"Your heart rate has increased thirty-seven percent," Bebo observes from the kitchenette. "Which exceeds the twenty-twopercent increase during the shower proposal. I am updating my correlation data."
"Bebo, I am going to remove your vocalisation chip."
"You have been threatening to modify my hardware for four years, seven months, and twelve days. I remain unmodified."
Krilly has retreated to the bedroom, where she is putting on her own borrowed sleep clothes with the aggressively focused efficiency of someone trying not to think about what she just saw. She is failing spectacularly. I can feel the precise shape of what she's imagining, and it is not conducive to rest.
Her sleep clothes are the opposite problem. Too large, hanging off her frame, the shirt slipping off one shoulder to reveal the claiming mark and the collarbone beneath it. She looks small and warm and thoroughly bonded and the borrowed fabric is doing something to my brain that tight-fitting clothing never could.
"We should sleep," I say, standing in the main room in pants that barely contain me.
"Definitely." Standing in the doorway in a shirt that barely stays on her.
"Tomorrow is important."
"Extremely important."
Neither of us moves toward the bedroom. Two bonded nervous systems in a private room with a locked door and exactly zero external threats to redirect the energy toward.
"This is ridiculous," she says. "We've been sleeping pressed together for nine days."
"In survival conditions. With predators outside. The circumstances provided—"
"If you say the circumstances provided natural restraint, I'm going to throw something at you."
"I was going to say the circumstances provided distraction."
"Right. And now we have no distractions. Just a bed and a locked door and a hearing tomorrow that means we should definitely be resting instead of—"
"Instead of?"
"You know what. You can feel it."
"I can." My voice drops. Not a choice; the harmonic registers respond to arousal with the same involuntary honesty that my markings do. "I've been feeling it since the shower. Possibly since the sleep pants."
"The sleep pants are a problem."
"I was not aware that ill-fitting clothing was a source of—"
"Everything about you is a source of. The sleep pants just made it visible." Her cheeks are burning. "Can we please just get in the bed before I say something we're both going to regret?"
The silence that follows has a specific texture. Two people who want each other and have a permanent neurological connection that transmits the wanting in both directions simultaneously, trapped in a feedback loop of mutual arousal that neither of them started and neither of them can turn off.
"Bed," she says. "Sleep. Now. Before this escalates."
"Agreed."
We approach the bed from opposite sides. Climb in. Lie on our backs, staring at the ceiling, with a careful distance between us that the bond renders completely meaningless because I can feel her body heat and her heartbeat and the exact texture of her wanting from two feet away as clearly as if she were pressed against me.
One minute. Two. I count her breathing. She counts mine.
"Forget this." She rolls across the mattress into my side. My arm catches her automatically, pulls her against my chest. Full contact, head on my shoulder, leg hooked over mine. Both of us exhale simultaneously as proximity satisfies something the separation was agitating.
"Better," she says.
"Better."
Her hand finds my chest. Over the scars where the harness used to sit. The place she calls her favourite.
