Chapter 9: Intervention

As the elevator doors closed on Steve, something closed inside Tony. He was numb. Except for the ache deep between his thighs, he didn't feel much of anything as he walked slowly down the corridor back to the shop. He retrieved the crystal glass from the work table and poured another scotch.

He was headed back towards the sofa when he tripped over Steve's duffel bag, sloshing liquor onto the floor. In a daze, he squatted down and unzipped it. Just like Steve said, it was full of papers, all of them crumpled up together like in a waste paper basket. Plopping down cross-legged, he pulled a handful into his lap. He selected one and flattened it out against the cement floor. It was a big piece of newsprint with a pin-up girl slinking down the middle of the page in a black satin lingerie set, hair tumbling around her shoulders, her expression one of wry amusement. For a second, Tony's heart stopped: it was Peggy Carter. But, no… it wasn't. It was him. He took a big gulp of scotch and turned the drawing face down on the floor.

He flattened out another one, a second piece of newsprint. It was another pin-up, same notorious Bettie Page get-up, same wry expression, only the model was male. Tony had no trouble recognizing himself this time, what with the dick and the beard and the hairy legs and the whole nine yards. Somehow viewing this one required an even bigger gulp of scotch. "What the fuck, Steve," he muttered to himself. "Like, what the actual fuck." He put all the papers back in the bag and zipped it shut, then shoved it under a shop table with his foot.

He retreated to the sofa with his drink, collapsing into the cushions. Beside his leg, he noticed a little streak of dried blood on the leather upholstery, and he flaked it away with his fingernail. For several minutes afterward, he stared into space, feeling nothing but the aching, sticky burn deep inside his body. He shook himself.

"Hey, fellas," he called, "anybody got the remote?" A robotic arm appeared over his shoulder, remote extended.

He turned on the local PBS affiliate. The pledge drive was over, replaced by an equally bone dry American Experience documentary about the protection and recovery of art during World War II. Black and white stills marched slowly across the screen while a dispassionate narrator read primary source documents. American Experience was, Tony remembered, a show that Steve had once described unironically as 'riveting.' Tony suspected the man might also give rave reviews to drying paint.

On screen, a photograph appeared of a young GI holding up a looted Rembrandt he'd recovered from a tin mine. He grinned madly at Tony across the decades, like an angler who'd landed a twenty pound bass. Tony smiled absently and sipped his drink, remembering a time he'd gone with Steve to see a very middling George Clooney movie about the Allied forces' art recovery unit.

"I would have loved that job," Steve had said with wistful envy as they'd walked out of the theater. "Can you imagine finding a Michelangelo in a cave? What a thrill."

"Didn't you single handedly rescue, like, two hundred allied POWs or something? That wasn't thrilling?" Tony asked, amused.

"Well, sure, I guess," Steve had said, with typical, aww-shucks humility, "But not as thrilling as a Michelangelo."

Tony took another swallow of scotch. The ache between his thighs was making him feel stiff, and he shifted uncomfortably. Steve. He couldn't think about Steve. It hurt too much.

He turned his attention back to the screen. There was an external shot of a chateau, then some interiors of its extensive wine cellar, stuffed floor to the ceiling with paintings evacuated from the Louvre before the invasion of Paris.

Another image appeared, also taken in the wine cellar. A GI sat cross legged on the floor in front of a life size Roman marble of a nude figure reclining on a bed. He had a big pad of newsprint in his lap and brandished a stick of charcoal; his handsome profile was screwed up in concentration. Tony sat bolt upright like he'd been rammed in the ass with a poker. It was Steve. The universe was out to get him or something. He grabbed the remote and increased the volume.

The narrator intoned drily: In the winter of 1943, army captain Steve Rogers, known popularly as Captain America, was granted a special three day leave. As a gesture of gratitude for his heroic service, the French government gave Rogers special access to the Louvre's evacuated collection at Chambord. The location of the collection was top secret. Rogers, a formally trained artist, filled a number of sketchbooks during his stay, though he had to leave them behind due to security concerns. They remain in the Louvre archives.

The image of Steve faded, replaced by a series of sketches, all accomplished copies of masterpieces rendered in charcoal or pastel. The picture changed again; it was another photograph, this one of Steve face to face with Da Vinci's John the Baptist. The expression on Steve's face was rapturous. He looked so young. He was so young.

Over the image, the narrator said: In his journal from the period, Rogers describes the visit succinctly as "the best three days of my life." Just over a year later, Captain Rogers' would be presumed dead. He would not see the Louvre's works restored to the museum setting for decades.

The screen changed again, to a color photo this time. Tony was so shocked that he jumped to his feet. It was a picture from the infamous "class trip" to Paris. The whole Avengers gang (minus Thor, because you just can't take him anywhere, usually because you can't find him to take) was standing in front of Napoleon's monumental equestrian portrait. Steve was pointing upwards and talking animatedly like an enthusiastic docent, all his good little students nodding and following along, all of them except Tony. Tony stood with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling over his tinted glasses, and ignoring the painting completely. He was looking at Steve. It was before they'd started dating, though certain ideas had started to percolate in Tony's mind by then.

The presence of an archive photographer had been one of the museum's conditions for an after hours visit, but Tony had never seen any of the pictures. Tony remembered now, vaguely, the Louvre's photographer trailing them silently through the galleries taking candids. She'd been a sleek blonde, definitely his type, and she'd slipped him a card in case he wanted to "regarder les photos." Somehow, he'd managed to lose her number before he'd even made it back to the hotel, which was probably telling in retrospect.

The image shifted again, to Steve studying the serene face of Michelangelo's Dying Slave. Tony, in the background, was studying Steve, with the unconscious absorption of a man who's got a terminal case and doesn't even know it yet. You poor bastard, Tony thought, regarding himself, you've still got a long way to go before you get him in bed, and it's going to just about eat you alive before the end.

And that's where the documentary ended, with Steve Rogers heroically returned to the land of the living, and the artwork returned to the Louvre. Credits rolled.

Turned out Steve was right about American Experience. It was riveting.

Tony turned the tv off and sat back down. He hadn't known any of that about Steve visiting the Louvre collection in the French countryside. He wished he could ask Steve about it now. Had they let him touch the marbles? Had he seen the Mona Lisa, face to face, without the ropes and the glass? Tony was filled with regret. He'd just wasted two weeks being upset with Steve about…what exactly? About an ill-timed erection? About being stupid in love with Tony at a time when Tony did not feel particularly lovable, which in turn had made Tony feel uncomfortable? In retrospect, it seemed so fucking dumb, a colossal waste. The Tony in the documentary he'd just seen would have done anything to be in a room with Steve's erection, ill-timed or otherwise. He'd say the same for himself now.

And speaking of Steve's erection, my god, but Tony hurt. Every few seconds, there was a dull throb between his legs, with a sort of burning in between. Steve had really done a number down there. Tony had to get his mind off of it, the pain and Steve both.

He stood up, taking the scotch with him, to find his cellphone. He initiated Oz, the Great and Powerful, and called Pepper.

"Hey, Pep," he said. "Sorry I left you in the lobby. Steve was here saying goodbye."

"Goodbye?" She said, sounding alarmed.

"Yeah, Fury sent him to the Balkans. Actually, is Belarus in the Balkans? I can't remember. He's going there now, to Belarus, which may or may not be Balkan. Doesn't matter. You know, I don't even know why he's going. We didn't get into—"

"Tony," Pepper cut in, "have you been drinking? Are you drunk right now?"

That's right, he was. He'd sort of half forgotten. "Yes," he admitted, "but it's not like you think. I'm not on a bender or anything."

"Honestly, Tony, right now I don't know what to think. I haven't heard from you in two weeks—" her voice was rising.

"Something is wrong with me, Pepper," he said frankly, "Bad wrong. Like, I'm not dying, but, well, it's complicated."

"I want to see you, Tony. I will not leave without seeing you."

"Right," he said, slurping from his glass. "That's what I was afraid of. So, listen. I'm going to ask you to see Bruce first. He's up in the lab. He'll explain it better than I can, with the charts and everything."

"The charts?!" Apparently, something about the concept of charts edged her towards hysteria.

"Did I say charts? I meant bar graphs."

"Bar graphs are charts, Tony."

"Well, just shut your eyes for that part of the presentation, okay? Anyway, when you're finished, come see me in the shop."

"Okay," she said, dubiously.

"Trust me, it'll be better this way."

He hung up, dreading the afternoon with his whole being. He knew it was a bad idea, but he topped off his drink.


"Tony?" Pepper called, her heels clicking softly across the concrete floor.

"Yep," Tony said, shaking himself out of a doze. He stuck up a hand over the back of the sofa. After his phone call with Pepper, he'd gone horizontal. The pain had been fairly steady, and he'd been fairly drunk. He sat up slowly, hoping at least one of those conditions might have changed during his nap. Neither had.

Pepper eased down beside him, so close that their knees bumped. Her nose was freshly powdered, but she hadn't been able to do anything about her red-rimmed eyes. She smiled at him.

"Oh, Tony," she sighed. She looked at him for a minute, taking stock of the disaster, and then reached out tentatively with her hand. When he didn't move away, she fingered the blunt edges of his hair, just like Steve had done. "We're going to have to do something about that," she said, tucking it behind his ear. "And we'll have to get you some things that fit. Bruce says that you've been barefoot for two weeks."

"It's not permanent, Pep. I mean, Thor will show up eventually, and we're actually making some progress on replicating extragen in the lab. We're making something kind of close, anyway. I don't need a whole new wardrobe."

"I'm not talking about a new wardrobe. I'm talking about a few things. I don't think it would be extravagant for you to have a pair of shoes."

Clothes seemed like too much trouble. Shoes seemed like too much trouble. But then, the pain and the scotch made everything seem like too much trouble, including Pepper.

"Would I have to try these hypothetical clothes on?" he asked wearily.

"Yes. But I think that if you look a little more like yourself, you'll feel a little more like yourself. Bruce says you might be depressed."

Tony snorted, "Well, that one should take the trophy for understatement of the year. Everybody else can just go home. I cry every time I get in the shower, Pep."

"Oh, Tony," she said, with an incipient sniffle.

"Don't," he said sharply. "If you start crying, I'll start crying, and I'm dehydrated enough as it is."

Pepper clasped her hands in her lap, and took a deep breath, tucking away her distress somewhere around her immaculate person before she continued, cool and collected, or at least appearing to be, "I'm glad you brought that up. You said you aren't on a bender."

"I'm not," Tony said, though he suddenly longed for another drink.

"And yet," Pepper checked her delicate gold watch, "you are drunk at 11:45 in the morning."

"It was a special occasion."

Pepper lifted her eyebrows expectantly. Well, Tony decided, she asked for it.

He pulled the plaid fabric of his boxers high up one thigh, revealing streaks of dried blood. Pepper's face performed a particularly Pepper-like contortion in which she pursed her lips and tucked her chin. It was a maneuver she executed when confronted with something that confounded all known rules of etiquette; Tony had been on the receiving end many times.

"Is that…blood?" She asked, swallowing.

"Yep. Turns out that while I may be the playboy of the western world, I am not the playgirl. Up until an hour ago, I had a fresh factory seal down there."

Her face performed a series of color changes from pink to white and back again.

"No," she said finally, "you don't mean that you and Steve—?"

"Punched my v-card this morning? I do indeed. And it hurts like a bitch, Pep."

"You had sex like this? For the first time? And then Steve just left?" Her voice was rising in pitch; in a second it would be beyond the realm of human hearing, "He left you like this? By yourself? That, that—" She struggled to find the word to convey the depth of her loathing.

"Careful there, Pep."

"That swine!" she finished, breathing hard. "Come on," she said, grabbing his elbow, "we're going upstairs. I'm going to take care of this."


Pepper installed Tony in the soaking tub of the penthouse, filled almost to overflowing with very hot water and expensive smelling bubbles. He didn't know where the bubbles had come from; he didn't think he'd had a bubble bath since he was in diapers, but it wasn't bad. The hot water, along with some Tylenol, eased the ache inside him.

Pepper's knuckles tapped against the bathroom door, "Tony, are you in the tub?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'm coming in to wash your hair." She did not, he noticed, phrase it as a question. She came in with a big cup, a comb, and an acutely sharp-looking pair of scissors.

"I feel like you're about to stab me in the bath like Marat," Tony said.

"If Steve were here," Pepper said, settling on a little stool beside the tub, "I'd think about stabbing him." She rolled up the sleeves on her dress to the elbow and then submerged her cup under the bubbles. "Close your eyes," she instructed, and then poured the water over his head.

"Can we add this to the list of stuff you'll do for me? Like, contractually?" Tony asked.

"Please don't change my mind about who I want to stab," Pepper said dryly as she started to work the shampoo through his hair. Her fingers, rubbing muscular little circles against his scalp, made him want to purr. He sank down a little further into the hot water.

"It wasn't really Steve's fault, you know," Tony said. "It was my bright idea."

"Oh, that I believe," Pepper sniffed, "but he should have known better."

"He did. I just didn't give him much of a choice. I can be fairly persuasive in that department. I was on the shortlist for Sexiest Man Alive, you remember."

"I remember," Pepper said, and Tony could practically hear her eye roll, "I was so relieved when they picked someone else. There would have been no living with you. Who was it that year? George Clooney?"

"Brad Pitt," Tony said with chagrin, "For the second time. You'd think they'd want to spread it around, but no. And I guess they probably won't call this year, either, huh?" he said, jutting his chin towards the body under the bubbles.

He was surprised when Pepper leaned forward over his shoulder and put her arms around his neck. She planted a kiss just at the corner of his mouth. "You're still sexy, Tony," she said, with surprising tenderness, and nuzzled her nose against his hairline. "You must be, or you would never have convinced Steve Rogers to do something so stupid."

"Thanks, Pep," he said, genuinely touched.

She withdrew her arms and started rubbing his head again, this time with conditioner. Tony realized he felt completely safe for the first time in weeks, like a languishing houseplant that had finally made its way to a master gardener after being overwatered, underwatered, and given varying shades of light ranging from way too much to not nearly enough by a series of well-meaning novices. Pepper, by contrast, seemed to understand the specifications for his exotic foliage. He let his head fall back against the tub and closed his eyes.

He thought guiltily of Steve, stuck on some miserable little plane to the maybe-Balkans with a bunch of unsmiling black suits and a three ring binder chock full of geopolitical implications. Unlike Tony's petted and drunk self, Steve had absolutely no room to go to pieces. What had Tony done to him? Probably something terrible.

"It was really weird," Tony sighed. "The sex, I mean. I felt like I was only there in my body about half the time. When I wasn't there, I kept trying to get back in. And then suddenly I would get back in, and then it was so intense, I felt like I was drowning."

Her hands stilled momentarily against his temples. "That sounds terrible," she said.

"You know," he said, thinking about it, "it wasn't. I mean, it was a lot, but not actually bad until the end; the blood did kinda traumatize both of us. It was just the shock of it, y'know? And then Steve's car was there, and nobody got to finish, not that anybody would have anyway, I guess. It was definitely coitus interruptus do not resuscitatus at that point. Anyway, I could barely get Steve out the door before the SHIELD monkeys came winging in."

"Do you regret it?" She asked simply.

"I don't know." He considered it a moment more. "Maybe. It's conditional. If Steve doesn't come back, then I don't regret it for a second. If we hadn't fucked, we would have fought. Better that the last thing we did together was sex, even if it was—whatever it was. If he does come back, and he'd better, I think we'll both agree it was a mistake."

"He'll come back, Tony," Pepper said with certainty. Then, with hesitation, she asked, "Will you try it again? With you like this?"

Tony pondered the question, feeling a renewed ache in his groin. He could still feel the uncomfortable commingling of burn and throb deep inside him, but if he concentrated, he could feel something else, too. Tony thought of Steve's cock rubbing up and down his wet slit, of Steve sucking off his wet fingers, and felt a little blip of desire.

"Yes," Tony admitted, "if I'm still like this when he gets back, we'll do it again. At least, I'd do it again. Steve might hide under the bed."

"You'll probably bleed," she said frankly, "and even if you don't, it's still going to be uncomfortable. It'll hurt less if you're relaxed and go slowly."

"When will the bleeding stop?" It was an intimate question, the kind someone can generally only answer from their own experience. He twisted back to look at Pepper over his shoulder, checking her response. Her expression was distant, casting back to some long-ago memory. He thought about a picture he'd seen of her once from her high school yearbook, and he could see that girl now, peering at him through the intervening years, coltish but lovely in her prep school plaid, wearing a very private little smile.

As if she could read his thoughts, her mouth twisted wryly. "I feel like the older sister at a freshman slumber party," she said with a little puff of laughter. "Well, this round should stop within a couple of days. It should be light, just some spotting. After that, you might bleed a couple more times after sex. I'll get you some liners."

"Thanks, Virginia," he said, "Now will you show me how to use a tampon?"

Her face was suddenly serious, "Do not put anything up there like a tampon or wadded up toilet paper or anything else. It's healing."

"Okay," he said, throwing up a hand in surrender. "Jesus. It was a joke. I didn't mean it. Nothing is going up there but air, and that's only because there's nothing I can do about gas diffusion."

"Alright, then," she said, mollified. She finally picked up the scissors, taking a deep breath through her nose. "I'm going to cut your hair now. I want you to know that my only formal training is a ten minute YouTube tutorial, but I've seen professionals cut your hair many times, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of the concept overall."

"Have at it, Frenchy," Tony said.


Steve had locked himself in the lavatory as soon as the plane had reached cruising altitude, eloping from the cabin without comment. Nat had directed a lifted eyebrow at him as he'd passed, but he'd pretended not to see it.

Now he stood with his arms braced against the sink, staring at himself in the water-spotted mirror. He took a deep breath and turned his head slowly to one side, observing the livid blotch peeking above his shirt collar. In the reflection, he stripped off his tee, exposing the whole mark. It spread across the top of his shoulder, deeply crimson. He ran his fingers over it, gently at first, then hard enough to make it hurt. Shutting his eyes, he imagined the scrape of Tony's teeth back and forth across the flesh, worrying at the skin as his fingers worried it now. He sighed, then pulled a wad of cheap paper towels out of the dispenser and wet them under the faucet.

Towels in hand, he sat down heavily on the commode and peeled his pants and boxers down around his ankles, exposing his legs and groin. The blood had crusted brown across his inner thighs and on his penis. As he wiped at the mess, the dried blood turned red again as it came in contact with the damp towels. The vivid color brought an image of Tony searing across his mind, and the violent crimson blood smeared across his white thighs.

He swallowed around a lump in his throat; he couldn't remember being this depressed. There was something sacrilegious about it, cleaning off Tony's blood in a plane lavatory with a damn paper towel. These were the last vestiges of something significant that had happened, something that wouldn't happen again. Their destruction seemed to warrant some sort of occasion. Then again, what the hell did he want, even in an ideal world? A requiem mass with candles and incense as he scrubbed blood out of his pubic hair?

He shook his head at the thought. No, what he wanted, of course, was Tony. Tony and just a little more time. Another hour or two, and the whole encounter would have ended so differently. Maybe they'd have decided to continue intercourse, maybe not; that part was immaterial to Steve. What wasn't immaterial was how he'd have used those extra minutes to make Tony feel cared for. Even half an hour would have bought Steve enough time to take Tony upstairs, get him showered, and installed in bed before he'd left.

He couldn't imagine what might be going on now in his absence. He was acutely aware of the fact that he'd left Tony alone, bloodied, with a bottle of scotch and that damn duffel bag full of acute psychological weirdness. He'd thought about telling Tony not to open it, but figured that was about as good as telling Pandora not to open that box. Steve could only hope that Tony had the good sense to allow Pepper in from the lobby, though that idea also made him miserable. Poor Pepper. What a mess to dump in someone else's lap. He took his bloody paper towels, wrapped them up in a bunch of clean ones, and crammed the whole lot as low as they'd go in the trash can. He was just pulling up his pants when he heard knuckles against the door.

"Rogers, it's me," Nat said, barely audible.

Steve sighed. He had now been in the bathroom so long they'd sent a search party. He pulled on his shirt and opened the door.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm coming out."

But Nat remained in the doorframe, blocking his exit. She held up a small zippered bag.

"I brought you some things to shave with. You can keep a small one if you want, but the hedge has to go. You don't see full beards like that in Europe right now."

"Sure." He attempted to take the bag, but she wouldn't let go.

"Here," she said, pushing him back into the tiny bathroom with a foreword step, "I'll help you."

"You'll—"

"Yep," she said, taking another step. He was forced back against the commode. One more step, and Nat had forced him to sit. She pulled the door shut behind them and locked it, then put the bag on the tiny counter, observing the traces of bloody water in the sink that Steve hadn't yet wiped out. She gave him the raised brow again.

"I can do it myself, Nat," he said evenly, giving away nothing.

Squatting down between his knees, she said, "Hold out your hands."

"What—"

"Like this." She demonstrated, her palms parallel to the ground, motionless in the air. He looked at her for a moment, realized he couldn't win either way, and extended his trembling hands. "Why do you have Tony's ring?" she asked him, looking up into his face.

There was nothing he could possibly say. After an extended silence, Nat shrugged and retrieved an electric trimmer from the bag and switched it on.

"I really can do it. Even with the shakes, I'm not going to slit my throat with an electric trimmer," Steve said as she stepped back into the space between his thighs.

"Yeah," she agreed, "but I'm doing it anyway. This is the in-flight entertainment." She put a hand on his chin, tipping it up to expose his throat. "Say goodbye, Steve."

"Goodbye, Steve," he deadpanned.

Nat rolled her eyes. "Okay, what am I doing here? We could channel Tony or—"

"Just shave it," he said flatly.

"You're no fun." The vibrating blade slid up his throat and over his cheek, coarse hair falling onto the floor.

"We're making a mess," he reflected. "I should hold a towel or something."

"You got one?"

"No."

"Well, then." She continued the slow glide of the blade, turning his face this way and that until there was nothing left but stubble and a mustache. "I sorta wish I could stop here," she confessed, holding his chin in her hand and looking at him admiringly.

"I've got a pornstache, right?"

Nat looked delightedly shocked.

"Hey," Steve shrugged, "you're the one that said I should channel Tony."

"You should at least look at it before I take it off," she insisted, but he just shook his head. She kept clipping, and he was down to stubble all over. They did a little dance so he could get to the sink and wash his face; the action also served to clean away the last of the bloody water still clinging to the inside of the basin.

"Why don't you let me do this next part?" he asked hopefully, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

"Is there an in-flight movie I don't know about? Otherwise, I'm the one that gets to play with shaving cream."

So they danced back. Nat plugged the sink with paper towels and filled it with water, then covered Steve's face with shaving cream. The scent of barbershop suffused the tiny room. It made Steve think about the forties and that little place on the corner where he'd go for a straight shave on the rare occasion he secured a girl to date, though none of the barbers he could recall looked as nice as Nat.

"Oh, now that's satisfying," she said as she made her first pass up his neck with the plastic razor, leaving a smooth trail of skin through the foamy cream. She dipped the blade into the improvised basin before coming back for another.

"We aren't ever going to talk about the blood in the sink, are we?" she asked as she made another smooth swipe.

"No," he confirmed.

"How about the giant hickey that your shirt almost covers?"

"That seems self-explanatory," he said, willing himself not to turn pink.

"Sure. But it isn't the subtlest look for covert ops, and that thing is brand new. Another day, and it'll be completely black. You were making out like a teenager right before you got on the plane, Rogers."

"I'll wear a scarf."

"Damn right. And you're going to ditch the double rings, too, unless you want every checkout girl in Belarus to speculate about the six foot tall American bigamist."

"Maybe my alter-ego is from Utah. Michael Johnson could be Mormon," he suggested.

"They'll love that. Some of them will wonder if you're ready for sister wife three. What's going on with you, Cap? Seriously. You're giving me clueless civilian vibes right now. I don't even want to take you shoplifting, much less on an op."

"Don't ask me, Nat," he sighed. "Just…don't ask me. I'll get it together."

"You've got to. You looked at the dossier: this is a potential HYDRA job involving nuclear weapons. And unless we specifically call for backup, there's only you and me."

"I know." They lapsed into an extended silence; the only sound was the repeated scrape of the razor over his dwindling stubble.

"What would you tell someone in your support group to do about…whatever?" she asked after several minutes.

"You don't tell people what to do in group, Nat," Steve said.

"Maybe not in so many words—"

"No, not at all—"

"Fine," she rolled her eyes. "What sage, but unrelated, wisdom would you drop on the group at large?"

"You fundamentally don't understand support groups—"

"And you fundamentally don't understand how fast I can kill you with this safety razor," she said, twirling it around her fingers.

"Alright. I got it." He took a deep breath, and said, "I would remind the group that if you have an unsolvable problem, you have to put it down for a while. Walk away. Anything else and you're just making yourself crazy."

Nat let him stew in his own counsel while she shaved his upper lip. It was good advice, and he tried in earnest to take it, concentrating hard on being in the present the problem down. He closed his eyes and focused on his senses: Nat's warm hand on his face, pulling his skin taut for the razor or manipulating the angle of his jaw; the distinctive smell of the shaving cream, but also the smell of Nat's deodorant and hair as she stood so close. It was nice to give himself over to the sensations, to the sheer animal pleasure of human proximity after weeks of being by himself.

Guilt over what had happened wouldn't serve him now; neither would worry over the future. If he wanted to make it home in one piece, the best thing to do was put the problem down. With a deep breath, he held up a steady hand and slipped the pair of rings off his finger.