“All you saying that makes me think is: you’ve actually fought someone with your dick swinging in the wind.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
He sounded pretty relaxed, when he said it. In fact, he even sat down on the bed as he did. And he didn’t sit far away, either. He sat close enough that she could see every line and curve of that glorious body, in vivid detail. She could see it all, and this time, she didn’t feel bad about looking. There was no sense that she was doing something wrong.
Not even when she noticed another reason for his possible shyness.
“You have a lot of scars.”
“None of them are as tragic as you’re thinking.”
“So you don’t wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night because someone stabbed you here and left you to bleed out in some dirty alley?”
She almost touched her fingers to the twisted mark she was talking about, just above his right hip. But he didn’t flinch away. He didn’t look perturbed.
And he didn’t sound troubled, in the least. In truth, he seemed more conspiratorial, then anything. He even leaned in, like he was sharing some embarrassing secret. “I got that one because I fucked up clearing a razor wire covered fence.”
“Oh. Well, that still sounds super dangerous and awful, to be honest.”
“The only reason I jumped it is I wanted to get to a Subway faster.”
“Is that because you hadn’t eaten in three days?”
“I had eaten two hours before.”
“Okay fine, I concede.”
“You should. I have at least a dozen stories about the various incredibly foolish ways I got injured. See this one?” He twisted his body, so she could see a mark like the letter C between his shoulder blades. “Target comes at me with a machete; I get fucked up by a coat hook I backed into on the wall behind me. Literally almost died because I stabbed myself on a thing you use to store outerwear.”
“See,targetandmacheteare the things I’m fixating on, there.”
“Yeah, as soon as I said those I thought: you’ve just undermined your point.”
“Not undermined it. More like fucked it in the butt.”
He laughed, for that.
An easy one. A good one.
Even though he was still talking about utterly wild things.
“In fairness, his machete was very small,” he said.
And she had to fight to keep from goggling at him
“Oh, well thank god this enemy combatant wasn’t fond of large weapons.”
“He wasn’t an enemy combatant. He was anexplanation redacted.”
“Ah. So now we’re into the terrifying government secrets part of this conversation.”
“Substitute terrifying for shameful and usually pointless, and you’ve got it.”
There was less amusement in his voice, now. Not enough to grind the conversation to a halt, but it was definitely noticeable. It was there—a slight hollowness, where none had been before. Though still, she couldn’t stop herself asking.
He had opened this door, at last. It was impossible not to go through.
“Is that why you don’t do it anymore? Because it was shameful?”
