold.

Orion stood up and held out his hand. "So let's go back to bed and not sleep ."

When a man you're into propositions you in the middle of a storm by candlelight, you really have few defensible choices.

I opened my mouth to say something sexy and flirtatious, but what came out was, "But what if we have sex and then you remember that I'm a horrible person who destroyed your life and you actually detest me?"

"I don't detest you."

"That's the word you used—I remember it really fucking clearly."

He pulled me into his arms. "Well, I don't detest you now. And I'm not worried I'll detest you because we had sex."

"No, but—"

"Des, come on. It's the middle of the night. Let's just see what happens, okay?" He kissed me.

We went back to bed. In a manner of speaking.