://002. Middles.
The sex that night was lukewarm, routine; the sex he'd grown out of during college, like moving past eating exclusively cold pizza for breakfast. It was better to have it hot and fast and good, after all, than to settle for second best: but wasn't that what he found himself taking lately, second best? From the labs, from himself.
"Something wrong, Mem?" she said lazily, calloused hands folded neatly across her belly; and the shadows around where her legs met her body would've been intriguing if he hadn't been turned away, thinking too hard to pay attention. She wasn't offended, that was the way it was between them, the best intimacy arising when they were both swept along and inspired by their work.
"I don't know," he admitted moodily, broad pale shoulders tensing slightly under the cool ocher of her gaze. She thought he truly had excellent skin; surprisingly speckled with moles along his left shoulder blade, and she used to want to draw lines and connect them into some body-constellation to remember.
"No really," she said, "I can tell you're bothered about something, come on. We've worked together long enough."
Was he fidgeting? How out of character, for the hyper-focused hyper-prodigy to fidget. She hadn't seen this before, and watched with interest as he battled out some inner conflict. She hadn't been aware he ever suffered from inner conflict either. No crises of conscience for this scientist...
"Well," he admitted, at last. "The lab's been progressing slowly lately, you see?"
"You've been uninspired."
"Yes," he said, although it wasn't a question. "I don't know. I've been looking for a new project for a long time. Something to hold my interest. But there isn't much. Maybe.."
"Maybe?"
"I'm thirty-five," he said. "What if you can lose the spark? Early in life? What if I have?"
She rolled up her shoulders and laughed a little, a hoarse little wheeze of a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Plenty of scientists go on working until they die. Thirty-five? That's just an early mid-life crisis. Plenty of people have those and they have other means of fixing them."
He'd turned his head slightly, to better catch her words. "Oh?" he said, sounding abruptly dry, different from the pompous ass he sometimes came across as, in the lab. "What's your suggestion?"
She smiled. "Have you thought about children?"
10/12/07
...ha ha.