"Jo, look at me," Henry says with his hands on her face like it all matters. Like anything they do in this world will make a difference. The babies still die and people are just getting older, like falling into the abyss.
"Jo, look into my eyes," he repeats, and Jo looks at him. Really looks.
It's not that she doesn't know what a naked Henry Morgan looks like. They've been a matched pair for months now without any results. She knows a naked Henry, but only in the most clinical way possible. His eyes, though, they are different. She was right that he was kind, and she takes solace in that color of mossy earth that can't decide if it's green or brown.
"Henry, I can't," she says, barely moving her lips.
Perhaps if she is quiet enough, the observers won't hear her. They are always being watched, though, especially now. Every ovulation is an act of science, and every time they have sex it makes her feel like an angry stranger with the one person she realized she needs to trust most in this god-forsaken world.
"I know," he replies softly with his lips close to hers, breathing in her words before they can escape to the others.
They aren't lovers. That would imply freedom to care about him more than just a duty. If they were lovers, he could hold her when they're done, kiss the tears away if she ever let them show, and plant his lips on her temple in the way of small caressing kisses. He could do that for her.
But that, no, that is not allowed here because it is extraneous and not useful the doctors say. Jo doesn't understand that. Before the plague that's how many families had their babies.
There is that one thing that Jo keeps hidden in her heart of hearts. She could tell Henry if she dared, and she knows he'd keep her secret. She's not sure how she knows, but she does.
She doesn't want to have children. She just doesn't. She resents her body being used against her and the resulting lack of choice. Henry doesn't have a choice, either.
"Morgan, move it like you mean it," Mike Hanson, their project counselor, says near them with his hand on a clipboard and the other poised to take notes. Hanson and his partner Karen have come out of the genetic lottery as winners with two boys for their efforts. Somehow that means he gets to rule over her and Henry's reproductive rights.
Henry moves, and Jo feels him inside her. She feels the power in his hips when he thrusts, and she knows the way their sweat-slick abdomens can fit together making them sometimes feel like one being. But it is never enough.
Hanson tells Henry to adjust the angle of her pelvis or to aim for certain parts in her that she's not even sure exist. Jo hates reproductive intercourse with Henry. Hates it.
Sometimes she would just love to have a good fuck. She remembers fucking. When sex was fun, awkward, mildly entertaining, messy and not a requirement of responsible citizens. She'll probably never get fucked again, and that saddens Jo. When she is no longer ovulating, she won't be of use to her society while the men will be paired with women for as long as they can make a viable sperm count.
Henry holds her at her hips and thrusts deeply one more time. Tiny beads of sweat that Jo can almost count one by one dot his forehead as he spills into her.
Before they could possibly enjoy the afterglow like a resonating cadence in music, Mike Hanson pulls Henry away from her and rips off the little sticky data monitors from his body. Morgan slaps Hanson's hand away and glowers at him.
Hanson's assistant Lucas Wahl is taking all Jo's vital signs, too, right there on the table where she and Henry have just been. The procedure is impersonal and invasive, and she isn't given the privacy of a gown to cover herself.
"Okay, done," Hanson declares. "Take your supplements and come back here tomorrow at one o'clock."
Neither Jo nor Henry speak. She's afraid she'd slay Hanson with her sharp tongue if given the chance. She gets up and walks off to the showers, ready to wash the thought of this day away.
Jo is surprised, moments later, when she feels fingertips at her elbow touching her tentatively. Elbows are two of the least private parts of the human anatomy, and yet when she turns to see that it is Henry, she feels touched more intimately than when his penis was in her vagina.
"You forgot your supplements," he says as explanation, offering her the cup.
"Thank you," Jo replies as she takes the cup from him, letting the skin contact linger on his microseconds too long.
"Get some rest, Jo. We'll do better tomorrow," he says with a soft encouraging smile before he backs out of her personal space.
Tomorrow is the one thing they can't count on yet. Not if Jo and the other women can't have children.
She slams back the pills and casts away the small plastic dose up. The crumpled refuse lands on the floor near the trash can, but she ignores it for the shower.