Chapter 187: 187: The First semester X

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They let their hands wander with care. Sera’s fingers traced the long lines of his shoulders and arms and the shape of his back where muscle told the truth about what work he’d done and what work he was ready to do.

John’s hands followed the arch of her waist and the subtle strength of her hips through fabric, memorizing boundaries and asking permission at each border. She answered with small shifts closer, with the way her knees pressed gently against his sides, with the way her hand slid up into his hair and held his head for a deeper kiss.

He broke that one only because breath asked politely. They rested foreheads together, noses brushing, sipping air from the same small space.

"I thought about you in temple work," she confessed, voice low, mouth curved. "It is difficult to meditate when your mind insists on returning to the memory of a boy who tastes like stolen cinnamon."

"I thought about you," he said. "I looked at my notes, and they had your handwriting on them even though I was the one holding the quill."

"You are getting romantic," she teased.

"I am getting honest," he said, and her eyes softened further, which seemed impossible until it happened.

She shifted again in his lap, the gentle sway of weight that is not a request so much as an acknowledgment that this is a human body and it likes proximity. He felt it; she felt him feel it; they both smiled because being known and not shamed is its own kind of heat. He pressed a kiss below her ear. Sera shivered and breathed his name. He had not known a syllable could make him feel like he had been given a key to a beautiful place.

"John," she said again, quieter, not asking anything, only giving him the sound to keep.

He answered with her name under his breath and felt her answer to that answer.

They could have gone further. The path was there; both of them saw it. But they also saw the room, the hour, the fact that being careful does not make a moment smaller; it makes it last. Sera cupped his face in both hands, looked at him like a vow that did not need a witness, and kissed him in a way that promised there would be time for the rest, and that when there was, it would be joy and not panic.

Evening climbed the high windows. The slant of light shifted from silver to a deeper blue. Dust motes stopped gleaming and turned into faint specks that the eye overlooked. Somewhere outside, a shutter clicked; the building breathed.

"Tell me something true," she whispered.

He thought for a heartbeat, then gave her the plainest thing he had. "When you walked into the dining hall at noon," he said, "I forgot to count my breaths. You looked so cute and beautiful."

She exhaled a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not. "When you stood to meet me," she said, "I forgot to pretend not to see how everyone was looking."

"Will you tell me something else," he asked.

"Ask."

"What did you think I would be like, before we talked? When I was just a boy at a village gate and a rumor with a too-quiet face."

She considered him as if she were reading a page she wanted to memorize. "I thought you would be a problem the village would try to solve," she said. "Then I talked to you and found a person the world will try to name him a legend. I felt a mystery in you. The goddess showed some signs to me. Anyway, I am glad I got to know the person."

He looked away for a second because sometimes happiness is bright enough that you have to blink it into something you can see. When he looked back, she was still there, patient as shade. He didn’t ask about the goddess. He decided to wait until she reveals more.

"Tell me something you want," she said. "Not someday. Today."

"I want to stop measuring my life on other people’s orders," he said. "And I want to measure it in the number of times I make you laugh quietly like you do when you are trying not to wake the old books. I want to be with you everyday."

"That is greedy," she said, smiling. "And I approve. I also want to be with you every night. In your arms..."

They kissed again, softer now, the way people kiss when they have decided not to prove anything. John let his hand find the tiny tension at the base of her skull and ease it with his thumb. Sera kissed his mouth once more and then his cheekbone and then his jaw, as if signing a letter with a flourish. He touched and grabbed her ass. She felt a pleasure she never knew.

Outside, the first night birds called to each other about the precise location of the moon. Inside, the air got cooler and their shared warmth got dearer. John tucked closer, not to chase heat but to keep it. Her hot breasts were pressing on his chest.

Suddenly the curfew bell found them exactly there.

It began far away, a single iron note that rolled in and found the bones of the old library, then a second, then a third, each one the careful voice of an academy reminding itself to keep its children indoors. The sound slid down the spine of the stacks and across the bench. Both of them stilled because obedience done together need not feel like surrender.

Sera pressed her forehead to his and let a brief, heartfelt complaint escape in the gentlest tone he had ever heard someone use to complain. "Of course," she said. "The bell wants us to leave."

"Of course," he echoed, smiling into the small shared air.

They did not bolt. They did not fold themselves apart like guilty conspirators. They untangled slowly, with the ritual grace of people who intend to tangle again. Sera rose from his lap and smoothed her dress by reflex though it did not need it. John didn’t put his hands inside. He wanted to do it when she asked for it.

But... the time is up. He didn’t want to break rules again. At least not now.

John stood and straightened his coat by reflex though he had never cared if a coat wanted straightening. She fastened her mantle. He brushed a nonexistent fleck from her shoulder. They looked at each other for the exact amount of time that could fit between two bell-strokes.

"I will send the stone tomorrow," she repeated her noon conversation, voice steadier again but eyes still warm. "When you get leave, or when training takes you out, call me. I will meet you at the shop. We will finish what we couldn’t, today."

"I will." He reached and took her hand, gently, openly, because a hand is an honest thing to hold and curfew is not a spell against honesty. He turned it and kissed her knuckles like a promise. "I will find the door that lets us through. I will make love to you like there’s no tomorrow."

"We will do that," she said. "I want that. I want to feel your naked body warmth on mine."

He started to reach for her again; she started to step toward him; both of them laughed in shyness because there it was, that bright ache that comes from being wise and wanting for each other. He leaned and stole one last kiss, brief and grateful and precise. She let him steal it and then stole one back, softer, as if to say, here, take this one for the walk. Until we meet in the house.

"At the west side of the house," she said, as if the room might forget its own coordinates without her voice to pin them. "There is an old bench. I have proven it can hold two people who intend to stay warm in each other’s arms. Let us test it again."

"We should publish the results," he said jokingly. "For science and for our love."

"We will need multiple trials," she said gravely.

"Repeated measures," he agreed.

"Statistical significance," she finished, and kissed him once more to seal the study / mate design.

The bell finished its final note. Sera glanced toward the door, then back to him, the look that tethers two people across a hallway and a night. She stepped backward, unwilling to break eye contact first. He lifted two fingers in a small salute and she returned with a smaller one. Then she was gone, into the corridor, a clean line of light moving ahead of the closing the outdoor time for students.

John stood in the hush a moment longer to let the room pack the memory carefully into whatever shelf old libraries use for such things. He could still taste cinnamon on his mouth. He could still feel the exact shape of the soft ass where his hands had rested and pressed. He breathed four in, four out, and the line in his chest stayed steady and warm.

He took the long, honest route back to the dorms, the one with the lamps and the patrolling junior who nodded at his pass. On the lawn a pair of second-years scurried, whispering about late tasks and the philosophical implications of the dessert counter. John let the campus settle around him like a cloak he had decided to wear rather than endure.

In the corridor outside his room, the muffled roar of a distant argument about whether flan is real made him smile. He opened the door to find the place dark and mostly quiet. Ray was already a heap of blanket and ambition on his bed. Fizz was absent, no doubt being adored and obeyed by his legion and definitely not doing anything as modest as sleeping.

John lay down and stared at the faint ladder of lamplight on the ceiling. He did not count breaths. He did not need to. The bench behind the west stacks had counted one for him, and Sera had counted two, and the bell had counted three, and the rest would be waiting on the morrow when a small stone arrived that knew how to carry her voice across rules.

He didn’t close his eyes, he was waiting for Fizz. If Fizz didn’t come soon. There will be problems.