Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 23
Elisabeth decided that this was a very appropriate occasion for using her last packet of milk-bath powder. She filled the tub deep and stirred in the powder with her arm, then got in and settled herself in the rich opaque water. She tugged out her ponytail holder, dropped it onto the floor next to the pile of dirty wet jeans and underwear she'd left behind, and submerged herself, to rinse the worst of the mud from her face and hair. (Her brief glance in the mirror had made her giggle at the ridiculousness of it all.) She came up, blowing the water from her lips and wiping her eyelashes, and leaned back to relax with her eyes closed.
Except that she was not precisely relaxed. Despite the luxury of the warm water (a heavenly balm after her wet, chafing clothes), Elisabeth was beginning to doubt the wisdom of separating herself from Giles long enough to take a bath: long enough, more to the point, to think, to entertain worries, to tense up in both mind and body. To cut herself off from the momentum that would make it easier.
On the other hand, she had never before felt such desire and such safety at once, as if the two states were a sort of stereoscopic vision that rendered her world of loving suddenly and wondrously three-dimensional.
She didn't know if she'd ever be able to express any of this to him.
She didn't even know if she ought to try.
A tentative knock came at the door. Elisabeth opened her eyes. "Yes?"
He opened the door a few inches and stuck his face in, carefully keeping his eyes averted. "I brought you something to put on when you get out," he said, "and if you want to fling your wet things out here I'll put them to soak...."
"Rupert," she said, smiling, "you know you may as well come in here."
"Oh. Right," he said, going pink again. His eyes moved from the ceiling corner to her face. After a brief hesitation he came in the rest of the way and closed the door behind him, his soft purple robe hanging over one arm. She nodded over at the chair sitting next to the tub, with her clear-plastic pack of bath things on it; he moved toward it, draped the robe over the back, and picked up her bath bag before sitting gingerly down with it on his lap. She looked up at his face, still smiling gently.
"How you doing?" she asked him.
He blinked and gave several little nods. "I'm—I'm all right. You?"
She was staring at him and almost forgot to answer. "Yes—all right, too."
He turned to look directly down at her, frowning; she frowned back and said, "What's up?"
"Elisabeth," he said, "can I—can I ask you—?" He stopped. She encouraged him with a look.
He started over. "When you—when you said, 'first time out of the gate,' did you mean, first time out of the gate with me? or did you mean...er—altogether?" He regarded her anxiously, waiting for her answer.
Comprehension brought the warmth to Elisabeth's cheeks. She heaved a sigh and sank an inch in the water. At last she drew a long breath and confessed to the tap, dejectedly: "I meant altogether."
A little silence settled on the room, except for the faint lapping of her bath water. Then Giles cleared his throat. "Were you never going to tell me?" he said softly.
She looked up at him with a little grimace. "I was...debating," she said.
"Well, you cut it awfully close," he said, the first faint suggestion of pique in his tone.
She compressed her lips, thinking, then looked up at him again. "But does it matter?"
"Yes," he insisted.
"Why?"
"Well—physically, for one thing," he stammered.
She gave him a look. "I know myself fairly well. Do I have to explain that?"
"I—no," he said, raising his eyes and flushing again.
"Then—"
He looked back down at her, and she broke off abruptly. "It makes a difference to me," he said. "It makes a difference in how I handle it."
"But I don't want there to be a difference," Elisabeth argued.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he challenged her.
She looked away from him and chewed her wet thumbnail. She did not answer him at once; or at all. He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms, staring at the side of her face, waiting. When she couldn't stand it anymore she gave him a reluctant glance. "I don't expect you to understand," she said at last.
His face was impassive. "Try me," he said.
She waved her wet hand in a circling gesture. "It's like—it's like trying to get an actor's union card."
He squinted. "What?"
"You know," Elisabeth said glumly. "You have to get a gig to get a card, but you have to have a card to get a gig."
He was still clearly nonplussed, but judging from his face he was unwilling to say that he didn't understand. He frowned at her, puzzling it out. She decided to help. "For some people, Rupert, it's damned difficult to get in the club of People Who've Done It, without selling your soul in the process."
This he seemed to understand. "I see that. I know that. However, it doesn't explain why you didn't tell me before." His eyebrows lowered in a stern expression.
"Doesn't it?" she said, lifting her head. "Suppose I had told you earlier in the week, instead of leaving you to figure it out." She met his eyes with a glare. "You'd have pitied me. You wouldn't have been so ready to give me an equal footing. You'd certainly never have let it get this far." She was sitting up straighter in the tub, and as she argued she wiped a wet strand of hair from her cheek.
"You don't know that," he argued back, uncrossing his arms.
"There is a nineteenth-century streak in you a mile wide, Rupert."
He braced his hands on the rim of the tub and glared back at her. "Except this isn't about sexual politics, Elisabeth. This is about you and me."
"You're damned straight it is," she said, with energy.
He narrowed his eyes. "About sexual politics?"
"About you and me."
"Oh," he said. He let go of the tub rim and rearranged the plastic bath bag on his lap, folding his hands on top of it. "I see. It is about you and me. Which means that this 'equal footing' you speak of lies in your not having to tell me anything about yourself, while carrying an extensive knowledge about me."
Elisabeth flushed. "I didn't say—that's not what I meant!"
"Isn't it?"
But Elisabeth had sunk back into the tub with primmed lips, quoting softly. "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all."
Giles rolled his eyes. "Would you leave Prufrock out of this?"
But Elisabeth quoted on, almost manically, under her breath. "Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time, for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse—"
"Elisabeth—"
"Highbury bore me, Richmond and Kew undid me—"
"Elisabeth!"
She stopped, dropped her shoulders. Her chin fell almost to her chest.
There was a long silence in the bathroom, except for the faint sound of the water in the tub. Elisabeth stared at the play of light on the white turbid water, a hot wetness gathering in her eyes.
Giles cleared his throat gently. "Can I ask you something?"
His voice was soft. Elisabeth bit her lip hard and nodded.
And of course he asked what she knew he would. "Can I ask why you waited so long?"
After a moment she looked up at him; and in the anxious lines of his face she read—she had been going at him wrong, she had misunderstood—
"You think there's a story," she said in a new voice.
He waited. She sighed, and turned her gaze again to the water. Brought up a hand from the white depths to splash the drying skin over the bit of her breastbone that was above the water. "The thing is," she said to her new bruise, "there isn't a story. That's what's so humiliating."
"That in itself," he said quietly, "is a story, is it not?"
"Okay," she granted him. "So I'll give you the short version." She spoke slowly, choosing her words. "In high school I was naïve, and protected, and self-righteous. In college I was on my own, and—and I figured out that I was afraid of people. And then—in graduate school I figured out that I was even more afraid of myself. So I bolted. I mean, it doesn't take experience to figure out that if you tie yourself to a person that way, you risk….Anyway, I liked my independence, and I could handle the loneliness okay. Plus you can preempt the rejection if you stay out of the game. So…that's the story. Pathetic, but not really tragic." She offered him a glance, then let her eyes fall back to the water.
She couldn't see his face, but she felt the tension in his presence ebb a little.
"So…so what's changed?" he asked her.
"Well…." She lifted her eyes. "I've been to hell; and I came back. And—…" She raised her face to look up at him at last. "And I like you."
She wondered if those two sentences were enough to explain, or if she should try again, to convey something of her new consciousness to him. But in the end she just watched as the beginnings of a smile played at the corner of his lips. His eyes fell to his hands, and the smile grew. "I like you too," he said softly.
Elisabeth felt shaken. She sat up in the water and held onto the rim of the tub. It was a moment before she could speak. "I must confess," she said finally in a whisper, "to feeling a sense of triumph."
His smile grew wider, his eyes still on his hands. "We seem to be thinking along the same lines. While we're being confessional, I have to say—I— Bit of a triumph for the old man, isn't it."
"I know you were never dead from the waist down," Elisabeth said dryly.
He broke into a sudden laugh. Then he put his hand to his forehead and groaned.
"And for the record," she added, making him look up at her, "I haven't been dead from the waist down either."
He smiled. "I believe you." He reached forward and wiped back a strand of her hair that had dried to her forehead. His hand lingered, tracing the round of her cheek with the blunt-soft side of his finger. She shut her eyes and leaned like a cat into his touch. He bent forward and down, awkwardly, so that the bath bag slipped from his lap and flapped onto the floor, and kissed her mouth lightly; testing; savoring. She reached her wet hand up to touch his, and kissed him back.
She was warming the water by the time he drew a long shuddering breath and pulled back.
He was going to stand, but he paused to look at her. "It does make a difference," he said.
She met his eye ruefully, honestly. "I know."
Their eyes met on it for a moment.
"Well." He stood achingly and replaced the bath bag on the chair for her. "I'll take these for you." He gathered her dirty clothing into a bundle under his arm and carried it with him to the door. "I'll start this load, and then," he said with a wry eyeroll, "I guess I'd better go upstairs and check the expiration date on my condom supply." There was a touch of color in his cheeks as he said this, and a mischievous twitch in his lips.
"And you'd best make sure they're the right size," Elisabeth said gravely.
He flushed and laughed. "So you did hear that."
She smiled at him with humorous pity. "You can't buy a break, can you, Rupert?"
"Apparently not."
He had opened the door and was backing through it when she said, "Except maybe now."
He stopped and looked up at her, the shine growing in his eyes again and the little smile on his lips.
"But there's just one thing," Elisabeth said.
"Oh?"
"It's a dealbreaker."
"…Yes?" He looked at her narrowly, hugging her clothing to him.
"You don't call me Liz. Because that just doesn't happen."
He smiled suddenly in obvious relief. "Ah."
"Got it?"
"Right." He paused. "Well, then I have a condition for you."
"Oh? Name it."
"You don't quote me any more Eliot."
She started to laugh.
"No matter how apropos he may become."
She stopped laughing enough to place her right hand over her bruise and lift her left hand toward God. "I promise, no more Eliot."
"Thank you."
They shared one more little smile; and then he swept quietly out of the doorway and pulled it closed behind him.
*
She mounted the stairs, the hem of his robe trailing and flipping a few steps below her as she went. When she entered the loft room, she gathered the excess length of the robe and let it fall straight around her feet.
He was at the washstand in T-shirt and boxers, patting his face dry with the towel he'd taken from the rack; which was why he had not yet seen her in the mirror. After a moment his eyes appeared above the towel and met hers in the glass. He hung the towel and turned around.
For several seconds she watched him try valiantly to control the twitch in his mouth.
"It's all right," she said finally. "You can laugh."
And at this he did smile. "I'm sorry," he said. "I must confess that I did not foresee…." He gestured vaguely at the folds of robe falling around Elisabeth's feet, smiling wider; then put a fingertip to his grin.
"Your taste must not generally run to short women," Elisabeth said, smiling back.
"At the moment," he said, "my taste runs exclusively to you."
Which, for the moment, appeared to be all that needed to be said: Elisabeth went still, and not even her eyes flickered, meeting his.
He crossed the few feet between them without ado; reached to touch her, to lower his head and kiss her mouth. She returned the touch and the kiss—minced two steps closer, to close the little distance left between them—her eyes were closed—
There was time, oh there was time, for their kisses to linger, for his hand to cradle the back of her damp head, for her arms to find a snug hold around his waist. When he moved his kiss inch by inch to the hollow under the angle of her jaw, she drew in a long breath.
"You smell good," she said.
"Mm," he murmured back, "I thought I'd follow your good example in the matter of personal hygiene."
She snorted into a laugh. He raised his head to look her in the face, and she saw that he too was smiling.
"God," he said suddenly, "but it's good to see you laugh again."
She closed her eyes a moment and let that soak in, smiling. Then her eyes popped open.
"You don't, by any chance, think that means your mission is accomplished?"
It was his turn to laugh.
"Rest assured," he said, his eyes dancing as he bent to kiss her—
"Rest assured of what?" she teased him, several minutes later.
"I just told you," he said.
"Oh right." She pulled his head down and kissed him again.
His touch was just the right blend of hard and soft; it turned her own hands into quick learners: and his mouth taught hers likewise, to be an instrument of both benediction and hunger….
His hands told her that he wanted the robe off her. She wanted this also: but at this moment thoughts broke in, and she caught her breath and pulled back from him, to see his face again.
His face was very pink; she suspected hers was too.
"Can we have the light off?" she asked him, swallowing. "I…I want to feel my way through."
His eyebrows went up. "You want the dark?" he said, hoarsely.
"Not—not exactly—" She turned, still in his arms, and saw the candle on his nightstand, next to the lamp. She felt him release her so that she could go to it and open the nightstand drawer, digging for a match. He followed close behind her.
"Are you shy?" he asked her softly.
"No," she said. "…Yes. Not so much about myself, I mean…but a little—"
"About me?"
She nodded, pulling the matchbook out of the drawer and working a match loose. "But that may change…later," she added, giving him a half-smile over her shoulder.
She struck the match and lit the white candle, which took on a warm glow that only increased when she turned off the bedside lamp, leaving the rest of the room in dimness.
He was close behind her: he brushed aside her damp hair to kiss the nape of her neck, his hand stroking her arm. "I can round up five more and my copy of Donne, if you like," he said in her ear.
She shut her eyes in a silent trembling laugh, and leaned back into him. "I think this will suffice," she whispered.
"One candle?" he said, embracing her from behind.
She turned to face him. "One candle's enough," she said.
He kissed her closed eyelid. "I can at least quote you some Donne…'Come madam come, all rest my powers defy—'"
"'Until I labor, I in labor lie,'" she finished.
"Though we're not doing much lying down as yet," he mused. "Think we should do something about that?"
She leaned her head back and regarded him with a mischievous little smile. "'For shame, thou everlasting wooer: still saying grace, and never fall to her!'"
He broke into a loud laugh. "Is that Donne?" he asked her, still giggling.
"No."
He kissed her; and she encouraged his roving hands with her own. "Who is it then?" he mumbled, his mouth in the hair at her temple.
"I forget," she said, helping him find the belt tie of her robe and pulling it undone. "Does it matter?"
"Not anymore," he said, slipping the robe from her shoulders to the floor.
*
She had anticipated difficulty. She had anticipated fright and determent, like a cat walking a narrow parapet and finding no place to jump except into empty space. She had anticipated it for years, so that secretly she expected never to get past it.
As it happened, she passed that fine line of fright without even noticing it.
With his hands and voice guiding her, she followed his touch below the surface of thought, as she had that afternoon in the training room, the day the crystals had shattered.
He lay back and invited her to rest upon him—
Except that where she was going now, he was coming with her. And not into an empty darkness, but into a warm, small darkness of their own, lighted only by the swaying candle flame, the quiet broken only by the whisper of his voice and hers.
Oh my new world—my new found land—
And what she gave him he laid back into her hands: and this time what she sought lay here, in the continual mutual gift and abdication of power. Without marking it, she met him with the same boldness he measured to her, in a rhythm that grew without breaking.
When thou knew'st what I dreamt—
The delicious human otherness of him, guiding them seamlessly close. The taste of the salt of his palm. The candle flame, warping and weaving the shadows in the room, across the walls and the ceiling. His intimate touch, the farthest thing from impersonal and miraculously free of threat.
It was this last that raised her breath and her voice to a soft cry.
As lightning, or a taper's light—
She held him close against her.
*
It wasn't till afterward that she could measure the impact—or the impact could measure her: she was somewhere between laughing and weeping, and nowhere near articulate speech.
When she did open her eyes fully, it was to meet his looking down into her face; his expression was ambivalent, as if waiting for the signal to start worrying.
She gasped into a fresh laugh even as new tears slid down her temples.
"It's all right," she whispered on a breath. And when the pained hope came into his face, she reached up and pulled his head down, so that his brow came to rest on hers. Together they slowly regained their breath. "It's all right," she said again. "Rest on me."
He gave his head a little shake without quite lifting it from hers. "You don't want all my weight."
"Yes I do."
After a moment, she felt him acquiesce and relax heavily upon her, laying his head down; she too relaxed then and shut her eyes, laying her cheek against his hair. His hair, especially at the nape and temples, was now damper than hers.
Her blood cooled wherever the flushed surface of her skin met the air; and as it did so, she became aware of the near-ridiculous awkwardness of the way they were lying: it had always been awkward, she supposed, but she had been carried past it till this moment.
She smiled: she knew of no poet who had mentioned this.
"John Cleveland," she said.
He moved, shifted upon her, turned his head over so that she could meet his eye in the candlelight. "Who?"
"John Cleveland. The name of the poet."
"What poet?"
"The poet I quoted to you a while ago."
"What poet?"
They grinned together.
He shut his eyes. "I'm sorry, love, but I can't answer for anything we said after you came in here wearing my robe…." He shook both of them with a silent chuckle.
"That," she said, "is as it should be."
They were silent again, except for their breathing.
"Okay—" she said after a long moment.
"Yes?"
"—now my extremities are going numb."
"I told you."
"It was worth it."
He plied the strength of his arms to arrange them so that she lay alongside him. "Better?"
"Yes."
Again there was silence between them, as of banqueters resting before a fire. Which, Elisabeth thought, in a sense they were—they had fed one another with themselves, and were both well pleased.
A small shiver began in the muscles of her limbs: it spread, gradually, to the pit of her stomach, so that she was soon shaking visibly in his arms.
He moved his head, but with her head tucked under his chin, he was in no position to look at her. "Are you cold?" he asked her.
She was chewing her tongue to stop her teeth from chattering. "No," she answered, controlling a hard shudder. "It's not cold, it's reaction. It'll pass."
The only way to get it to pass was to relax into it, that she knew; so she sighed heavily and tucked her head deeper under his chin to wait.
Presently she said: "I can feel you worrying. Stop it."
He made no answer except to let out a pent-up breath and attempt to relax with her.
"And anyway," she added, "it's not so much the sex as it is the self-disclosure."
As soon as she said this, it seemed to her that it had been unnecessary, for he nodded without asking questions and gathered her a little closer. "You know," she said.
"I know," he said.
She shut her eyes, and they relaxed together. Gradually her shivering dissipated under their mutual touch.
After a long moment she lifted her head and tilted it back to look at him. "Do you want some tea?"
"Tea sounds wonderful," he murmured.
"I'll go down and make it," she said. She extricated herself gingerly from him, wincing, and rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed. She bent to lift his robe from the floor, turning on the lamp as she did so. "I don't know about this robe," she said. "If I come up here carrying cups of tea, I'll probably trip over the hem."
He chuckled.
She sighed deeply. "Guess I'll have to dig around for some of my own things from downstairs." She made as if to rise from the bed.
"You can't," he said.
"Can't?" She stopped and glanced round at him. "Why not?"
"Because I put all your clothing in the wash."
At this she really did turn round to look at him. "All my clothing?" she said. "I hope you separated them properly."
"Oh, I did," he said, smiling. "The second load is in the washing machine now."
She regarded his innocent look with a sardonic smile. "Well, well, well. You are a devious man, aren't you?"
"Devious?" he repeated, still innocent.
"Yes." She stood and went to his dresser. "Very well, then, I'll put on something of yours."
His eyes followed her wistfully across the room. "Must you?"
She smiled over her shoulder for answer, then bent to dig in his drawers, finally unearthing a T-shirt which she pulled unceremoniously over her head. The hem of the T-shirt fell to mid-thigh. "I'll be back in a bit," she told him, and disappeared out of the room and down the stairs before the little smile could fade from his face.
*
With a cup of fully brewed and doctored tea in each hand, Elisabeth mounted the stairs for the second time that evening, going slowly to avoid spillage, and reentered Giles's room.
What she saw there made her laugh all over again.
He had cleaned himself up; donned his own robe and his glasses; straightened the bedclothes; and wonder of wonders, rounded up a cluster of candles that stood burning on every level surface in the room.
Elisabeth counted the little flames with her nose. "There's more than six here," she said, still grinning.
He shrugged, his eyes twinkling from over his glass-rims.
"A lot more than six," she said, handing him his cup and (holding her own cup carefully high) crawling into the bed to snuggle alongside him. His arm went round her shoulders as he drew his first sip.
"Did I make it right?"
"Yes," he said, sipping again.
"Good." She blew on the surface of her own tea and tasted it; the hot steam spiraled back and tickled her nose.
For a while they said nothing, but sat together and sipped lightly at their tea without any need for commentary. His hand stroked her hair with an absent affection, occasionally waking to caress her neck and shoulder. Occasionally she tipped her head a little to rest lightly on his breast, taking in his scent. "Beats the cigarette," she said once, burying her nose in her teacup.
"Mm?" he said. "What beats the cigarette?"
"Tea. An afterwards cup of tea."
"Yes," he said, "it does beat the cigarette." He chuckled and buried his face briefly in her hair.
She was nearly finished with her cup. She lowered it to her lap and nestled her head under his chin, letting her eyes fall closed for a moment. The warm amber light of the many candles danced behind her eyelids.
"Are you finished?" His voice was as warm as the candlelight, magnified in his chest under her ear. She opened her eyes.
"Oh—yes. Here. I'll take them." She took his empty cup, nested it carefully in hers, and scooted across the bed to the night table. She nudged a space for the cups among the candles, turned back, and found him staring at her.
"God, but you're a beautiful woman," he said.
She stopped where she was, half-kneeling facing him, and her eyes went wide.
"I am?" she said faintly.
His lips moved, perhaps to smile; his eyes were as warm as his voice, shining over the glint of candlelight on his glasses. "Don't you know?" he said.
She tried to frame an honest answer. "I've been told that before," she said finally.
"But you don't believe it."
"Well...it isn't disbelief exactly; more like...it just doesn't seem quite real. Plus," she added, her mouth going wry despite herself, "there always seemed to be some kind of agenda attached to the compliment. Like, you know, to dial up my self-esteem, or—well, something else."
"Something else," he repeated, with a wry smile to match hers.
"Yeah. But," she said, more cheerfully, "there's no way you could have that agenda." She reached out and touched the tip of his nose playfully. "I've seen to that."
"Yes," he said smiling, "you have."
"And—you haven't tried to tell me I'm flawless or anything like that."
"No," he said thoughtfully, "not flawless. Something else."
"Something else?" she repeated.
"Yes." He cocked his head and surveyed her face with a little, affectionate squint. "I'm trying to think how to put it."
She waited while he searched her face with his eyes, until his mouth moved to speak his evolving thought. "You're like…you're like a medieval illumination," he said. "Earthy, not ethereal…rich in color—lively, full of movement—detailed, especially in the eyes." He stopped, and smiled dryly, casting his eyes down to his lap. "That's probably not a very flattering compliment," he said with a little laugh, and raised his eyes again. "But it's the best an old librarian can do…." He went still, looking at her face.
She was sitting on her heels, unmoving, her brimming eyes bright in the light of the candles. She swallowed hard a few times, and drew a long visible breath before she could speak. "Thank you," she said in a whisper. She crawled forward and curled up with him, her face buried safely under his chin, her hands honest and soft conforming to the flesh under his robe. He put his arms around her and shut his eyes.
After a time she moved, disturbing his stillness. "I owe you," she murmured.
His eyes popped open. "No you don't," he said, scandalized.
"I mean," she said, "because I said I would make it worth your while for waiting." She sat up enough to look at him. Her hand moved in a proprietary caress over the soft fabric of his robe.
"Well, that you have," he said, a grin teasing at his mouth.
"Mmm," she said, "I had something rather more specific in mind."
"Oh?" He looked unsure whether to be gleeful or nervous.
"Yes," she said, "I had the idea during the patrol. I planned to give you a proper massage as a means of seducing you. But," she continued with a grin, straightening the fold of the robe at his neck, "you met me half way on that, so it proved to be unnecessary." She leaned forward and dropped a kiss on his smiling lips.
"Oh," he said, his tone much changed.
"Then," she said, "I decided to do it to reward you for waiting while I had my bath. But, you tell me, I've already rewarded you for that. So," she concluded with a mock-sad sigh, "I guess I won't be needing to massage you after all."
"Oh—but—now—" Giles stopped, tried a different tack. "I did get this terrible crick in my neck when that vampire knocked me down…."
She was smiling, her head cocked at a teasing angle.
"Do you have any aromatic oils?" she said finally.
As a matter of fact, Giles did. He directed her to one of the top drawers in his dresser, where a small box of dropper-capped bottles reposed (slightly coated with dust), along with two slightly bigger squeeze bottles of carrier oil. Elisabeth sniffed lightly at each of the bottles, deliberating; but when she came to the bottle of jasmine essence her search was over.
She arranged him, his robe and glasses removed, on his stomach with a pillow gathered in his arms under his chin; then got onto the bed herself, holding her newly-prepared jasmine oil in one hand. She found a seat on his backside and settled herself in comfortably. He uttered a low purr. "I haven't even started yet," she said with a smile.
But she did start, without ado, beginning in long strokes along his back, followed by a gentle kneading. Something in her touch drew a small shudder through his body, followed by a prickling of gooseflesh over his skin like a gust of rain over a puddle. She smoothed her hands over it, and as the oil warmed between her hands and his flesh the goosebumps melted.
She had planned this as a gentle ministry—her fingertips strong under her weight, digging into the fiber of his muscles—but she had not quite been prepared for its effect upon herself. But gradually she became aware of the heat in her hands as a reflection of something glowing, growing in warmth within her. She removed one hand from his skin, added more oil to her other hand, moved on; let it gather as it would, meeting it lightly with a sense of delight. When he made a little noise, a plaint of gratitude, she breathed it in as gratitude of her own.
She felt an urge to hurry the last strokes, to get to the part that was coming next; but she held herself deliberately back, so as to finish the work she had begun. And this was good, as it only increased his pliability and her warmth. By the time she had turned him over, to sit half-propped on pillows with her straddling him, his eyes were glowing, and so were hers.
She found the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, dropping it off the side of the bed somewhere. His hands, not primed by oil and work as hers were, slipped up to steady her hips. She smiled and bent to kiss him.
"My turn now," she murmured, just before her lips touched his.
*
Afterwards, she sighed and collapsed gently against him, like a tired child. He let out a soft breath and let his hands arch gently over her spine, supporting her. He felt like a tired child too.
He shut his eyes comfortably; and they went still together, except for his breathing and hers. It would be so very inadvisable to fall asleep like this, their bodies cooling and sticking together, her form and weight growing awkward curled around him like a caterpillar that had chosen its twig for becoming a chrysalis….He moved one hand along her spine, soothing her unnecessarily, eyes still closed. It would be most inadvisable to fall asleep like this.
Presently she lifted her head. "I'm hungry," she said.
He opened his eyes. "Hungry?"
"Yes," she said. "Are you?"
He thought about it. "Maybe a little."
"I was thinking about raiding the fridge and eating the rest of the pizza."
"It's been done before," he said gravely.
She smiled.
So they went downstairs, dropping from step to step lazily, Giles belting his robe around him, Elisabeth back in the T-shirt and wearing a pair of his sweatpants, the bottoms rolled up in ridiculous balls and the waist turned over and over. They had had fun blowing out all the candles ("Make a—I guess you don't do that in this dimension," Elisabeth said. "Not out loud, anyway," Giles said); and nearly as much fun straightening the bed together.
She thumped down the last few steps and made a little groan. "I am so going to feel all of this in the morning," she said, making his grin slide wickedly for a moment.
Elisabeth decided she wanted to eat the pizza cold. She halved one of the slices for Giles and sat down with the rest loaded onto a napkin at the table, and ate voraciously. She looked up halfway through the second piece to catch him watching her with open admiration. "I guess you really were hungry," he said.
"Researching—slaying—losing my virginity—I've been working hard," Elisabeth said, swallowing a mouthful.
She had said it to win another smile from him, and it did, but the smile was short-lived. She could see him reverting, albeit regretfully, to Giles the Second-Guesser—mind feeling the edges of every horizon, tentative, calculating, cautious. The lines under his eyes were more pronounced than she had ever seen them, and it startled her to realize that what had energized her almost past expression had worn him out.
"You're so tired," she said to him, with a little smile.
He shook his head quickly. "No."
"Yes you are." She got up from her seat and went to him, sitting across the table from her.
"No, really," he said, slipping his hands around her waist as she laid hers on his shoulders.
"You should go on and go to bed," she told him. "I'm really, really wired, and there's no way I'll be getting to sleep any time soon."
"I'm not tired enough to go to bed," he said, his Adam's apple sliding down as he swallowed a yawn.
She laughed. "Rupert—you don't have to prove anything to me. You should go to bed and get some sleep. You've earned it."
He met her eyes finally and ventured, "You really wouldn't mind?"
"No. I really wouldn't." She bent and kissed him lightly, then let go of him.
"Very well, then…." He stood achingly and kissed her goodnight; and she stayed where she was briefly to watch him mount the steps to the loft bedroom. As she sat down to finish her pizza, she saw the lamp go out, and heard the faint creak of the bed as he got into it.
She hadn't been lying to him: she was wired. After finishing off the pizza she cleaned up her mess and began to pace the livingroom slowly, meditatively. She was wired, and stirred up, and aching in all sorts of new places, literal places. Giles's sweatpants were quite ridiculous on her frame; her ankles, bulked by the rolled volume of fleece, brushed together as she walked. This is the sort of thing you don't dream, she thought to herself as she skimmed a hand over the top of his couch—her bed for this past week. You don't dream rolled-up sweatpants and you don't dream about sex that doesn't go wrong or abort itself in some way.
With her hand still out as if to confirm the reality of everything in his flat, she passed his desk, upon which still lay the ancient book they'd consulted earlier, the cloth bookmark hanging limply from between the thick pages. The book of her destiny, in a language she didn't know. Tentatively she reached out and touched the seal on the front cover, a complicated sigil, one that could look ominous or noble in an instant. She wondered what it meant.
Without pausing to do more than brush the surface of that thought, she moved on to the window next to the mantelpiece, insinuated herself between the curtains, and looked out on the neighborhood. Giles's previous girlfriend, Olivia, had looked out this same window and received the fright of her life. Elisabeth waited stolidly for a grisly monster to show its pallid face; but the night remained quiet and commonplace.
She leaned forward to let her face rest against the glass. It was just cold enough that at her touch condensation spread across the pane, radiating from her face and turning the streetlights misty. Elisabeth looked out on this world that was not her own, and knew herself to be afraid: not with the racing pulse and shoehorned breath, but with a steady knowledge, that would not change moment to moment.
She stood there a long time, so long that a new ache gathered between her shoulder blades; then she rose silently and backed out of the little world behind the curtains, into the quiet livingroom. From the kitchen the clock ticked faintly, familiarly. She reached out and turned off the one Tiffany lamp still burning; stood for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, and padded quietly up the stairs to the loft bedroom.
She could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was asleep. She worked the sweatpants down and let them drop to the floor, then reached for the covers and lifted them to get in.
It woke him, but not completely. He gave a snort, and a snuffle: "Wha—?" In the darkness she saw his hand come up, ready to defend himself.
"Shh! it's okay, it's just me," she whispered.
He relaxed with a faint moan of relief, and perhaps a little irritation. But nonetheless he moved the hand he'd raised to welcome her in; and when she'd gotten under the covers with him he drew her close, with a languid, not forcible, touch. Obligingly she nestled close to him and pillowed her head on his chest. He had gone back to the T-shirt and boxers, she found. He let out a long sigh, returning toward sleep.
Under her ear she could hear his breath, and, more definitely, the strong thud of his heart. She didn't like it; she could remember a number of times, even from back in her childhood in her father's arms, that she had shied away from holding a person close enough to hear the sound of their heart. She could remember thinking that hearing it was too close to hearing it stop: too close to the sacred, fearful nexus between life and death.
"You all right?" he murmured, and she realized that he was no longer falling asleep, that he was lying quietly attuned to her rigid stillness.
She made herself relax before she answered with a silent nod.
"…Yes," she added, belatedly.
His heart was still beating under her ear, and she was still afraid.
He moved his hand, to stroke her once; then he sighed again and lay still. Under her ear his heartbeat and breathing slowed and became regular. And gradually she relaxed.
Sleep crept up on her, and she dreamed: she was in a garden, in a manuscript, with illuminations that had come to life, and she among them, one of them, dancing in colorful cloaks and jerkins and hats with feathers, red and blue and gold and green, dancing to the edge of a page, and suddenly she was stopped blindly at the precipice of the margin: "Rupert," she said, and he said, "I'm right here." —and though he did not say it, he may as well have: she was going to have to jump.
She had nearly resigned herself when the dream dissolved, and she fell even deeper asleep, resting.
Waiting.
*
Chapter 24