“I love you.” She told him, cradling him in her arms. “It’s going to be ok.”
Her words, her touch, her scent, all rippled through him and the fight went out of his muscles and the tears fell more freely from his eyes. They were still for a long time.
Then, after a while, he said:
"How did you learn that?"
She laughed a little (not unkindly) and said:
"I'm sorry?"
He extracted himself from her embrace just enough to look questioningly into her eyes.
"That thing you do when you know exactly what to say, how to touch, how to feel. How did you learn that? You didn't set out to, right?”
She thought for a second or two.
“I suppose I learnt when I was young.”
“Really? Were you taught it?” he pressed on quickly, urgently, as if frightened he’d lose the courage. “No-one sets out your a-z of childhood morality in school, do they? You weren't made to memorize a times tables of appropriate responses to emotion? For most people it just...sinks in right? You soak yourself in it until it creeps in through your pores, your every inch slowly infested by sentiment."
“You make it sound so unpleasant.”
“Do I? Maybe that says something about me.” He looked away, the ghosts of tears red around his eyes.
“How do you mean?” She still had one hand tangled in his hair. She left it there.
“I sometimes feel like I didn’t learn in the same way. Socially, I mean. Everyone else was slowly absorbing emotional data – emotional resources – and it changed them. Over a course of slow inches, they found they *understood* people. They knew how to *act* and what to *say*. It was built into them.”
“And for you?”
“For me…imagine bees.”
“I’m never not imagining bees.” Her words were little more than a breath caressing in his ear. “Bees are awesome.”
“This should be easy then.” He didn’t move away, but she felt the tension came back into his muscles. “Imagine bees building a hive – they collect pollen, assumedly for no other reason than they *want* to. It’s instinct. But, more than that, it’s pleasure – the flowers willingly give themselves up to them. And one instinctual step at a time, a hive is built, layered with intricate, sweet walls – I say built, but if you watch it then it feels more like it *grows*. Now imagine a toddler trying to do the same with lego bricks. With persistence, with careful observation – and plenty of trial and error – they may create something that looks very similar. Hell, if they worked *really* hard and fucked up a *lot* along the way it may appear in all ways identical. But…”
“But?”
“It isn’t organic. It doesn’t function.”
She smiled.
“I think if a toddler built a perfect beehive out of lego, I’d think they were functioning very well.”
“But it’s not real, is it?” He was gasping now, gulping down big bites of air in a panic.
She caressed his forehead and breathed cooling almost-kisses on his neck.
“Why don’t you tell me what you mean?”
“I’m worried,” he said, “that if I say ‘I love you too’ it’ll be a lie. And according to the rules of the beehive, lying is something I’m not supposed to *do*.”
And she said:
“Ok.”
