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For Helen,
You’re my…
Spiteful words and half-baked thoughts and that sort of delirious anger flares up again: why does she have to be so goddamn fuckable?
Zosia hovers over her on the bed, happy to take the lead after Carol practically dragged her up to the second floor. Carol tries not to think about how Zosia didn’t miss a beat: gave as good as she got, kissed her back with equal fervor, navigated the corners of her house expertly, didn’t think even think twice about which door led to the master bedroom as she pushed Carol up against it, pinning her with her torso and kissing down her neck as she reached for the handle. When it turned and the door opened, Zosia didn’t even trip over the perpetually upturned corner of the rug.
Carol tries not to think about what all that pre-existing knowledge implies, tries not to think about the growing list of concessions she’s made for the hive, tries not to think about how eating your words is finding out what Zosia tastes like.
“Carol,” Zosia says her name in a way she’s heard before—like someone who wants her so bad and they can’t believe they’re finally getting that—that Carol wants this too. Carol wants to tell her to shut up, instead she lifts her head to catch Zosia’s lips, her fingers curling at the hem of her white top so she can start wrestling it away from her body, craving skin. Zosia pulls back, sits up, does as Carol wants, ridding herself of her own clothes before helping Carol with hers. Zosia moves sure, efficient, in contrast to Carol’s own frantic hands that have been vaguely reaching for Zosia the entire time.
Zosia looks down at the naked body below her, her hands on Carol’s hip bone then sliding up her torso, tracing her palms on Carol’s ribs before cupping her breasts. And she almost can’t take it, that look of amazement on Zosia’s face as Carol can’t help but let out a whimper when Zosia swipes at her taut nipple. As if Zosia doesn’t already know, as if she hasn’t seen a glimpse of her naked body in that grotesque collection of memories. As if Helen’s not in—
Carol can’t take it and she pulls Zosia in, impossibly close, kissing her again, biting at her lower lip and chasing after the remnants of alcohol in their mouths.
“Just—” Carol breathes when she pulls away. “You know what I want. I…”
Zosia can’t read her mind, but it isn’t too different, anyway, from having that obscene, inestimable knowledge. How within it, she knows how Carol wants to be kissed, how she wants to be touched. What it means when she can’t help but wrap her arms tighter around Zosia, her fingers splayed out across her back, palm pressing against that scarred skin, nails almost scratching at her shoulder blades.
Carol feels touch-starved, her libido kicked into overdrive, so incredibly turned on. She sighs into Zosia’s mouth like this is what she’s been waiting for. 41 days and 40 nights—longer, if she counted the days before they left her—she did better than Jesus.
She likes to think that she held that solitude with some sort of dignity, destructive as it was, before calling them back. Before completely collapsing into Zosia’s arms, that angry, half-baked thought surfacing again: why does she have to be so goddamn warm?
She should have just gotten a dog—one that would follow her around and curl up on her bed and not leave her side when the fucking apocalypse unfurls onto the earth. One that wouldn’t fucking die. She should’ve let Helen talk for a few seconds longer when they were in Banje Beach and a stray took particular interest in their company—maybe if the sun hadn’t set so fast and the air didn’t suddenly turn cold that day, if they didn’t have to rush back to their Airbnb. She should’ve let Helen, like always, break down that pretense of a resistance. Helen could talk her into anything. It was on the tip of her tongue: yeah, fuck it, let’s grab a mutt from the shelter after the tour.
Helen could talk her into anything: a dog, redesigning the kitchen, a Range Rover, the chapter is more than good enough, Carol.
Helen could talk her into anything. Except—
Carol is sensitive to the touch, so easily overwhelmed at having someone this close again. Zosia is warm and real, and Carol’s skin feels like it’s on fire. She’s barely registering the way Zosia’s hand descends between her legs, through the tangle of her pubic hair, her fingers sliding through the moist folds and splitting her open with a sureness that makes Carol cry out in relief. Maybe if she had a dog, she wouldn’t be clinging so hard, would have resisted another night, instead of relishing every bit of body heat that she can take from Zosia, that electric feeling as Zosia moves inside her, curling her fingers, pressing her thumb on her clit.
Carol moans, incapable of stopping the embarrassing sounds coming out of her mouth, the unmistakable flush that’s surfaced on her skin. She’s so mortifyingly wet, she can hear it.
She loosens her grip around Zosia’s shoulders, feeling her strength starting to give out as her muscles clench and unclench involuntarily, all the blood rushing down, the tension collecting, tightly winding, deep inside her. Zosia pulls back slightly, just enough to meet Carol’s gaze, and Carol sees that same soft, appeasing smile she always has on her face. Almost, she can imagine that voice, is there anything we can do for you, Carol?
But this time, Zosia doesn’t say anything because she knows—they know.
Carol is feeling so fucking good.
Something warm, something inside her, something real— it curls right at the spot that makes her hips buck upwards. That tension turns into something familiar, her own pleasure clawing up, something she knows. Something that knows her.
“Stop—ngh—ah! Wait—!” Carol gasps. But Zosia doesn’t because she knows. “Fuck, Zo—Zosia—!”
Carol comes; too fast, too desperate, and it’s what she wants—that white-hot heat. Because it’s been so cold for so long, she didn’t think she could shake it off, that chilling loneliness so embedded into her body after they—everyone—left her.
They fucking left her. Still in the middle of her climax, Carol’s anger flares up, stealing that heat, a rush of blood to the head, something violent cracking through the feeling of so fucking good.
But Zosia catches it, catches it with soft lips and an eager tongue and teeth that nips and pulls at Carol. She stops the anger from calcifying as her fingers slow inside Carol, still moving, helping her ride out her orgasm.
“Fuck,” Carol sighs, sinking back into the pleasure, heady and unmoored. She feels Zosia smile against her lips.
Soon it becomes obvious that Zosia has no plans of letting her rest, her movements quickening again. Zosia swipes her thumb on Carol’s clit, makes a steady rhythm of it, eliciting another moan—another uncontrollable, embarrassing sound coming out of her mouth.
“Like that, baby, like that,” Zosia says, voice low.
In Carol’s ears, it rings sickeningly sweet.
“Shut—shut up— ngh—shut up—” Carol hisses, trying to muster up some venom to go with it but her voice sounds foreign, almost as sweet as Zosia’s, like a plea. It almost sounds like don’t stop, don’t stop. “You’re so fucking—”
Zosia kisses her again, cutting her off. Vaguely, Carol realizes she doesn’t know how she planned to end that sentence. You’re so— All she knows is that she wants to be kissed. The hive has figured that out.
“Stop using—stop,” Carol starts again, stubborn as her own voice sounds so pathetic in her ears. No bite, all desperation. Her mind is cloudy and her body is betraying her and she’s being pushed to the edge of her sanity. “I told you, leave it alone—ah—her memories—"
Zosia is undeterred and kisses down her jaw, traces her tongue down her neck and nips at her collarbone. When her face presses against Carol’s pubic hair, she feels the tidal waves of desire starting to override whatever rational thing is left inside her brain. Zosia’s tongue reaches her, hot and teasing as her fingers are still working inside. After a few licks on her clit, each punctuated by a stuttering of Carol’s breath, Zosia looks up at her. She looks confident down there, between Carol’s legs, face flushed and lips swollen from their furious making out, Carol’s own desperation reflected back at her.
“But Carol, you are so close.”
Carol makes a sound too embarrassing to describe and feels herself clench around Zosia’s fingers, shameless and pulsing.
Fuck. Fuck. They don’t need Helen’s memories to know she liked that.
Zosia begins to work her in earnest and Carol throws her head back, draping a forearm over her eyes, placing a hand at the back of Zosia’s head, tangling her fingers in her dark hair. Carol lets Zosia push at the back of her thigh, urging her to bend her knee, spreading her open.
Zosia is so good with her tongue. So good on her clit as her slick fingers move in and out of Carol. Her grip tightens on Zosia’s hair, like she wants her to stop—like it’s too much. It almost is, really, the pleasure building endlessly, impossibly, her hips moving uncontrollably as she pulls on the strands of Zosia’s hair. But Zosia knows not to stop, knows exactly what she wants, how she wants it—relentless and unforgiving and just to… not stop.
“Zosia, fuck—Zosia…” Carol cries out because she can’t help it. Maybe she has something more meaningful to say after that, but nothing else forms into words. “Wait, I’m—ah! I’m—!”
Of course, Zosia knows even if Carol doesn’t tell her. She speeds up, her fingers curling, sucks on her clit as Carol’s hips lift off the bed, legs shaking. Carol squeezes her eyes tightly, pressing her forearm across her face, the back of her eyelids an explosion of color. That tightly wound thing inside her unfurls, threads pulled apart by Zosia’s beautiful fingers.
When she comes again, everything turns white.
It feels perfect, between her legs it feels perfect. It feels like the warmth she’s been chasing promising to never leave her again. It feels like giving in. It feels like a firework aimed right at her. And this time, it doesn’t miss. It hits her straight on.
“Hey,” Zosia says, voice soft, hovering above Carol, again closing the distance between their faces, peeling off the arm draped across her face. Carol didn’t realize she had been crying. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay…”
Carol shakes her head. How could things be okay?
“Just tell us—tell me—what you want,” Zosia says in an indecipherable tone. Sweet? Coddling? Smug? Appeasing? Still, coercing—because she knows Carol is still fighting.
“Read my mind,” Carol tells her, still lacking the proper bite. When Zosia places a soft kiss on her lips, she can’t do anything but let her. This is not giving in—but it feels a lot like losing.
“We—I can’t do that,” Zosia answers, smiling sadly. She stretches out on the space beside Carol, propping herself up on a bent elbow.
Carol sighs, staring up at the ceiling. With her, the tears are always quick to dry, and that overwhelming feeling recedes from her body like a tide.
“Well shit—I was kinda hoping you’d tell me because I—” Carol stops and frowns. Wondering if she should keep going—wondering what the plan is now. Wondering if there’s even still one left. How to save the world. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“You don’t have to know,” Zosia tells her, measured. “But when you find out…I would love it if you share it with me.”
Carol looks at her suspiciously.
Zosia shrugs and smiles, wryly she says, “I can keep a secret.”
After a pause, Carol can’t help but laugh, a loud disbelieving exhale. Zosia’s smiles wider and reaches for Carol’s hand. Carol lets her take it.
She wonders if it feels this good for the others, too. This whole time—if it never really felt like the world was ending for them. Maybe it’s always been futile, to ask them to give it up in the first place.
And if—if Helen had survived and it was with her— But then she’d be—
“Carol,” Zosia says tenderly, moving closer. She’s as intoxicating as ever, beautiful under the soft light of the room. When she kisses Carol, Carol kisses back, letting herself get swept away again. The good feeling doesn’t stop and she’s running out of reasons to be suspicious of it.
“Actually,” Zosia starts, between kisses. “We—I think I know what you’re thinking—”
“What?” Carol asks, breathy and suddenly not too interested in talking—in thinking.
“You want to go again,” Zosia says and Carol is sure that the tone is the slightest bit of smug.
Carol opens her mouth to argue but she realizes quickly that there’s nothing to argue against.
Carol traces a finger on Zosia’s back, following the outline of the scars from where the shrapnel were once embedded. She feels something twist inside her stomach and she places a kiss on the outside of the bigger scar. Maybe it’s something way too tender for her to do if Zosia had been awake. But it’s an apology, if anything.
This—this isn’t giving in. She wouldn’t—not, not to them.
There’s only one person who can make her give in, the only person who can talk her into anything. The person who can talk her into buying that too-expensive worktable, to switching to oat milk, to getting actual professionals to fix the plumbing in their kitchen sink. To going on a trip to Norway to watch the northern lights in an ice hotel.
It was Helen who could talk her into anything. Except—
When Carol jumps out of bed, Zosia stirs, but she doesn’t wake up. Carol gives her one more lingering look, but her body is eager to get her to the other room.
In the office, she opens her laptop and starts a new document.
Lucasia watches in silence as Raban sits on the bowsprit, the twin moons setting her skin aglow. She ought to warn Raban that soon, the air will turn sharp and deadly; sand in the Dunes of the Dumali are known for a hardness that stings, and combined with the gales of the area, one can imagine the damage it wroughts on tender skin. A thousand paper cuts in a single second. But in the moments where no one else is watching—when it is just her and Raban on the deck, it is the only time she let herself think that Raban is the most beautiful woman in the world.
Carol wrings her hands together, antsy on the stairs. Zosia is in the office reading the only thing Carol has produced in forever, the continuation of a story that she never thought she would write for again. She wonders if Zosia would like it. She wonders, too, if Zosia is capable of disliking it.
Carol wonders if Zosia will notice that she left out a page. A single leaf sitting on top of her desk, turned over, with the dedication she never found the courage to write except now that it’s too late:
For Helen,
You’re my entire world.