“I’m sorry?—”
“Stop.” The word was rough. He pulled out gauze, a bottle of clear liquid, and tweezers that looked ancient. “Just... stop apologizing.”
His hands hovered over hers for a moment. She caught the tremor… only just there, and gone even before she could be sure she’d seen it. Then his fingers wrapped around her wrist, turning her palm toward the light.
Those hands. The same ones that had fisted in her hair, tilted her head back, held her like she was something precious and breakable even while kissing her like he wanted to devour her. Now they were gentle. Clinical. Like he hadn’t kissed her at all.
And they were so warm… gentle. He could crush her wrist without trying, but his grip stayed light and careful.
The first splash of antiseptic burned like fire. She winced and hissed through her teeth.
“Talk.” He didn’t look up from her palm, using the tweezers to pluck out a piece of gravel. “It helps.”
“About what?”
“Anything. About Earth. About… Christmas.” The word sounded strange in his accent, like he was tasting something foreign. “Tell me about human Christmas.”
She stared at the top of his head. His dark hair had come loose from the leather tie, falling forward to hide his face. Was he mocking her? After how he’d shut her down about it yesterday?
Another piece of gravel came free. The sting made her eyes water.
“I don’t... you said you didn’t want to hear about it.”
His jaw shifted. “Well… I’m asking now.”
She stared at him. He’d kissed her. Actually kissed her, rough and desperate and so intense she’d felt it in her bones, but then pulled away like he’d been burned. Now he wanted to know about Christmas?
He kept working on her hand, not pushing, just waiting.
“It’s...” She swallowed. Her throat felt raw. “It was originally religious. Celebrating the birth of... umm, I’m not sure to be honest. Someone important I think. What it became was about family and about light in the darkness.”
He moved to her other palm. She kept talking to distract herself.
“The whole last month of Earth’s calendar year, everything changes. There are lights everywhere… like strings of them on houses, trees, streets. Stores play music and there’s the smell of pine and cinnamon and baking.” Her voice caught. “My mom used to start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. That’s another Earth holiday. We drank hot chocolate when we could get it and she’d play the same twelve songs on repeat while we hung ornaments.”
“Ornaments.” He tested the word.
“Yeah… like decorations. For the tree? You bring an evergreen tree inside… well, we always had a fake one, real trees are only in protected places back home now… and cover it with lights and decorations. Each one had a story. The paper angel I made in third grade. The glass snowflake from my grandmother. The ridiculous singing reindeer my dad bought as a joke that we all hated but hung anyway because?—”
Her voice cracked. His hands stilled on hers.
“Because tradition matters,” she finished brightly, pushing the sadness away. “Because doing the same things every year, it connects you. To the people who came before, the people who’ll come after. Even when they’re gone, you still have the tradition.”
He was looking at her now, his strange amber eyes with their horizontal pupils steady on hers.
“Your mother. She’s dead.”
It was a statement rather than a question. She nodded once, not trusting her voice.
He went back to her hands, cleaning the last of the dirt away with movements that felt even more careful than before. “How?”
“She was sick. Three years ago. Could have been treated if we’d had money, but...” She shrugged with one shoulder. “Earth prioritizes resources. We weren’t a priority and I didn’t have the money for private treatment.”
The gauze he wrapped around her palms was soft, the pressure just right. Not too tight, not too loose. It was obvious he’d done this before. A lot.
“There.” He moved to her knees, kneeling on his kitchen floor. The position put his face level with her stomach. “These are worse.”
They were. Fabric had torn, and the skin had shredded on the gravel. He cut away the ruined material of her thermal leggings with scissors from the kit, careful not to pull at the wounds.
