Madeleine slid out of the bed and paused to move a couple of condom wrappers from the floor to the bin, adding to the detritus of a night’s diligent practice. Glancing out floor-to-ceiling windows at early morning sun and the grand curve of the Bridge, she picked Tyler’s koi robe off the back of a chair and slipped it on. Her Blue metabolism worked against long, lazy sleep-ins, and she followed the call of her stomach to the plentiful supply of snacks she’d stocked yesterday morning. Once the edge of her hunger had been dulled, and she’d cleaned herself up and managed to unknot her hair a little, she returned to look at the boy sleeping in her bed.
Comets. Stars which streaked across ribs, a bellybutton which glimmered above a trail of dark hair leading down to a thicker swatch. Long arms and legs, their impression of length increased by his overall skinniness. Head resting at an angle, tangled half-curls swept back from the brow, wide mouth relaxed. The position of his hands was somehow graceful, one bony wrist exposed, and she entirely forgot her intention to fetch them a hot breakfast and instead positioned a chair to take advantage of the light, fetched her biggest sketchpad and backing board, and lost herself in capturing him.
She’d moved on from the main figure to work on the fall of the sheeting to the floor when a peaceful voice said: "Is it okay for me to get up?"
"Mm. Try not to mess the line of the sheets."
After he’d carefully rolled off the bed and crossed to look at the sketch, it filtered through to her that this was probably not the most lover-like way to act on their first morning together. Blushing, she looked up, but he kissed her on the forehead and said, "I love the way you are when you draw. And you really should sketch how you look right now because it’s definitely something worth waking up to."
"A little impracticable," she said, but Fisher simply smiled and moved a standing mirror from the far side of the bed, then headed into the bathroom while she studied her reflection.
He was right. Sitting with one foot tucked up, sketchbook balanced on her lap, the gold and black of the koi robe spilling around blue and stars, the slight curve of one breast, a length of glimmering thigh, crinkling brown hair waving loose. She turned to a new page and began outlining, and when Fisher emerged, damp and wrapped in a towel, said: "Can you get the case of coloured pencils from that table?"
He did more, moving the café-style table within her reach, and lifting out the trays of pencils before rescuing his clothes from the pile by the door, hanging up her bathrobe, and heading out to the main room of the suite. She had made a great deal of progress before his return, enough that when a sweet, spicy scent forced itself on her notice she was willing to look at the bowls and cups he was fitting into the gaps of the table. Steaming porridge sprinkled with nuts, dried fruit and brown sugar.
"Did you make this?" Hunger abruptly triumphed over art, and she reached for a bowl.
"With considerable guidance from Noi. I’ve never really had much occasion to cook."
"Was she very entertained?"
"If today wasn’t Pan’s birthday, it probably wouldn’t be safe for us to venture out." He slipped her sketchbook from her lap and studied the picture while she began to eat. "What do you do with your sketches? And the paintings."
"Keep them in my room. I used to scan them and post them on an art site, but I took them all down last year. Being hypercritical. Not wanting to be known for work I no longer considered my best." She sighed, then glanced at his face, absorbed as he continued to study the picture. "You can have that one," she added softly. "When I’ve finished it."
His open pleasure made her feel light-headed, and as soon as she’d finished her meal she took him back to bed. Still plenty to learn. But curled with him afterwards, thirty people crept into her thoughts. This was an interlude which could not last.
"Do you think we should try to get out of the city like Noi wants?"
"Getting out of the city is likely to be considerably harder than Noi wants to believe. More to the point, that dragon’s range and speed means out of the city isn’t any guarantee of safety. But I don’t think we’ll last two years here, either." He hesitated. "I know it seems like we’ve made no progress, but it’s only when we have a full understanding of what we can do that we can hope to mount any kind of attack. I do think I’ve found a third ability, though a practical use for it isn’t immediately obvious."
"A third ability? What?"
He didn’t reply immediately, shifting to lie staring at the ceiling. "Think over what it feels like to feed Nash," he said at last, almost too low for her to hear.
Everyone tended to shy away from discussing the heady warmth Nash could conjure. It wasn’t quite a sexual thing, but it was very pleasurable, like an intangible massage. It usually left Madeleine a little tired, yet feeling good.
"Now think about what it feels like to punch, and to shield. The sensation is not the same. Although Nash is clearly drawing on that punch power reservoir, it is–"
"There’s something else involved." The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was Fisher had a point. "When I feed Nash, I really feel like I’m, well…almost like I’m sitting next to myself. I don’t get that sensation at all when I shield or punch.
"I’ve been focusing on that," Fisher said, still speaking very low. "Isolating the sensation, trying to work with it. This is…" He stopped, frowning fiercely at the ceiling. "Close your eyes."
She studied his profile, then settled herself more comfortably and obeyed.
"I’m going to reach for you," he continued. "I’m not certain how…" He paused again. "Tell me to stop right away if I hurt you, and try not to shield-stun me."
Madeleine realised that part of the reason for the hint of reserve in his voice was an unspoken: "Or mash me into paste".
"Okay," she said, deciding to postpone some serious thought on a life of being uncomfortably dangerous.
Warmth. A delicate thread which was somehow a thing to capture all her attention and make her want to shy away, to push back, but also light her up, a spark to a bonfire. It wasn’t simple heat, was a presence, a piercing tenderness, underlaid by anger and fear.
"It’s like I’m breathing you."
The warmth faded, and Fisher moved so he could tangle fingers with hers. "Did it hurt?"
"N-no." Pain was the wrong word, but she didn’t have any proper equivalent. "Like drowning, but not," she tried. The sense of his presence as a thing additional to the physical was fading, leaving her as alertly roused as a jolt of caffeine.
"Try it on me. As lightly as you can."
This was far from simple. The power she used to shield and punch was something tangible to her, and her awareness of containing it was strong. Trying to locate and manipulate something presumably intrinsic to herself – perhaps literally her own self – was a bit like attempting to look at the colour of her own eyes. But in a way Fisher had held up a mirror.
He drew in his breath, hand tightening on hers, and she faltered, then reigned back the outpouring of self to a thread as delicate as gossamer, a thistledown spiritual embrace. Fisher reached back with a thread of his own, and that was something new again, fragile and overwhelming.
They couldn’t sustain it, and drew back, panting like runners. Not tired, like feeding Nash would leave them, but instead feeling powerfully alive.
"There’s no way I’m practicing that with a group," she said when she could speak, and he laughed, but the sound had a bereft note to it, so she kissed him and that was an easier, more familiar path to follow, but made different again by their intense, lingering awareness of each other.