[fic]: to watch glistening, far-off streets with you (jason/marie) 2/2

[alice_1005]

Title: to watch glistening, far-off streets with you

Fandom: bourne; jason/marie

Summary: A series of Decembers.

iv. 2004

Experiencing real winter makes Marie dramatic. Late in December in the foothills of Tibet, she slams the heavy wooden door of their cabin behind her and starts stripping her clothes. Immediately, shivering, hair damp with melting crystals. She moves through the unsegmented interior as she does it, leaving patches of fabric in her wake.

Jason follows the haphazard trail of them into the cramped bathroom, and Marie looks up. “Good," she says dryly, "I worried that was too subtle."

A weathered wooden counter juts uncomfortably against his elbow. Even with the bathroom door left open, there’s barely space for them both to stand outside the shower, walled-off in the corner. Naked, Marie’s moved on to removing her jewellery. Most of it.

She has to bend back into him to slide the door open. Getting a hand inside, she rotates a limescale-corroded dial, starting the rush of the water. Jason fits a hand under his sweater to start pushing it off.

Under the hot spray, encased in steaming glass, he touches her. Marie’s eyes are already shut. Her head dips back. Relishing the scalding rivulets dripping down her neck, her body, leaving dozens of tiny, watery pathways for Jason's eyes to track. Heat not yet sunk into her; the flesh under his fingertips still cool to the touch.

He circles his thumb against her collarbone. “You seem upset.”

“It’s snowing.” Marie doesn’t open her eyes.

“We’re in the mountains.”

Turning around, Marie bends to pick up a bottle from the stone-tiled floor, cupping her hand around it before squeezing out a ribbon of gold liquid. Lathering her own hair almost aggressively, she demands, “Didn’t you promise me I’d never see snow again?”

“No.”

Jason crowds closer, enough to kiss the back of Marie’s neck. He presses his front along her back. Hot stream soaking them both, droplets falling from Jason’s hair onto Marie's shoulders, diffusing down her spine until they dissolve into their shared space of skin. Marie huffs, holding a different bottle. Jason slides it easily from her grip to open its thicker contents into his palm. When his hands settle in Marie’s hair she leans herself more solidly back into him—though only just.

Threading his fingers tightly to her scalp, Jason asks, “Are there less people than usual outside?”

“Why?”

“It’s the 24th.”

“Oh. No. They’re mostly Buddhist here, I think.”

With one finger, he draws lightly over the lines of the dragon on her bicep. “You think?”

“That’s not what it means.” Petulant.

Jason knows. He knows all the tattoos on Marie’s body, everything they mean or don’t mean to her; which she regrets and which she cares for, would willingly mark her skin with again. He could map them with his eyes shut, trace all their edges with the tips of his fingers, his tongue. Sometimes he does. Jason knows which seaside town the strip of coordinates in a thin, hidden line high on her ribcage under her breasts refers to. He knows why she hasn’t taken off all her rings.

He reminds her. Palms foamy with sweet-smelling gel that Jason starts to smear over Marie’s skin. Soaping her up everywhere he can reach, resting his head on her shoulder, gazing down at the breadth of her body beneath his hands. Fingers spread, settling, over the tattoo at the top of her thigh. Earlier irritation lessening on a long sigh, Marie tips her head back onto Jason's shoulder. Leaning back leaves her front more exposed to the shower spray—Jason watches the residue wash away, swirling into the drain below, glinting froth pooling at their feet.

Hot humid breath, Marie’s voice low against the shell of his ear. “You gonna warm me up?”

When he shifts to start stroking her clit, Marie shivers as if visited by a gust of freezing air. Head tilted back just enough that Jason can kiss the line of her throat. He muffles into flushed skin, “I don’t know.” Jason circles his fingers more firmly. The water drowns out the soft sound Marie makes, but he feels the vibration beneath his lips. He sucks gently above her pulse. “You seem pretty resigned to being cold.”

Marie laughs. More contentment than Jason’s yet heard that evening. Still with something like bitterness when she murmurs, “I’m not resigned to anything. That’s for you.”

Jason pulls away. He readjusts them. Hands skimming the sides of Marie’s arms, her waist before he grips her hips firmly, turning her so she’s facing him. She's set the water too hot. It’s left a web of mottled red over her skin. Bending down, Jason starts to drag his mouth over the blotches in an aimless path until he has to kneel. Kissing Marie's hips, her heated stomach—lips brushing lower and lower until he’s fitting his tongue against her. Inside of her. Holding Marie steady with fingers dug into the sides of her thighs. The loud pattern of the water muffles the noises she makes. The stream beats down too harshly for Jason to lift his head at all, burying his face against her instead. Marie shelters him from it with a flat palm over his scalp. Faltering sometimes, her fingers slipping on wet skin, scrabbling to keep their hold.

Jason licks at her until Marie's nails start to cut into his temples. Sharp pressure, tugging. He tips his face back up, still shielded under her palm. The light in this bathroom is harsh, overly bright; it must leave Jason’s mouth shiny—Marie makes a strangled sound low in her throat, pulling him aggressively upwards. She kisses him eagerly. Licking at the seam of his lips before slipping her tongue inside, mapping out his mouth for remnants of her taste. It makes her whine, makes Jason drive his fingers into the meat of her ass to push their hips together, lightly rocking into her thigh.

Against her mouth, Jason breathes, “Warm enough?”

Grabbing the back of his head, Marie runs her palms over wet hair. Kisses him hard, but fleeting. Breaking away to whisper, “You tell me.”

Turned around again, Marie presses her cheek against wet tiles. Mouth open, gasping. Waiting. Jason mouths hotly along the back of her neck, her shoulders. He splays a hand on her stomach, gripping himself with the other. Under his palm, against his front, he can feel the way Marie's breath hitches as he pushes into her. When he starts to move she moans louder than the sounds of the water.

Jason tries to slide his fingers down her abdomen, but Marie grabs his wrist. Shoves his arm upwards, wordlessly making him wrap it around her. Pull her in tight. Marie touches herself, instead. Knuckles knocking into a wet wall as she moves her hand. Arching, head falling back onto Jason’s shoulder, emitting sharp, staggering breaths with every thrust. Jason cranes to kiss her neck, her throat. The fingers of Marie's left hand are fanned so widely over the tiles he realises she means for him to fit his own over hers. Slotting his fingers between the gaps, metal bumping against metal.

—

Calmer, happier, clad in thick pyjamas, Marie brings two mugs of tea to bed. Jason’s less inclined—but as with so much else, she’s insistent he tries. Tonight’s blend smells strongly of jasmine. Dull, dark gold liquid sloshing within a stone mug. Everywhere they go, Marie spends some time sourcing local favourites.

It’s near-boiling but Marie sips unflinchingly. Reinvigorated—something colouring her cheeks, lighting her eyes. Almost sanguine when she says, “This year I got you something.”

Jason raises an eyebrow as she clinks her mug down onto a stained coaster. Too quickly; hot drops splash onto her fingers. Marie ignores them. Shuffling now through the drawer of a wooden bedside table, contents remarkably cluttered for somewhere they’ve only been a few months.

“Here.”

Taking his mug in exchange, Marie shoves a small object towards him. Thin leather bound over pages of varying thickness; the inside block feels choppy as Jason runs his finger over it. The effect is unique—it’s clearly hand-made, smelling faintly of glue. A narrow strip keeps it shut while Jason scrutinises the strangely soft material of the cover.

“I think it’s yak,” Marie says.

He looks up. Carefully, “I thought we don’t do this anymore.”

His guardedness doesn’t dim her smile. She nudges his knee. “Open it.”

The last notebook had been a shared and oppressive burden. Filled only with fragments of a bloodied past. A forgotten, violent life that Jason made himself suffer through trying to piece together.

Yet not alone. It had always amazed him: the depth of Marie’s devotion. Inexhaustible even in the face of unforgivable things. She never shied away from the darkness she tried to help Jason illuminate. Sometimes she sat at his desk with him, or flipped through that notebook alone when he couldn’t stand to watch her do it. But eventually—it didn’t seem to serve a purpose anymore. A load that kept them treading in dark water.

But this—

He opens it to see Marie’s already written in it. Pages and pages, marked solely by the sprawl of her own words. The first entry is marked December 2001. They go on from there. Most of what Jason scans over Marie’s divulged to him already—but not everything. There are things in here he’s never heard her say. Things maybe she couldn’t make herself admit aloud. Thumbing through the long arc of the years between them, Jason sees the scope of them through her eyes. Achingly heartfelt; a space Marie’s used to confess her most closely-guarded sentiments. Fears. Her visions for their shared existence.

Watching Jason read what she’s written, Marie’s mood changes. Nervousness bubbles a stream past her lips. “I guess you were right. Not about everything. But if you won’t remember anything else good then—well, I just thought—” She falters. Gathers herself, steeling ahead. “I write all these letters. And I never write to you, because you’re here. But I thought…”

Moving her hand over his, Marie flips to the most recent page. “You can start using it, too. It can be normal. Photos, or—” Within the thick off-white stock of the parchment, she’s stuck two colourful train tickets they were handed eight weeks ago. “Things like this,” she explains. “Little things. Memories, but—good ones. Not—articles, or diagrams, or—or, just—”

She shutters again. Silenced by the fragility of her own faith. A belief Marie’s been trying to build—that the past could be safely buried behind them. Every unveiled word she’s shown him resonates with hope for a future built on nothing but this.

There’s nothing Jason could say to her that could match what she’s offering. What she’s been offering, for years. But after bearing witness to it long enough, his silence starts to soothe. Leaving a space for Marie to let herself calm. To crowd in. Stroking over the backs of Jason’s fingers, his cheek, she murmurs gently for him to look up at her.

Marie breathes in sharply when he complies, wiping at wetness under his eyes. “I didn’t get you anything,” Jason tells her dumbly.

She swallows. Suddenly apprehensive. “You can.”

Marie shifts on the bed. She drops her hands from his face. Fiddling with them in her lap, her gaze caught downwards. “I want to see him.”

Dawning awareness of who she means catches Jason’s breath. Spreads cold trepidation through him as he watches Marie inhaling deeply, as if to prolong the pace of her voice. “It doesn’t have to be so soon. I mean, it’s been years already. It can be a few more. I know you’ll want to—do it your way, whatever that means. But it’s been so long, and I want…”

Some desires are still too deep-seated to make it out of her throat. But Jason’s sustained far-spanning years with only one life he could fully grasp.

“Alright.”

It surprises them both. Marie freezes. Slowly, wide-eyed, “You’re sure?”

Jason nods. He reaches for her. When she threads their fingers together it drains a long-anticipated dread from his body. Leaving him steadier than he thought he would be, the day Marie finally asked outright for something he couldn’t give her.

Yet what Marie’s gifted Jason tonight exists purely within a world of possibility. An open world, its limits undefined. Jason tries to meet her there. In an unfenced garden growing in the only light he knows.

v. future

They left Europe a long time ago. Moving far away from its distinct, airless cold, the gloom that filtered in thickly through the cracks in dense cityscapes. Numbing compared to the warm and open breeze they’d sought in sprawling seaside towns. That brought them half the world away from here. Now—they stall nearer to their beginning, enclosed by borders more innate to Marie. She had assured Jason at length that she’d never actually been to Austria before—but all her life, it lay just below.

During an early dark evening, Jason shuffles behind her in a cluttered used bookstore. Softly lit, randomly organised; its shelves not stacked with any system he can discern. Marie picks seemingly at random. Fleeting brushes of the tips of her fingers against varying spines before tugging one to her. Examining, mouth pursed, she discards most items as quickly as she first drew them in. In her indecision Jason reads some indulgence. Years since Marie’s browsed somewhere with so much to choose from in the language she grew up with.

Something stills her hand. Face blank above her lingering touch. Jason’s eyes follow the path of her fingers: On a CD case cover depicting a lone violinist, Marie’s tracing very slightly over the cursive stretch of the album title.

Marie knows Jason’s staring. That he’s hardly let her out of his sight these past few nights; paranoia heightened by their return to less far-removed locales. They’ve barely ventured from the dingy room they’re sleeping in. But it’s crowded here, blurred with bodies to blend into.

Tilting the plastic jewel case in her hand, trying to catch the overhead light, Marie tells Jason, “Martin was obsessed with this composer when we were kids.” Already cautiously quiet, her words are further muffled by the tall stacks surrounding them on all sides. “I think that’s what first made him want to play an instrument. But our mother couldn’t afford lessons.”

“Who did?”

She grimaces. “Eamon’s father. Only useful thing he ever did.”

Marie brings the disc to the counter, smiling like she always does when she's buying something. “Wie viel?” She almost sings it. She complains to Jason every moment they’re out of earshot that they don’t speak real German here—but it's belied by how long she labours over the sounds she can make again.

The price darkens her face with disbelief. Jason thinks she’s gotten used to a different cost of living, halfway around the world. When Marie backs away he halts her with an outstretched arm. Lifting the case from her grasp as he says to the storekeeper, “Wir nehmen das.”

Paper bag bundled beneath his elbow, Jason exits quicker than she can, making Marie catch up to him in freezing air. She calls out, “I don’t think that will win him over to you.”

Jason listens to the crunch of Marie’s feet in the snow drawing closer. “You can give it to him.” He passes it back.

Over his shoulder, he sees her clutch it to her chest.

The store sits alongside the rectangular limits of a heaving Christmas market. In the icy night, brightly-lit stalls dot the expanse like scattered havens from the blanketing dark. From a kiosk smelling strongly of cinnamon, Jason buys Marie a styrofoam cup filled to the brim with mulled wine. She only sips at it for a few minutes before tipping it out at her feet. Against the freshly-fallen snow the hot splashed stains resemble a spray of blood.

“That bad?”

Marie doesn’t hear him. She’s staring unblinkingly into the distance. Seemingly set apart; alone amongst a bustling crowd. Her gloved fingers curl visibly into the fronts of her coat pockets. Drawing into herself, shrinking.

They’re driving to Paris tomorrow morning. Between them both, Jason isn’t sure who’s more afraid.

Jason moves closer. He brushes his thumb against her cheek. Marie shivers at the contact and he remembers he’s not wearing any gloves. Before he can apologise, she wraps her own wool-covered fingers around his thumb, a tight refuge from piercing air. Looking more widely around them now, as though she just realised where they are. Taking in the scenic row of terraced buildings that enclose the market, their balconies draped with decorative wreaths; the towering, glittering Christmas tree at the centre, dappled with ornamental light; the snow-tipped span of mountains lining the background beyond.

Mundane displeasure edges into Marie’s face. Subduing a deeper unhappiness. Drifting snow sticking to her eyelashes, she looks straight at Jason as she says, “You know, I really didn’t miss this shit.”

Still surprising: how easily she makes him laugh. Jason puts his arm around her. Chilled lips against her temple as he beckons her someplace else.

—

As soon as they shut the door of their room behind them Marie pulls off her gloves, announcing without any surprise, “The heating isn’t working.”

With bare fingers, she grips the edges of the radiator much more firmly than she could if it was on. Bending down, she starts fiddling with dials sitting just above the floor. Swivelling non-functional taps, swearing as Jason reminds her—their money doesn’t go as far here. Traps them in places like this.

Marie turns back to him with a strange expression. She lowers herself further, until she’s kneeling on cold wood. She motions Jason towards her and he follows. Standing close enough that her spiralling breath sinks into his hip. As she slips his heavy coat onto the floor, Marie nuzzles Jason’s stomach through his sweater. Sighing, restless, her fingers skitter. Edging through the loops of the pants he’s wearing to start tugging them down. Rucking up the fabric of his sweater to press her lips to chilled skin, brush them over fine hair, follow the trailing path of it down his abdomen. Threading his fingers tightly to Marie’s scalp makes her sigh more heavily. Moving lower, she starts mouthing hotly over his cock under thin fabric. Caressing Jason’s thighs with blunt fingers. Trying to get him hard. After a few minutes spent shifting in increasingly confining material, she finally pulls his briefs down.

Marie looks up at Jason as she takes him into her mouth. Eyes unfocused; hazy. Cupping her cheek makes them slip shut. Jason stretches his fingers to rub at Marie’s open jaw, the muscles in her neck as she swallows around him. On the floor, she spreads her bent knees wide. Tension visible in her forearm as she tries to sneak a hand inside the inflexible waistband of her thick leggings. Futile friction-seeking.

Jason tries to pull her from the fog she’s floating in. He says her name, softly, then more insistently when Marie only hums. The second instance opens her eyes, pulls her off of him. Jason glances his thumb over her gleaming mouth. Gently, “You wanna lie down?”

Wiping her lips, Marie nods. Surfacing upright, she still seems lost. She kisses Jason too fiercely. Her arms loop too tightly around his neck. Desperate, like she’s searching for something she doesn’t expect to find.

On the bed, half-naked, Marie gets her mouth on him again. Lying on her stomach, her hand disappears underneath her hips. Repetitively rocking into a cheap mattress as she swirls her tongue in soft whorls. She’s trying to make Jason feel good—it does, but it would be better if she was there with him.

Jason tries again. Straining up off the pillow to touch Marie’s face, her hair where it falls around her hollowed cheeks. Tugging short and sharp, adamant enough that Marie stops. Swallowing, throat thick, she lifts her head. “Not in the mood?”

His hand drifts down over Marie’s covered chest. Under the soft fabric of her long-sleeved shirt, her nipples are flat. “Are you?”

Marie relents. Her smile bears a hint of relief. “I guess I’m thinking too much.”

She crawls up to him on the pillows. Reaching for her wrist, Jason lifts her wet fingers into his mouth, locking eyes with her as he sucks them clean. Before letting them slip loosely from his lips. Brushing his mouth instead against the sides of her fingers, her knuckles. The only ring she wears to bed.

With her other hand Marie cups Jason’s cheek. Tender, not at peace. Laying bare what’s been keeping her at bay, she whispers, “What if when we go on that road again, we go back?”

Jason frowns. “To Paris?”

“In time.”

Marie hasn’t played this game in years. It lost its appeal, the longer she spent learning to live in the fallout of her own actions. The repercussions that sunk in more and more with each new place they found to hide. Tonight, on the eve of their return to the city where Marie had made the most fateful decision of her life—she tries a different approach.

Body warm in a freezing room, touch gentle on Jason’s face, Marie recounts, “The apartment I drove you to. You remember.”

That's not how Jason defines that place. Marie may have driven him there herself—but only because he asked. Because he paid her to do it. A simple transaction with a clear terminus point—one he’d ruptured with his own selfishness. Jason could have let Marie get away from him the moment she deposited him by his own front door. Instead, Jason invited Marie upstairs, into the unknown. Ushering her into a violent world she would never really leave again.

“Yes.”

Marie sags into him. Kissing his neck, seeking the steadiness of his pulse. “You invited me up,” she says without any recrimination. “We couldn’t stop smiling at each other.” Her sentimental speech papers over the threat that had laid in wait for them that morning. Curling close, she tucks herself under Jason’s chin. “What if that had been our first time?”

Jason knows Marie’s focusing on the one prevailing thread she’s spent years trying to wrap around all her memories of that week. Something that allowed her to justify anything, after the fact—the love she couldn’t have known would become their guiding light. Yet tonight, Marie supposes that she could always see its sparks. As though it could consume the blame she carried as enduringly as Jason did, Marie speaks of their shared history like it was always going to lead them here.

She whispers, “Maybe we wouldn’t have been so scared.”

Staring up at the shadowed ceiling, Jason doesn’t respond. He thinks—he's much more afraid now than he was then. Sometimes, he’s so terrified of losing this that he can’t say anything to Marie at all.

Long years have shown her how to read his silences. Lowly, drifting, against his skin, Marie says what Jason’s never stopped being unspeakably grateful is true. What he no longer pretends he could live without. He holds it tightly to him all night.

—

In Switzerland, their car curves through winding mountain roads. An interminable pathway interspersed with wide bridges, spanning sturdily over cragged depths. Under the wheels, the paving stays smooth and even. Allowing them to glide fluidly forward, the way they never had on dirt back roads in far-off villages. The constancy seems to leave Marie more uncomfortable. More monotony than she’d learned to expect with Jason—not yet halfway through the journey, she turns her head and asks, “We’re not going through Zurich?”

Jason doubts she’s surprised. “No.”

Silence. Marie stares into an endless expanse of snow and rock. White marbling densely over grey as far as she could see, any foliage entombed underneath its weight. An eternal winter vista unbroken by any recognisable sights. Anything that might have once been familiar to her, in another life. She presses, “It’s not like we have to get out of the car.”

“Marie.”

She drops it. Sighing, shifting to what does surprise her, “You’re still not trying to talk me out of this.”

Jason half-shrugs against the seat. “Pretty late for it, now.”

“For a lot of things,” she says quietly.

Dread mutes Marie’s throat as much as nervousness overfills it. Yet her body remains animated. She won’t stop fiddling with her rings, sliding them up and down over her knuckles, twisting them back and forth. The sharp, ceaseless movement digs small red circles into her flesh. Jason observes for a few minutes from the edges of his vision before he moves a hand to cover hers. She stops.

Marie presses the backs of her fingers up against his palm. Commenting with more idleness, “You know, if these were real, he’d be your family, too.”

Jason looks at her. She flushes. Ducking her head, brushing hair out of her face, sheepishness snapping her to solid ground. “Legal,” she amends. Somewhat settled, breathing out as she readjusts herself. Shoulders softening with relief she’s not doing this alone.

—

Marie wakes up in Melun. On the outskirts of Paris—Jason wanted her to sleep. Even though it meant long, lonely hours without her voice to listen to. Jason studied her, instead. Lit by the same roadside lights he’d first seen her underneath. He’d taken some steps to vary their trajectory from the one he still remembered—but it felt faintly futile. What they were heading towards posed a far greater risk to her than anything on the road.

Late evening, darkness fully settled in. The glare of approaching headlights illuminates scattered signs. Tall, flat beacons rolling up to them in the black night. Counting down the kilometres. Marie sees them, noting what's dawning closer. Rubbing her eyes, she admits, “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.”

In a long list of unease, Jason isn’t worried about that at all. “You will,” he says simply.

“What makes you so sure?”

“You love him. You’ll see him and—you’ll know what you want him to hear.”

Marie pauses before venturing, “He might not want to listen to it.”

Static hours had given Jason time to think. To turn over and over in his mind, everything that might await them when they knocked on Marie’s brother’s door. He’d settled on a central understanding. Something he could commiserate with—maybe his reasoning for agreeing to this in the first place. From long-lived experience, Jason promises, “He’ll take anything he can get from you.”

—

Fear leadens Marie’s uncertain steps up the staircase of her brother’s adorned apartment building. The stairwell is lit from stained-glass windows. Pale panes of blue and gold, set in an ornate pattern that obscures their exteriors completely. Wide steps of white wood shape short flights, forcing frequent turns as they climb. Marie’s hand never lifts from the continuous wrought-iron bannister. Jason follows. Steadily, matching her movements, hand at the small of her back. Years ago, positions reversed, not touching, they had made their way cautiously up spiralling steps that led into Jason’s unfamiliar, unreal home. Where they’re approaching now isn’t somewhere Marie’s forgotten. She’s never been here before at all. But maybe she’s right—maybe Martin’s made a home for himself in this city mostly because it’s the last place he could mark his sister on a map. Maybe he’s admitted as much to Marie himself, over the last few years, during their scattered, allocated phone calls. Jason’s never asked. He’s never listened to them speak.

Martin lives just beneath the top floor. Five half-flights. At the final stretch, Jason stills. Waiting. Watching Marie eclipse his view, moving unsteadily out of his sight onto the landing. Adjacent to a door that must already be open from when they pressed the buzzer on the street—Jason doesn’t hear her ring a bell. He hardly hears any sound at all. Just Marie’s breathing—suddenly gasping, joined by a harsher exhale, muffled by rustling fabric. Marie’s voice seeps in by degrees. Lowly, brokenly—Jason hears Marie say she’s sorry. She’s never apologised to Jason like she’s speaking now. He’s never heard her sound like this at all. Marie says it over and over, until Jason can’t stand to keep himself scarce anymore. Climbing, caught in a tide of culpability, dragging him to take in the image of what he had taken Marie away from.

The final stretch reveals them standing inside the open door to Martin’s apartment. They’re the same height. Over Marie’s shoulder, their faces are level, their necks blending into each other. Clutching each other, desperation palpable; Martin’s hand on his sister’s back is white. A newly-vivid source of self-recrimination—Jason sees Marie held tightly in someone else’s embrace and realises how many years it’s been since anyone else touched her.

There are some things Jason knows he should regret more than he does. Only one thing he was never strong enough to resist pursuing. He thinks he deserves nothing less than this: to witness the previously-hidden pain that grew from him getting what he wanted. A long-building grief, unfolding now right before his eyes.

And yet—Jason never built any defenses against the singular connection he’s ever sought out. Easing gradually from her brother’s hold, Marie turns back. She looks at Jason resolutely. In absolution. When she gestures for him to follow her across the divide, all he feels is profound relief.

—

Once settled inside, the mood of the siblings' reunion changes. Voices solidified, they start to argue. Trading sharp and inflamed exchanges that are too fast, too loud for Jason to really comprehend. Though he knows exactly what they’re fighting about.

Since he’d allowed Marie that initial contact in India, she hadn’t spoken to Martin with any consistent frequency. Months would pass between the occasions Marie made herself restart whatever series of steps would allow her to speak to her brother again. It was risky, even with all the precautions Jason made her take. It was unbearable. For Marie to be confronted with her own actions from someone else’s eyes—someone who loved her, missed her, but couldn’t understand her. Someone she couldn’t offer anything to anymore—since being the mainstay of Jason’s life severed her from anyone else.

Sitting on a folded-out futon in the office, Jason watches blurred fury through a frosted-glass door. Thirty minutes since Martin pointed him here wordlessly, ushered him in, turned away. Jason didn’t care. He wasn’t there for him.

The door opens, revealing the redness of Marie's face. She shuts it immediately with a heavy thud from her shoulder. She looks broken open, stripped bare. Trying to even out the shakiness of her breath, her voice as she announces, “He’s gone out.”

When Jason tentatively lays a hand on her shoulder, Marie flinches at his touch like she hasn't in years. It scares her; she whispers that she's sorry, she steels herself. Eyes squeezed shut, focused as she seeks some source of calm. Letting Jason’s thumb glide through fresh tracks of tears. Repetitive, soothing motions, until Marie's exhaling more steadily against his palm. “I'm fine,” she whispers. “Martin just needed to say some things. So did I.” She sounds weak, unconvincing.

A bodily shift away from Jason's reach. “I’ll see him in the morning," she says. "I’m going to take a shower.”

Jason calls after Marie as she leaves the room, but she doesn’t respond, and he doesn’t try and follow.

He waits. He studies his surroundings. Clearly a space to create—Martin’s cello rests on a stand in the corner. Music scores are spread out in thin, overlapping sheets on a little desk, lit by a retractable lamp. A smoothly-bordered circle of illumination over white-stained wood. Matching bookcases line the rest of the wall opposite to the futon. The contents of their shelves are concealed; room too dark for Jason's eyes to fully adjust—but he thinks he spots the silver edges of a photo frame amongst the shadows.

Before he can inspect it, Marie comes back. Pulling her towel off the moment the door is shut. The damp rosiness of her flushed skin blends in with her tearstained face. She offers it to Jason without looking at him. “Your turn,” she says, still flat.

Reluctantly, Jason leaves her alone.

He returns to find Marie laid out in the dark. Her back to him, her spine rigid under the fabric of an oversized shirt Jason slept in two nights ago. She’s shut off the lamp. The only light in the room comes from street lamps outside, a dim white glow bleeding between the gaps in the shutters of the windowed balcony door.

Gingerly, Jason joins her. Stretching out on his side, placing a hand on her shoulder, gently turning her onto her back. Under thick cotton, she’s still shower-warmed. Her hair is wet—on the pillows, where it brushes in long tendrils against Jason's bare chest.

Marie stares up at the ceiling, swallowed up by what she can't undo. Her mouth parts. “Can you tell me—”

Her eyes prick again, and Jason shushes her. He cradles her jaw. Rubbing at her mouth, her wet eyes as he murmurs, “It’s not your fault.”

She swallows. “Some of it is.”

“You didn’t have much of a choice.”

Marie tilts her head on the pillow to meet his eyes. Words drawn-out, pointed, “Yes, I did.”

Jason doesn’t try to argue again. He keeps stroking her face. Meaningfully, he reminds her, “You can’t go back.”

That pierces her. Marie’s eyes go wide, then soft. Drawn back to Jason by enduring sympathy, she reaches for him. She lays her palm against his cheek before trailing it to his shoulder. She tugs, not gently. Guiding him downwards, until Jason’s lying half on top of her. Shrouding her.

Head on her chest, Jason can’t see Marie’s face anymore. She speaks carefully into his ear. “If I could, would you let me?”

Jason knows his hands are far from clean. That in his renewed life, he’s only held one good thing. Clung to it as an invariable constant, never selfless enough to let it escape from his grip. But if Marie asked—

“Yes.”

Under his ear, Marie’s heart stutters. Short fingernails skim over his scalp. “But I wouldn’t ask you that," she whispers. "I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn't undo this.”

“I know.”

Quiet for a long moment before she says softly, “I guess I have to live with that.”

Jason doesn’t say anything. He lifts his chin against her sternum. Marie’s arm curls around him, pressing him down more fully. She thanks him. Held over her heart, she tells him to sleep.

—

In the middle of the night, the apartment is hard to navigate. Impossibly full of internal doors, all painted white, paned with square glass windows that draw in shadows in the dark. Jason opens them at random until he finds a small kitchen. Trailing fingers locate a switch on the wall, washing bright light over white cabinets and stone marble counters. Featuring an array of small objects: a ceramic butter dish, a decorative mug tree, bamboo cutting boards propped up against the sink. A few bottles of wine are tucked away in the corner—next to an espresso machine, above a dishwasher. Over the microwave sits a half-eaten baguette poking out of its paper wrapping. The clutter almost reminds Jason of their kitchen in Goa—but it’s neater, more organised. Searching, he opens a cabinet just to the right above the sink.

After a few minutes, something stiffens him. A dawning awareness he isn’t alone.

Martin looms into view behind him. Brow furrowed, eyes fixed uncomprehendingly on Jason’s hands as he drops teabags into waiting mugs. Jason says shortly, “Same place she keeps it.”

Silence. He wonders if Martin’s planning on ever speaking to him directly.

At first, he only clears his throat. Waits a few more moments. “You don’t sleep well,” Martin observes at last. Blunt, unsympathetic.

Jason focuses on filling up a glass kettle. “Not really.”

“Dreams?” The unapologetic persistence is familiar. When Jason doesn’t answer, Martin presses. “Does she know what about?”

Marie does. She knows when it’s something real, when it’s imagined, when it’s about her. Tonight—Jason woke mere hours after falling asleep with Marie crouching above him, speaking low and urgent, saying his name. Her hand rubbed slow, ceaseless circles into Jason’s shoulder as he half-lifted off the pillows towards her. Marie wasn’t afraid anymore of what she might trigger; waking Jason from the engulfing blackness of murderous dreams. She’d given up on being afraid of a lot of things. Letting him breathe harshly against her chin, Marie made Jason tell her—that night, he’d shut his eyes to a vision of her and her brother both. Lying dead from bullet holes fixed neatly in the centre of their foreheads. Like Jason had seen before. Like he’d done himself.

Marie listened. She kept him quiet. She told Jason it wasn’t real, they were fine, it was all over, she promised they were fine, it was just a bad dream. She whispered until her voice became an indistinguishable blur in Jason’s ears. Until he had to wrench himself from her comfort, get up from the bed, leave the room.

She’s waiting for him now. Jason flips the kettle switch. “She knows everything.”

His flatness unbinds something Martin’s been successfully keeping shut. Higher-pitched, more confrontational, he speaks in a teetering rush. “You know what I don’t understand is that Marie’s not really such an optimist. She doesn’t see the best in people. She used to say you can’t trust anyone in the world but yourself. We argued about it. I called her selfish. But,” Martin laughs, humourlessly, in disbelief, “She trusts you.”

Jason has no interest in trying to defend that fact. “Yes.”

Watching him pour out two mugs, Martin softens. “She’s awake?”

Martin’s standing very close. He flinches at Jason turning around, backing into his fridge. Making Jason weave past him to leave the kitchen. “I woke her,” Jason says without looking back. Inching towards a dark and unknown corridor. “Goodnight.”

—

Marie isn’t asleep. She’s sitting fully upright on the futon, twisting her fingers in her lap, staring at the shuttered windows. At the soft click of the door, her head whips over. “I thought I heard voices,” she says. “You woke him up?”

“He was already awake.”

Marie’s eyes are sharp. “What did he say to you?”

Jason offers her a mug. He has to hold it out a long moment before Marie takes it. Right away, she sets it down on the floor, urging, “Jason.”

Lowering himself onto the futon, Marie’s stare bores into him throughout. Jason can tell how much it unsettles her: the idea of him speaking to her brother when she wasn’t there to witness it.

He lays a hand on Marie’s thigh. Conciliatory, trying to ground her with what she needs to remember. “He worries about you.”

That catches her off guard, but only momentarily. She counters, “So do you.”

“It’s different. Please, drink it.”

In the protracted pause of Marie’s begrudging sips, Jason speaks again. “You should tell Martin it’s not his fault.” Her head tilts towards him. “That you left,” Jason explains. “That you went with me.”

Marie frowns. “Is that what he thinks?”

Lying back amongst the pillows, Jason closes his eyes. “You should just tell him.”

For a few minutes, they drink in silence, Marie mulling his words over. Outside, on the street, the relentless blare of police sirens rolls closer and closer before trailing off into the distance. Fading sound muffled beneath the tightly shut balcony doors. Jason notices a faint ticking from a metronome on the desk and wonders how he missed it before.

When he bends to deposit his empty mug, Marie’s hand drifts over his back. Apologetic. Needy. Turning back to her, Jason lifts the edges of the thin duvet that had been pushed to their feet. Readjusts them until they’re both on their sides, Marie’s face pressed into his neck.

Jason runs a hand through her dried hair. “Tomorrow, go out with him alone.”

A sharp breath. Her palm slips under the waistband of the sweats Jason pulled on before leaving the room. Lowly, “You’re sure?”

Jason kisses her forehead. His turn to rub circles into her back, slow and steady until Marie slides into sleep.

—

Dreams take more out of Jason than they used to. Or maybe he’s just finally sleeping more deeply. On Christmas Eve, he wakes alone, in a room still in shuttered darkness, to an equable hum of voices drifting underneath the door.

He opens it to find Marie crouching on the hallway floor. She’s beckoning to a furry black cat neither of them noticed last night. It’s shy, only slowly slinking over. Marie manages to lure it close enough to scratch gently under its chin. Cooing, “Und wie heißt du?”

“Sie heißt Marlene.”

By the front door, clad in a thick coat, Martin’s standing stiffly. He must have lent one to his sister; Jason doesn’t recognise what she’s wearing now.

Marie raises her eyebrows, awaiting further explanation. Martin huffs. “Marlene Dietrich.”

The flash of a quickly-hidden smile as Marie ducks her head, lifting the cat into her arms. As though he’d forgotten something, Martin disappears abruptly through another innumerable door.

Marie rubs her nose against the cat’s. “I think my brother wants you to put on a shirt,” she says.

Jason approaches them carefully enough to scratch its ears. His experience is limited; mostly to street cats he’d seen roam villages around Europe and Asia—Greece had been overrun with them. Always seeking out sympathetic store owners. It was early enough back then that Marie took uncomplicated pleasure in making overly-obvious jokes about having a thing for strays.

This morning, her contentment is surprising. “You seem happy.”

Marie strokes her hand smoothly over the cat’s grey-tinged fur, expression soft as it starts to purr faintly. “Martin apologised before you woke up. I guess he doesn’t want me to run away again. Just yet.” She glances over. “What are you gonna do, read every book he owns?”

“I’ll see.”

Marie keeps smiling. She lets the cat clamber from her grip. Uses freed-up hands to pull Jason to her, strange sensation of wool against his bare back as she splays her gloved fingers on his shoulder. She kisses him until a throat clears behind them.

From his open door, ushering Marie out ahead of him, Martin looks back at Jason directly. “Careful,” he says tonelessly. “She bites.”

—

Jason doesn’t expect to leave the interiors of this apartment for as long as he’s sleeping in it. He devotes his solitude to exploring every inch. Not out of any particular interest—but to traverse it blind; to isolate anything he needs to worry about.

He doesn’t bother touching the bug in the landline, though he lifts a shell of cold plastic just to see it blinking there. Studying the design, so he can find out how long that model lasts; how recently it might have been replaced. Marie’s never called this phone. Jason would never have let her—but she was smart enough herself, regardless. With his input, she’d given Martin a long list of places to examine. Wall sockets, the undersides of furniture, the insides of his lamps—even the soil around his houseplants. They’d argued with a furious pitch, that call. Over three months before Marie had reached out again. But Martin must have complied—Jason spends hours looking without finding anything of note.

He finds other things. After picking the lock of a drawer in the master bedroom, he pulls out a tied stack of Marie’s letters. Sending them was a long and drawn-out process. First, Marie asked Martin to open a PO box. Somewhere as far away from routine he could travel without incurring suspicion in anyone who might be keeping watch. Then Marie would only send erratic caches of what she put so much effort into writing when she was confident they were leaving an area for good. She’d pick only the cheapest, slowest mailing method—the kind that never went on any planes. Spending months in cramped and overstuffed cargo holds, in the humid depths of unhurried boats, subject to as few checkpoints and as little tracking as possible in its long and winding journey.

It would be safer if Marie never sent anything at all. But Jason had promised her—he’d make any compromise he thought they could afford to retain the only thing that made life worth living. After all, she had sacrificed enough for him.

Jason never wanted to read these. He doesn’t now. Though they’ve clearly been poured over by their intended recipient—the pages are creased with marks from Martin having flipped through them over and over. Marie wrote messily, scattered words spiralling into the edges of thin paper. In some places, the ink in the corners has been rubbed by thumbprints so much that it’s starting to fade. Jason wonders if it’s worth asking Marie to write over it. If she can remember everything she’s ever sat down and tried to say.

He finds photos. More than he thought he might. Asking Marie if she expected to be reunited with any shared keepsakes, she’d shaken her head, saying distantly that Martin had never been very happy as a child. But studying photo albums pulled from little-used drawers that didn’t slide open smoothly, their contents half-hidden under a thick layer of dust—Jason sees smiling faces in nearly every shot. Marie’s only a few years older. Jason flips through her and Martin in a disused-looking public pool; in a wide street littered with autumn leaves, surrounded by other children, all holding lanterns; in a cabin somewhere deep within the woods. In every photo, similarity glares back at his gaze. Same kind brown eyes, same wide, trusting smiles. Jason stares at the photos for a very long time. Considering exactly how many years it’s been since Martin’s seen Marie’s face at all. How tainted her smile is now from knowledge Jason never meant to give her.

Once the sun starts to set, Jason stays in the kitchen. Leaving the light off, memorising the shifting spread of orange shadows. He feeds the cat. Mollified, she sticks around, having spent the whole day hiding so well that Jason never found her. Until she came bounding over at the sound of a shaking bag of food. She meows now around Jason’s legs, curious as he digs through cupboards.

By the time he hears the front door open, he’s laid everything out. Martin isn’t missing anything from the recipe Marie had only shown Jason once. He listens to her voice, calling through wide rooms as she searches for him. When she comes into the kitchen, she looks at the counter first. She smiles as warmly as Jason’s ever seen it.

—

Before long, the whole apartment is filled with the scent of what Marie’s stirring. She’s not very focused about it—opening every cabinet just to peer inside, idly lifting each item that decorates the kitchen surfaces to examine them in turn. Leaning against a propped open door, Martin’s eyes stay glued on his sister. He looks torn between asking her to be more careful—and his sheer amazement she’s standing in his home to reprimand.

Jason watches them from a wide leather sofa in front of a lit-up Christmas tree, wafting pine around the room. The cat’s curled beneath it, sound asleep on a neatly folded blanket. Relatively unadorned with ornaments, monochromatic; its glittering lights twinkle intermittently in dotted silver lines. Jason only illuminated it just prior to the siblings’ return. Martin pretended not to notice, like he’d done it himself.

Marie’s holding a small ceramic orb Jason thinks might be Japanese. Brow furrowed, she seems a little perplexed by it, rolling it around in her palm before setting it down very carefully. “This is a really nice place,” she says, somewhat delicately. She looks at Martin over her shoulder. More softly, “Unsere Mutter wäre stolz auf dich gewesen.”

Martin lowers his gaze to the floor. Marie resumes stirring. “Did you tell Eamon I was coming?” Jason’s breath picks up, but Marie’s voice is light.

“No.”

Her mouth flattens. “Probably for the best.”

“I—I wanted to tell him.” Martin rubs a hand at the back of his neck. “We don’t speak very often.”

“It’s alright,” Marie says sincerely. “I endangered his family. You don’t forget that.”

Martin trades a long look with Jason, but stays silent.

Marie’s drawing what amusement she can from the stilted awkwardness of the atmosphere. There’s a singsong quality to her voice as she taps the spoon against the inside of the saucepan, calling out, “Glühwein?”

They sit with their mugs. Martin a few feet away, legs unyielding on an armchair across from them, next to the tree. Their time outside together has made Marie bolder with adopted settledness. She makes herself comfortable. Leaning back fully, draping against Jason instead of the couch’s throw cushions. She tugs his arm until it wraps over her loosely, hand setting in her lap. His left hand. Eyes raking downwards, Martin starts slightly, fingers flexing around his mug.

Marie acts uninterested in furthering involved conversation. She sips her wine, she makes unsuccessful beckoning noises to the cat, she carries on complimenting Martin on his carefully-constructed home. She describes things to him, too. Marie lists places she’s lived, laying out what she’s tried to make of the spaces she and Jason have shared. Jason's waiting for her voice to turn sour, bitter; for Marie to stiffen against his front. She doesn’t. Bit by bit, she imparts more of her history to her brother. Gradually gaining ground as she tries to paint a wide array of pictures for him to imagine. Sat right here in front of him, instead of scribbling on a page that will have to travel halfway around the world for him to read it—if it gets to him at all. And all throughout—Marie keeps looking at Jason. Every few sentences, she glances behind her. His face close, hovering, just over her shoulder. Once or twice, she presses her lips to his. Fleeting. Something she’s never done in front of anyone that knows her like Martin does.

Suddenly, Marie stands. She tells them both to wait for her, that there’s something she doesn’t want to forget.

The cat's head lifts, watching after her. Martin studies his nails. He clears his throat.

Marie comes back with bright, inspired eyes, holding out a gift they’d carried hundreds of miles. “You know,” she says, lilting, “It’s actually from Jason.”

Martin thumbs over the detail on the CD case cover. The light from the tree reflects within its plastic in a hazy glint. With a short movement of his neck, he raises his eyes to Jason's. Curtly, he thanks him for the gift. His gratitude sounds sincere, if reticent. Marie beams.

“You’re welcome,” Jason says.

Martin tucks it into the side of his chair. “I already own a copy of this.”

“Oh.”

Marie takes a very long sip from her mug.

“I have something for you, too,” Martin shoots a look at her, “It’s new. Just came out. I have one and I thought—I thought of you.” Setting his mug on the floor, he bends to retrieve a small FNAC bag from underneath the tree. Unwrapped, it’s the only thing disrupting the shadowed void space at all—apart from the cat, who bats lazily at Martin’s arm sliding plastic across the wooden floor.

Once it's within her hands, Marie studies the small cardboard box, covered in French she can’t read. “What is it?”

Her brother rubs the back of his neck. “It’s electronic, for reading books. It can hold thousands.” A brief inhale. “I didn’t—I haven’t put anything on it because I didn’t know what you’d like, now. But I know how—I always remember you reading when I try to imagine—” He pauses. Readjusts. “Before you go, I’ll show you how to put things on it. I don’t—I don’t know if you’ll be able to yourself. Later. Wherever it is you’re going.”

Martin’s left Marie speechless. Jason stares at her and tries to visualise the last time he’s made her look like this. Reading something he wrote her, maybe. Or in bed, under moonlight, laid out alongside him. Marie’s fingers tracing Jason's lips beside her parted, wordless mouth like she was trying to pull his whispered words into herself. Still there lurked a darker side—even in those moments where Jason tried to show Marie the centre of the soul she'd reawakened. Sentiment always shadowed by the fact Marie defined Jason so completely in part because no one else could ever know him at all.

This is like that, and it isn’t. The best offering Martin knows how to make across a divide neither of them can bridge. Acting more in acceptance than understanding, he leaves Marie’s chest unsteady with short breaths as she wipes her brimming eyes. She says very softly, “Danke.”

Placing the box carefully on the couch, Marie turns away again. Almost running from the room as she calls behind her, “Lassen Sie mich Ihnen etwas zeigen.”

Martin clears his throat. This time, he opens his mouth. Before he can say anything, Marie’s in his space again, eager, pushing something into his hands. “You probably don’t want to read it too closely,” she cautions. “But there are pictures, too.”

She sinks down next to Jason again, splaying her hand on his leg immediately. The muscles tense under her touch when he realises what she’s handed over. Glancing at him, Marie’s mouth twists apologetically. There’s nothing more private to them than the journal Martin’s flipping through. But—Jason accepts her reasoning. Laying his fingers over hers makes her grip loosen slightly.

In any case, Martin seems to be taking his sister’s advice: thumbing quickly through thick pages, eyes lingering only upon the scenic photos he finds tucked within. Displaying a varying series of discovered worlds. In a wonder-hushed voice, he asks, “You’ve been to all these places?”

Martin’s awe is so audible that Marie melts. Sagging into Jason’s side, exhaling with the sheerness of a relief Jason isn’t sure she’s ever experienced. At last alleviating an inescapable guilt: taking the chance to show someone else she loved the life she chose, through her own eyes.

The light from the tree flits over her smile. “More,” she tells Martin. “A lot we didn’t keep anything from. But we always do, now. I make sure we do.”

“This is beautiful.”

Marie stays suspended in a state of peaceful collapse. Her head is heavy on Jason’s shoulder. Sure fingers tenting beneath his. “Yes, it is.”

—

Tonight, Jason turns on the overhead light in the office. Uncovering the contents on the bookshelves, so he can select a scratched silver frame, make Marie examine it until her face burns. “Jesus,” she murmurs, “That was a long time ago. First time I bleached my hair. I got better at it.”

She presses at the cardboard backing to slide the photo free. In the back corner, a scrawled date reads August 1992. “My sixteenth birthday,” she says quietly. “That’s our mother’s handwriting.” Marie traces her fingers over it. “She hated me doing anything to my hair. I said I was old enough to decide.”

Glancing up, “Martin could probably make a copy. You want me to ask?”

Carefully, Jason asks, “Do you?”

Marie studies it again. She twists the photo, warping the film, squinting down at her past self. “No," she says finally. "It’s not important. But Martin might have some others. You should ask him.”

Setting it down firmly on the shelf again, Marie announces she's going to shower. She takes off her sweater—and stops. She glances at Jason over her shoulder, indicating the clasp of her bra.

He kisses a tattoo on the top of her back as he unhooks it. “Did you drink too much to do this yourself?”

Her hand’s lifting her hair off of her neck. “Yeah, that’s why I brought you.”

Strapless, it slips away easily. Jason presses his mouth higher on her neck, cupping her breasts, feeling her sigh. It's hard to think of the last time Marie spent an entire day away from him. Out of nowhere, she asks him, “How far away is it?”

“Where?” Jason circles his thumbs lightly over her nipples.

Marie sighs again. Leaning back into him, warm flesh peaking under the pads of his fingers. “Where you first did this.”

“Three point eight miles.” No response. Jason adds, a little defensively, “It’s a small city.”

Turning to him, Marie’s trying not to smile too widely. “You could have pretended to have to think about it.”

Jason kneels to pull down her tights, her underwear, letting them gather in soft dark shapes on the wooden floor. He kisses her hip. “Go shower.”

—

In dimmer light, Marie finds Jason sat up on the pillows, reading something he’d written for her. “I know it’s private,” she says as soon as she’s shut the door, lifting the towel from her body to rub it over her hair. She doesn’t make any moves to get dressed. “I just thought—well, I wanted Martin to try and understand.”

Jason closes the journal. “You think he does?”

“No,” she says, short, combing her scalp with her fingers. “He never will. But maybe—well, maybe a little bit. He’ll find someone, too, one day. He’ll understand more then.”

She drops the towel. On the bed, Marie straddles him. She caresses his cheek. Close, quiet. “He doesn’t hate you, you know.”

Jason swallows. He thinks—he already has more than he could ever deserve. “He can if he wants.”

“But he doesn’t.” Marie’s always insistent when it comes to shaping her own inalienable truths. “He knows how much you love me.”

Hand at the small of her back, Jason rolls them over until Marie lays amongst the pillows. Immediately, she reaches up, twining her fingers around the back of his neck. Her eyes widen slightly, expectant.

Jason brushes over her temple. “He has no idea how much I love you.”

Marie tilts her head on the pillow. Gazing. Purposeful press of her fingertips as she whispers, “Show me.”

Against the deep navy sheets, Marie’s skin shines pale and bright. She’s uncharacteristically docile, just lying, looking up at him. Breathing. Jason threads a hand through her hair near her forehead. Carding through it, feeling it smooth and soft from her shower. Arid winter air makes it sleek. Jason can look at her and think of it shorter, darker; jet-black. Dripping onto his fingertips when he felt it for the first time. Or in long cascading waves, always frizzled by the humidity of their endless summers, that Jason would push off Marie’s shoulder to kiss the tattoo there, that he used to watch trailing along the bedsheets when she arched over them, tipping her head back as he pushed into her.

Calmly, Marie cups his shoulder, murmurs his name. Half-chiding, bringing Jason back to her with a firm hand on his jaw. When he kisses her Marie sighs into it. Drops her hands to curl her arms tightly around him instead.

They kiss lazily, mouths half-open. Pulling away, still caught in her grip, Jason drifts down two poised fingers. Marie leans back on the pillow, biting her lip. She opens to him that way, thighs splaying wide on dark sheets.

Jason leans their foreheads together as he moves his fingers inside of her. Marie always wore her pleasure, her love for life so brazenly—but tonight, now, she cages it. She grits her teeth; subtle marks of tension in her jaw. Keeping her eyes wide open instead of letting them draw in soft and lidded. Very rarely does Marie make Jason work a reaction out of her like this.

But it’s still early.

It’s good sometimes, feeling her out. After only kissing, when Marie wasn’t really wet yet, but slowly got that way on Jason’s fingers. Slicker and tighter until she was almost clutching at them, babbling for Jason to get on with it, to make her come however he was going to—protests abruptly silent when he’d slip those same fingers between her parted lips. Marie would reach up for him as she sucked them, catching his wrist.

The first time—Marie had taken Jason’s fingers into her mouth herself, before he could wipe them on the crinkling sheets. She blushed. A deep red that stayed high on her cheeks. Mellowed only by how tan she’d been then. They’d been in Italy, maybe, or Greece still—and Jason rubbed the smudge of colour on Marie’s cheekbone with his thumb and thought: there was nothing she could feel that Jason wanted her to hide from him.

They’re long past that. Tonight, Marie holds herself back to force his focus.

Grazing against nerves inside of her makes her eyelids flutter on a sharp exhale. Head turning on the pillow, parted mouth inching closer to the wall. Gently, Jason fits his free hand over her lips. Pressing more insistently—with his fingers, with his hand on Marie’s mouth to muffle her moaning his name underneath it.

Sharp edges of want still him, and Marie seizes it. She licks at Jason’s palm, strong swipes of her tongue like she makes around his cock; it twitches now as he watches her, eyes lidded and glassy, calmly rocking down on his fingers. Jason drops his open palm from her mouth.

Marie’s swallow is audible. Murmuring thickly, “You wanna keep me like this?”

He doesn’t. Her chin shifts slightly, lifting her hips up as Jason pulls his fingers out of her.

Bending down, Jason starts to slide a duffel bag out from under the bed. Unzipping it on the floor while Marie’s hand trails over his back. Moving lower, rubbing the knobs at the base of his spine, she asks curiously what he's doing. Jason holds something out behind him.

When Jason glances back over his shoulder, Marie’s frowning at the small, sealed box in her hand. “It’s just—cleaner,” he explains.

Her shoulders start to shake and Jason realises she’s laughing. Barely registers her tossing the box away into the shadowed corners of the room before she’s dragging him back to her. Tugging him down by the neck until his face hovers just over hers. Her grinning mouth split open. “Martin can do laundry,” Marie whispers, “Jesus.” She’s laughing against Jason’s lips, trying to tilt their faces together. “He has sex with men, too.”

Marie smiles so much it’s hard to kiss her. Giggling, baring her teeth, running a hand through Jason’s hair as he presses his mouth to hers again and again. Marie calms in slow stages—the shape of her mouth softening, circling her thumb around Jason’s temple, taking his bottom lip between her own and sucking gently. Letting it go, she breathes his name with such affection that Jason crushes their mouths back together before she’s finished making the sound.

She wants Jason underneath her, and he wants to keep them slow. Quiet. Legs laid out flat on the mattress, hands clasping Marie’s hips, keeping their movements short and shallow. Marie’s arms loop around his neck again, nails cutting lightly against his biceps. Hot breaths against Jason’s forehead as she grinds down slowly, uninterrupted. Leaning back, Jason takes her in. The sight of her dropping a hand to the pull-out mattress, bracing herself for more leverage as she moves herself on top of him. Shifting her other hand to splay on Jason’s chest; cold line of metal on the skin. Marie’s working hard, moving her hips in tight circles, breath caught between her teeth. Swaying into her again, Jason bites languidly at her neck. Tilts up to tongue her throat, feel her juddering swallow.

Marie’s eyes are shut, damp sweat at her hairline. She’s shuddering—from the effort of staying silent, from the slow-build burn of rocking together like this. When she slips fingers along her own stomach Jason catches them, lifts them away. Fits his hand there instead, palm flat against her lower abdomen, taut fingers stretching to reach her swollen clit, brushing up and down.

Mouth over Marie’s heartbeat. Trying through the haze of pleasure to remember—the first time she took him here. This same city; not this apartment. Another one, mere miles away, where Jason leaned against the wall in a starkly-unrecognisable kitchen and smiled at Marie as warmly and invitingly as he could. He’d thought she was beautiful, he wanted to touch her; in that moment he wanted her to know it. So many years ago. In all that time, Marie made Jason tell her things like this. She’d made him write it down.

Still, Marie can stand to hear it again. Jason buries it against her neck, how much, how long he’s wanted them like this. The first thing he knew he wanted.

Listening to him makes Marie gasp, move her hips faster, half-clutching at his shoulders. Mouth at his ear, mindless, pleading sounds. Too much to withstand—underneath her, Jason shakes in slow and rising waves. Reoriented by the harshness of Marie’s breath against him, the way her hips jerk when he pulls out of her, body aching with unfulfilled need. He barely asks her what she wants before she speaks in a desperate breath, “Your mouth, please—”

“Ssh.” A soft kiss to his teeth marks in her throat. “Lie down, baby.”

Spread out beneath his hands, his mouth. Wet enough to scissor fingers in her easily, fitting his tongue between them, lapping at what he left in her. Marie groans, too-loud but he doesn't care anymore.

Tilting his head back, looking up at her through his eyelashes, Jason sees Marie burying her own hands over her face on the pillow. Trying to keep quiet, heel of her hand tight to her mouth. The glow of the streetlights outside lights the backs of her fingers in stripes of varying sizes.

Jason stretches his free hand up to her face. Prying at Marie’s own until she lets them drop. Cupping her jaw, fingertips stretching to her cheek, spanned wide to cover as much of her lips as he can. More sound escapes that way—but it's better, Marie’s hands free now to settle in his hair, making short, desperate strokes through it. Panting through the splayed spaces of his fingers as she pushes herself against Jason’s tongue. Marie comes with a long shudder, locking her thighs in place, fingers now digging into Jason’s wrist to hold his hand more tightly against her face. Mouth wide open. Catching against his ring. A smooth, cool, circle; digging into the warm fullness of her bottom lip.

Sharp sounds of them catching their breath. Jason moves to lay beside her, sluggish moments until Marie stretches half on top of him. Burying her cheek into the hollow of his throat, arm draping lightly around his waist. Already sweat-stuck to her, Jason wraps his own around Marie’s shoulders, kisses her damp forehead and closes his eyes.

Marie mumbles, “You didn’t do that the last time we were in Paris.” He doesn’t say anything. “Both nights,” she narrates. “You made me come with just your hand, but not your mouth. You didn’t—six months later, it was new, the first time you did that.” Her voice sounds muffled against his neck. Jason wonders how close she is to sleep.

He presses his mouth to her temple. “A lot of it was new.”

She’s quiet for a long time. Jason assumes she’s asleep, until something else slips from her lips. “Not all of it," Marie whispers. "I think something was always the same.”

—

Thin, watery morning light drips through the half-open shutters. It’s early. Grey, slow-lightening sky. Silent streets. Blinking awake, Jason lifts his head to see over Marie’s shoulder. She’s lying on her side, naked back to him, chin propped up on her hand as she looks out at what little they can see from this angle. Mostly barren branches. A few skylight windows.

Marie knows he’s awake. She pushes her sleep-warm body back into him. Throaty, tentative, she asks, “Okay?”

Nothing woke him but the light. Jason kisses the back of Marie's neck and feels the muscles of her shoulder slacken under his lips.

She sounds a little smug. “I thought that would help.”

“It doesn’t always work,” Jason reminds her. Not unkindly.

Quiet for a moment. “Still. I had a feeling it would.” Abruptly, Marie turns so she’s facing him. “You know, I really don’t like it here.”

“No?”

She shakes her head. “Everyone’s rude. It’s dirty, grey. I know people think it’s beautiful, but...” A pause. Switching course, “You think police are still parked outside that hotel?”

Jason huffs. “Probably not.”

“So we could stop by.”

“They might still have our photos taped under the counter,” he suggests.

Marie laughs. She turns her gaze to the mattress, picking at loose threads on the spare sheets. Focused recollection changes her face. Significance settling over her, stripping her smile, hushing her as she asks, “Can you imagine standing in that room again?”

With splayed fingers, Jason brushes sleep-tousled strands of hair off her forehead. “It’s just a room.”

Marie stays removed. Still caught in awe of that remembered axis point. Both far behind them, and within their reach. Whispering, “Does it really feel that long ago?”

Jason’s fingers settle on her chin. Tilting it up toward him, Marie's eyes lift immediately to lock on his. Pointedly, Jason tells her, “It feels like my whole life.”

A warm smile unfurls slowly across her features as Marie pulls herself back to the present. Very softly, she says, “I guess it would."

With a sudden, lit-up energy, she gets out of bed. Shoving down the covers, searching for her bra on the floor. Excitement scatters her speech; sounding slightly breathless as she recounts her intentions for Christmas. In the sky, the rising sun makes more of a valiant effort: wide beams sweeping gold across the floorboards, diffuse rays shaping an indistinct halo in her hair. Marie turns back to Jason. She reaches out her hand. Waiting for him to take it, to follow her into the cold and dawning light of a new day.