My nails drag lightly down his back. My hips rise to meet his. A familiar pattern. An established sequence. His thrusts are deep and purposeful. His breath stutters every time I clench around him. My own release builds and crests, mycore squeezing him.
Idris whimpers my name when he follows, voice low and rough against my ear.
He stays inside me for a while. When he withdraws, he lies down beside me, catching his breath in uneven pulls. I feel one of his hands slide along my hip, as he checks on me, asking questions to see if I’m sore, if I need a massage, or a snack, maybe water.
I hum to show I’m listening. Speech takes too much effort at the moment.
His thumb traces a slow line over my ribs. The soothing motion makes my heavy eyelids close.
He’s silent for a while until he whispers something about being excited over the experiment, but how he’s concerned over his brother. “He’s been tinkering a lot lately,” Idris says. “I think he’s anxious, being so far from his son. Too young to be away from him…”
Sleep is starting to pull me under. So my voice is thin when I murmur, “We’ll evaluate the matter tomorrow.”
“We will,” he says, smiling against my temple. “But saying it out loud helps. You make things make sense, Em.”
He presses a tender kiss next to my eye.
“Em, why do you always fall asleep right when I start pillow talk? I should be offended.”
I manage a faint sound of acknowledgment.
He laughs, nearly silent. Then I feel a sequence of kisses across my cheek, while he takes my glasses off of my face. I hear him place it on the nightstand.
Another kiss is pressed on my forehead. A silent sigh follows it. Along with yet another quiet laugh, barely audible this time.
That’s the last thing I hear before sleep takes me.
4
Nil
A day earlier
Waking up should feel like I defied all the rules for one more breath. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. Instead, it feels sort of like waves, slow and relentless. A peeling back from the void, one shaky exhale at a time.
First thing I pick up on is sound. A mechanical, constant noise. Then scent’s next, clean like fresh air. But then there’s this aching weight pressed against my chest.
My eyelids drag upward. Light pierces through. It’s dim, but my body isn’t ready for it. My brows painfully flinch from the light above me, even though it’s low.
A weak groan escapes my dry mouth. My throat’s tight. My chest is sore. It hurts to breathe, but I can feel a plastic mask over my nose and mouth, forcing me to take in oxygen.
With another groan, I blink awake.
I don’t recognize this room, but the sky outside the window is familiar. Gray clouds, sage seawaves. It’s the color I saw last, before everything went quiet.
I remember the cliff. The wind. My sister’s voice cutting through all the noise in my head.
I didn’t let go. I went down with the monster.
I thought that was the only way to end it.
For some reason, I’m here.
My lungs feel like they belong to someone else, but they work. Air drags in and out with that dull ache. My body feels heavy and wrong, like my bones got taken apart and put back together by someone who was guessing.
I blink until the ceiling stops looking like it might slide away. And I slowly look to the side.
A paper calendar sits crooked on the nightstand, the current date flipped open to a picture of a black cat hanging off a tree branch. Something’s scrawled across the bottom, but my head’s too heavy to read it.
