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His second shower of the day did very little to help with the heat, the water coming out of the pipes already tepidly warm. Booker scrubbed himself dry only so he wouldn’t track water into the room, leaving his skin still damp enough it would evaporate and hopefully cool him down a little.
That he went through all this trouble, only to throw it out the window when he saw Nile sprawled on their bed with a book. It was stronger than him, than even the heat, the urge that led him to crawl between the frame of her legs and lay with his face cradled on her belly. He pushed her shirt up, seeking her skin, and she complied by taking it off without missing her page. Nile was a furnace, warm all over, always, and her hipbones poked at his ribs something awful, but there was nowhere he’d rather be. He closed his eyes, feeling the flutter of paper over his shoulder each time she turned the page.
Soon her fingers turned to his skin, drawing absent-minded patterns up to his hairline, down the dips of his shoulder blades. The occasional scrape of nail sent his skin into gooseflesh. Pacing, leg bouncing, neck cracking: of all the ways Nile used to relieve the excess of energy she kept coiled in her body, this was definitely his favorite. He felt when she let go of the book, anticipating. A beat, two.
Her fingers sunk into his hair, and Booker sighed in contentment.
It followed no set rhythm, the way she took turns at flattening, shifting the parting, only to pull it back to where she began. The soft motion lulled him into half-sleep, sagging deeper into the comfort of her body. A nap, he thought, a nap would be great like this…
Booker felt Nile’s little huff under his cheek, a contraction of the muscles on her belly, and nothing else. He waited, until the time passed made it seem like she’d been able to overcome whatever difficulty she found in his head. Her fingers turned more deliberate, driven with focused intent this time, until…
A deeper, clearly frustrated huff.
“Something wrong up there?” he asked, nose pressed so tightly against the curve of her breast the words came out rumpled.
“It doesn’t hold one twist of a braid,” Nile answered, her voice rife with a pouty quality she reserved only for the most irrelevant things. Booker arched an eyebrow at her. “I mean, I know it wouldn’t hold, it’s so stupidly fine and straight,” she continued, rolling her eyes at him. Her fingers combed through his hair again. “I just didn’t expect it to slip out of it so damn fast.”
“Sorry it didn’t pass your test, boss,” he replied, good-humored, and Nile gave him a soft tug for his troubles.
She engrossed herself in her activity again. His hair, dripping down his neck when she started, was by now almost dry.
“I bet you were one of those kids with hair like corn silk," Nile said, softly, teasing. At his confusion, she added, "Hair so blonde it's almost white? The kind that darkens when the person gets older."
"I—" Booker reached for a memory, sure it would be an easy answer. It wasn’t until the moment stretched, his single word hanging in front of Nile’s growing confusion, that he realized… he couldn’t remember. “I don’t… know?” he finally said, frowning.
His childhood was something he’d mostly put behind even in his first life, fuzzy and distant like a dream. Tales to tell his children and hopefully get a laugh out of his small misfortunes. Booker remembered loose bits and pieces: how he despised eating eggs, drawing shapes with a stick on the packed dirt ground of their kitchen. He remembered crying when his older sister married, even though she would live only a couple of minutes away. However he looked like didn’t figure in any of these images.
“Book?” Nile called, and Booker blinked away the ghosts. She looked worried. “You with me?”
“Nowhere I’d rather be,” he answered, softly, laying his head sideways so he could see her face. “I don’t remember,” Booker said. “We must have had a mirror—polished metal maybe, small and durable for grooming—even though we were quite poor, but I suppose it wasn’t for children’s hands. Or maybe the memory is just gone…”
“That’s… scary,” she said. Booker waited while she picked through her thoughts, watched as the words came and went on the mirrors of her eyes. Wondered how that young version of himself, almost completely gone from this world, would’ve felt at knowing there was someone thinking about him with such gentleness.
“Andy told me before, about how she can’t remember the faces or names of her first family anymore, of her sisters,” Nile finally continued. “At her age, it felt fair, I guess… Never thought how quickly forgetting could catch up with you…”
Muscle and bone shifted under his cheek, a strained breath struggling to deepen.
“Am I crushing you?” Booker asked, fixing his forearms on the mattress to relieve the weight. Nile simply pulled him back.
“Yeah, but it’s good,” she answered, arms lacing around his neck to hold him tight in place. Slowly, Booker allowed his weight to sag onto her again. “I mean, I can only breathe maybe halfway, but that’s what magical healing is for, right?” Nile said, a smile tugging at her cheek. “Gotta be close to weighted blankets, hm? Grounding.”
“Do I ground you?”
Nile traced a finger along the line of his eyebrow. “Yeah.”
He felt her heart on the palm of his hand pressing at the left side of her ribs, steady and sure. Grounding was a good way to put it.
“You don’t forget everything,” Booker said, breaking the comfortable silence. “Just like Andy still knows she had sisters, and how I know none of my boys were born that blonde.” Nile hummed in interest. “My youngest’s turned out lighter than mine when he was grown, but when he was a baby it was closer to wet beach sand, so you’ll have to keep guessing…”
Nile sighed in mock defeat, or maybe from the shortness of breath, and Booker laughed. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How were you as a kid?” he asked. Booker took one of her hands out of his hair, tracing the ridges and dips of the fine articulations. “Since you’re so young and fresh-minded.”
“So funny, old man. Well,” Nile said, eyebrows scrunching, “Like any other kid from the time, I suppose. Mom was not good at braiding, you see? Her fingers were never nimble enough to make it neat, no matter how hard she tried. So she did twists—cute parts, definitely greased half my head while doing it—and then let me loose on a box of hair bobbles. Barrettes, ballies the size of cherries…” She was smiling now, eyes closed as she lost herself in the memories. “I loved to bury my hands in them, the noise they made…” Nile shrugged. “Had to stop wearing so many when I got into soccer though.”
“Scared you’d blind someone with a butterfly clip?” Booker asked, and Nile laughed. The picture of a tiny, carefree Nile chasing after a ball, followed by the clacking of plastic hair accessories was too endearing. “I wish I could see it.”
Nile pressed her lips and looked down. “Mom has so many pictures,” she said softly. “Thousands, in old albums and boxes. I guess everyone is afraid of forgetting, right?”
“Maybe I’ll get to see them, one day,” Booker answered. “Then we can remember together.”
A drop of sweat ran lazily down the curve of Nile’s neck.
“I would love that, yeah,” she answered, smiling.