I'm having a little trouble finding the motivation and the stamina to finish up my other works in progress, and this hit me when I was trying to get ready for class. I know, it's even more unnecessarily fluffy than usual, but I needed that...

Feedback always helps!

Leprosy

ff lindy

I had been working side by side with her for almost a year before I noticed it for the first time. On her left leg, just above her knee, Pam has a weird patch of brown about three inches across. It's no where near dark enough to be a mole, but her creamy skin makes it noticeably darker than the rest of her leg.

The first time I saw it I thought it was mark from the way she had crossed her legs behind her desk, but when I noticed it again a month later I instantly assumed it was a bruise. I bit my lip and looked quickly away from it because I didn't want her to see that I noticed. In my mind I had already cast Roy as the abusive boyfriend, leaving bruises she would be ashamed of. I thought about confronting her, asking her where the bruise had come from, but I chickened out.

Still, months later, the dark patch was there, and every time she wore a skirt short enough to show even part of it I wanted to study it. I was intrigued by this blemish, this unusual piece of Pam trivia. I knew, in time, that it was not something that would heal; it was not a mark of her recent past. I wondered what the story was, how it came to be, why it was there. She caught me once, staring at it when she had her legs crossed towards me at the table in the break room, and I saw her blush and quickly refold her legs to hide it.

The first night we were together, the first time I made love to the woman I had fantasized about for years, I considered asking her about it. But, if I have learned anything in my 30 years, it is that you should never bring up even the slightest imperfection in a woman when you are in bed together. So, I kissed it whenever I had a chance and knew she wouldn't notice, and I wondered about it for weeks, waiting for the moment I would unearth the treasure of her story.

It was a Sunday morning and she was wearing a pair of my boxer shorts and a tiny tank top. Her hair was scattered across my pillow and the sunlight from outside illuminated the room with diffuse light like a tent on a summer afternoon. She had pushed the blankets down onto the ground and she had one hand tucked under her head, the other playing idly in my hair.

I reached a tender hand down and ran my finger over the discolored patch of skin then looked up at her with a grin.

"The blob," she whispered, and a tiny smile played across her cheeks. "It's the blob."

"What's it from?" I asked, part of me was dying to make a joke, but the wiser side of me, who had seen how scared she'd been every time she caught my eyes on it over the years, warned me not to.

"It's just pigmentation. Not dirt, or a bruise, or leprosy."

"Leprosy?"

"I stopped wearing shorts in the third grade, because people started calling it leprosy."

I forced a small smile to mirror hers, although the thought made me sad. "Kids are mean."

"I tried everything to get it off. In middle school I put bleach on it every night until my mom caught me and started hiding the bleach in the liquor cabinet. It's ugly, I know."

"It's not so bad," I said, running a finger over it again. "It could be shaped like a penis or something."

She let out a meager chuckle. "At least it's not leprosy."

I laughed appreciatively.

"Roy asked if it was contagious once."

"Leprosy or skin pigmentation?" I didn't know which was more absurd a question.

"Skin pigmentation."

"Maybe he meant genetic." I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt, after all, the thought was already crossing my mind.

"I wish," she sighed. "He was afraid to touch it for the first few months we were together. He thought it was gross."

I shook my head.

"He was a duface," she sighed.

I couldn't help but agree with a nod and a grin. I traced the squiggly edge of the mark with my finger. "Is it heritable?"

She nodded, and looked a little apologetic. I imagined my sandy haired daughter complaining to me about her birthmark. I would tell her that it was like the label on a pair of designer jeans, proof that she was made by the best, proof that she was designed by her Mommy.

I smiled at the thought, and must have looked a little dopey because she gave my hair a yank. "You don't have to look so happy about it. When I was little I told my mom that if my kids had blobs I would make the doctors remove them before they were old enough to start school."

"No you didn't."

"Yeah I did," she argued.

"Well, I like it."

She rolled her eyes at me.

"I do. It's imperfect. It's human. It's my Pam."

"Your Pam?"

I ran my hand up and down her leg and hummed an affirmative response. "And if our kids have blobs I'm not letting a doctor lay a finger on them." I shifted my eyes to meet hers, wondering what I would find there.

Her eyes twinkled, without a hint of fear. "And no doctor would," she admitted. "I just wanted to wear those miniskirts everyone had without tights."

"My eighth grade crush had a corduroy one," I admitted, thinking back to my own awkward middle school days and the excitement of seeing the five inches above the knee of a girl when her mom finally broke down and bought her one. "I bet your parents were thrilled that you didn't wear them without tights." Pam's smile grew, proving that I was right. "And frankly, I hope we have very blobby daughters so they don't show off their legs until they're 30." It was another bold statement, a second allusion to the someday-children we had never before discussed.

"You sound like my father," she groaned. "He told me there was nothing wrong with being a little different, and it wasn't ugly in the slightest, but that if no one else ever saw it, that would be fine with him."

"I knew I liked that guy."

She shook her head a little. "You know, he wouldn't like you seeing it either."

"And I'm sure no little brown spot is actually going to keep our daughter from dating, but a dad can dream." I don't know why I kept pushing it. I really wanted a reaction. I at least wanted a smile, or a joke, some acknowledgment that she was hearing me.

"You're going to be that dad, aren't you?"

"You bet."

She sighed, but the glow on her face spoke volumes.

I gave her half a grin, daring her to speak.

"Good."