#handholding

"Take my hand, take my whole life too..."

I stand at the threshold of Soli’s hab.

In front of me is an impossibility. Beautiful trees, cobblestone streets, and smiling faces all revolve on colossal rings around the radiant central axis of the Menara, a whole world in miniature beyond the reach of scarcity and capital.

Behind me is the hab where I’ve spent the two most important weeks of my life, and the kindest, gentlest person I’ve ever known.

It feels like I’ve stood here for hours.

Catching up with my old crewmates should be an easy thing. It hasn’t been long. The pub where we agreed to meet is nearby, and apparently it even serves the weirdass Viburnian pub food most of us remember from before the ships came down and took us from one hell to another. And judging from some of those screen names in the group chat, I might not be the only one there sporting a shiny new gender.

“Are you alright, Natalie?” Soli asks. “Do you need help?”

Natalie.

I’ve heard people complain that affini are too fond of using pet names to address people. It makes them feel funny. Demeaned. Personally, I can’t relate. Nothing makes my heart flutter like hearing “Natalie” in the angelic voice of Soli Actipsis, 2nd Bloom. It makes me melt every time.

“It’s fine, Miss,” I say. “Just nervous.”

A half truth. The prospect of meeting “The Lads” as I am now is a little intimidating, sure, but deep down, I’m terrified that what’s stopped me in my tracks is not who I’m about to meet, but who I’m about to leave behind.

She’s done so much for me. She’s the one who encouraged me to be honest with myself and with her about my gender, after keeping it locked up for so long. She’s the one who calmed me down after waking up with that weird medical implant. The one who medicates me every morning. Who helped me walk again, who helped me eat normal food again, and so on, and so on. If the Affini believed in debt, then mine is one I could never repay.

Which is why it sucks that I’m down bad for her.

I have been ever since I woke up, after the Punisher was boarded, and I still don’t know how it happened. All I know is that I heard her serene voice, I saw her gentle, honey-gold eyes, and Limb-Loosening Eros took me.

It’s not fair to her to feel like this, to want even more from someone who’s given me so much. To want to hear her call me Hers. To know what her flower petal lips taste like. To be surrounded by her, in ways only an affini can.

I see her perfect face on the inside of my eyelids. I hear her voice in the quiet of my mind. I smell the phantom traces of her perfume in every corner of her hab.

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a volcano, and the part of me that holds me back from jumping gets weaker every day.

And it is a danger, at least of a sort. She’s given me a whole life to live, on my own terms, in a way that I could never have imagined even a month ago. A life free of poverty, free of mandatory work, and free of the pressure to exist for another. And I’m already daydreaming about giving it up. To be a floret is not a punishment, but it’s certainly a forfeiture of everything Soli’s given me.

And if even taking a step outside Soli’s hab is fucking me up this bad, I’m really in danger.

“Natalie, you haven’t frozen have you?”

Her voice finds its way inside my chest and coils around my heart.

“N-no, Miss. I’m not sure why, but…” I try to take a step outside. My foot crosses the threshold, then retreats like a bug scuttling back under a rock.

“It’s okay that you’re nervous, little Natalie. Maybe having some moral support would steel your nerves?”

It takes me a few seconds to piece together her meaning. She wants to come with me.

I turn to look at her. Her two gentle ambers pull my attention.

I almost say yes.

“S-shouldn’t I do this myself? I need to- to get used to being-”

“Nonsense.” She interrupts me. I let her. “Part of being independent is recognizing when you need help, after all. Let me come to the pub with you.”

That seems reasonable.

Soli stands up from her seat to join me. I watch her flowing, goldenrod hair bounce in time with her elegant gait. Her simulated high heel boots click-clack against the floor. Her form is mesmerizing, and the way her “boots” and her Lady Godiva hair contrast with her otherwise seemingly undressed body just makes me feel all the more sinful for it. I tell myself it’s like she’s wearing a catsuit. Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t help.

She walks up to me, towering above me, at probably twice my height. I wonder what it would feel like to curl up in her lap.

“Here, my little Natalie. Take my hand. Let’s go together.”

I nearly swoon. My little Natalie.

And then I register the rest of what she said.

The last time I let her touch me was the night I woke up. I was still exhausted, barely recovered from… everything. And I let her bathe me.

I dreamed about her touch for nights afterward.

She was perfectly respectful and quick about it, a consummate professional. A growing part of me wishes she hadn’t been.

I look up. Soli extends her hand down for me to take.

I shouldn’t.

I think it would end me.

It might actually break me.

My hand rises, in defiance of my will. My fingertips slide against hers. I feel the deceptively soft flesh of her fingertips against the swirling ridges of my own as they slide deeper into her, by inch by ruinous inch. My fresh, red nails disappear over the horizon of my knuckles, eclipsed by hers. The disparity in the size of our hands makes me nearly swoon all over again. It reminds me how small I am. How vulnerable. Soli could do anything she wanted to me, and it’s by the grace of her honorable character that she’s used this power for good. I almost wish she’d use it for evil. It’s not like I could stop her. I probably wouldn’t even try.

My hand tries to close around her fingers, but she continues her advance down my arm. Not content to merely hold my hand, in a chaste, finger-against-finger position, she swallows my whole hand in hers. She wants to take it, every inch.

I feel my heart race.

She engulfs me in her powerful hand, and she holds me tight. It’s warm. I feel the currents of hot sap coursing beneath the soft surface of her palm. I feel my own heartbeat in the rhythmic expansions of my fingertips against her. She must feel it too. Does she know?

I scrabble around the inside of her hand, desperate to somehow make this gesture symmetrical. To prove that I have at least a little agency in this arrangement. I fail, of course. The Affini don’t do symmetrical. She’s taken my hand as presumptuously as she’s shouldered the burden of my recovery, and in neither case is anything expected of me. My sentence is to be cared for, and to give nothing in return.

My hand submits to hers, and simply rests within its belly, palm-to-palm. I rub my fingers against her simulated palmar muscle. I can feel the strength in them.

I look at the verdant cocoon surrounding my hand, squeezing it tight.

I feel it squeezing my heart tight, too.

My eyes squeeze shut.

I’ve clung so hard to my coming independence. I should get to live a life of my choosing, on my own terms. The opportunity is right there for the taking. For the first time in my life, the only thing in my way is me.

And I still want it.

I just want Her more.

Something in me shudders apart.

I let go.

A tear meanders down my cheek. It’s warm and gentle, like her. My breathing slows. The static in my mind clears.

I look back up at Soli. She returns my gaze with nothing but love and patience.

I resolve to ask her the Big Question tonight, after dinner. I hope she says “yes.”

“W-we should get going, Miss,” I say.