Special Episode: More
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Kasey has wandered out of the bed and into the moonlight that’s falling into the room. The white glow spills through her as if she is smoke, though I can discern every form and line, every delicate curve and gentle plane of her body.
As we cannot play any music - having hands that can use no instruments and press no buttons - she has begun to hum, to sing under her breath when she wants it.
I love every song better for her sweet, warm voice wrapped around it. I love her rippling veil of obsidian hair, the way it picks up a portion of the silvery light and lets the rest spill right through. I love the way it moves and glimmers around her face with her movements, with the slow, thoughtless little dance she’s doing in the moonlit center of our Haunted House.
I watch her from the bed, mesmerized, spellbound. She and I are eternal, but it’s moments like this that truly feel timeless. There seems to be nothing behind us, nothing before us. There is only the dreamy way my love slowly turns in a circle and stretches her arms up over her head, humming softly to herself, her eyes closed so that her ink-black lashes sweep her cheekbones.
“I shall stay right here,” I tell her, resting my chin on my fist, “And watch you so for the rest of my life.”
She laughs softly, without opening her eyes. “What life?”
“Is this not life?”
She stops and looks at me, then lets out a bright, musical little laugh when I make sad eyes as soon as her movements cease. She begins to dance again, and I lapse back into happy silence, a tremendous smile.
“You make me think, Will,” Kasey says softly, turning another slow circle in the moonlight.
“You make it so that I cannot think at all.”
“You’re making me feel like one of those little dancer statues in a music box.”
“Would that such a woman as you could ever be confined to such a thing!” I laugh, tossing my hair out of my eyes. “Then I might always keep you safe. Hide you in my pocket.”
“Keep me safe from what?” she giggles, opening her raven eyes to look at me again. “We don’t have bodies.”
I let my eyes linger on her in the moonlight. “Is that not a body?”
She blushes a little, the glow of her cheeks growing richer. “You know what I mean.”
“Ay, lass,” I sigh helplessly, leaning heavily into my elbows. “But still, I feel the need to keep you safe. Ask me not to explain.”
Kasey blushes deeper, fidgeting with the sleeves of my shirt. It’s so big on her that it falls to her thighs, leaving the rest of her bare. Only her fingertips peek out from the pushed-up sleeves.
She’s haloed in the moonglow, her inky hair tousled, her lips like red satin and her eyes like black velvet, looking right into mine.
I had been ready to say something, but my thoughts flee my mind at a dizzying rate. All I can do is look, with enormous eyes and an awed smile on my face.
Kasey blinks at me, then slowly draws closer. I’m stretched out on my stomach, my elbows at the edge of the bed. She takes my face in her hands as I look up at her.
“So strange, Will,” she murmurs, staring down at me wonderingly. “I can’t get over it. Without your clothes, and when you’re not saying anything, you could be from any time. You could be some sexy guy I met at a bar in New York.”
She bites her lip, stroking her thumbs over my face.
“Then you open your mouth,” she says slowly, every word full of warmth, “And you’re right out of history.”
I let out a helpless sound, hide my face against her stomach.
“What?” she giggles, winding her fingers into my hair.
“Sexy,” I repeat, my voice muffled against her.
“Oh - not something people called each other in your day? Especially right to their face?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So now you’re embarrassed, because I said that you are?”
“Absolutely so.”
Kasey breathes out a little laugh, eases my head back from her, then laughs again when she sees the burning color in my cheeks. Slim, gentle fingers push me onto my back, and she falls over me, covers my body with hers.
We can’t feel the bed beneath us, so we tend to make cozy places of each other. By now we know the best ways to get our bodies most closely fitted together, enveloped by the other as if by a warm blanket.
Kasey nestles her head into the crook of my neck. I hold my breath, waiting for the blink of her eyes, when I know I’ll feel the soft sweep of her eyelashes.
I smile to myself when it comes, that little moth-wing kiss of lightest contact.
We can only feel each other. In the whole world, only each other. Would I ever have realized what a vast, boundless fountain to draw on she is, if it wasn’t so? I could spend eternities savoring each and every sensation of her. I’m coming to know even the tiniest ones with deep and reverential intimacy.
That one little brush of her eyelashes. Bliss.
I sink my fingers into her hair, wrap my other arm around her, bend one knee to keep her in place. The night is windy and wild outside, the trees in a rush of movement, the river moving fast. It must be cold. But none of it can touch us. The shared warmth of our cozied-together bodies begins to melt through me, and through her. The only movement of ours is that of our slow, deep breaths.
“I could just lay like this for hours,” Kasey says softly, in perfect accordance with my thoughts. “I feel like I’m dreaming.”
“None of my dreams were ever so sweet,” I murmur happily, then startle a little when Kasey suddenly buries her face into my neck.
“Stop it!” she laughs, one hand curled over her face. “Oh, my god. It’s a good thing I can’t use phones anymore, or I’d feel the need to text Jamie every word you say, verbatim.”
“Is - that-?” I hesitate, uncertain that I know enough about texting to understand. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be.” She lets out a soft giggle, nosing her face back into my neck. “Don’t be sorry.”
I break into a relieved smile and lay my head back again, dragging my thumb in slow circles on Kasey’s lower back. This work shirt she’s wearing is one of the only pieces of clothing I’ve had to wear in lifetimes, and I thought I knew the feeling of it in and out. But it feels like entirely different fabric when I can feel the shape of her body beneath it. When her warmth saturates it.
“I’d say I didn’a pull off your shirt half so well as you pull off mine, Miss Lavoe.”
She giggles, and I feel the rush of it against my neck, the vibration of it through her body. Bliss, again.
“Well, that’s partially because you couldn’t even get even your forearms to fit through the sleeves, lumberjack! Good thing that you didn’t attempt the buttons.”
“I would have, only I couldn’t move my arms. Alas, your tiny shirt was like a set of cuffs on me.”
“Oh my god. There was no point in trying, was there? There wasn’t even enough fabric for it to come close to closing around your chest.” Kasey lets out a snicker of laughter, tracing her fingertip up my jaw. “It was fun to watch you try, though.”
“Anything my shade asks, even when why she might have asked is a mystery.”
“I was just curious,” she answers, around another giggle. “I didn’t expect you to actually do it!”
“Anything she asks,” I repeat again firmly.
Kasey smiles against my neck.
She sits up and looks down at me, then slowly pushes her fingers through my hair. “I want to do something for you.”
I sit up on my elbows, gazing up at her affectionately. “What, lass?”
“I don’t know. Name it. Just - something. I want to.”
I cast a surprised smile up at Kasey, warm in ways beyond the physical. “You might - just talk?”
She blinks, staring at me with startled eyes. “I do that all the time.”
“Yes,” I say happily, tucking a fallen strand of inky hair behind her ear.
Kasey draws back sharply, then laughs, nibbling her lip. “You want me to explain something from your list?”
I have a long list in my mind of things from beyond my lifetime that I have questions about. Things I’ve only caught flashes of during my time in the modern world, things I couldn’t piece together on my own. I never knew why I was keeping the list, given there was no one to ask, and would never be anyone to ask, so far as I could see. And I had questions from many eras. Even if there was someone to ask, they would only know the answers related to their own.
Or so I thought.
“Do you seriously have a list?” Kasey had asked brightly, when I told her about it. “Ask me! Pick a question from any decade.”
We’ve spent long nights talking after the list comes up, but made surprising little progress on it.
For often the explanation of the first thing leads us into winding pathways of talk, where the roads are dotted with flowers of new, related mysteries, pathways to be ventured down which branch off into their own paths, and if there’s a story to be shared along the way, something from my life or hers to do with whatever question I had asked, I want to hear those stories, and she wants to hear mine, until we tend to finish by Kasey saying - wait, how did we get here? What were we even talking about in the first place?
Every night spent on these wandering journeys is precious to me. And to know that we can always come back to them, that if we left some path unexplored, Kasey might say - what were you telling me about that, the other night? We said we were gonna come back to it, and we never did.
“We haven’t made much of a dent in your list,” Kasey says, as if reading my thoughts. “What was next, again? It was a pop culture thing, a - comic book thing? Was it something to do with Iron Man, or am I misremembering?”
“Can’t have been that, Miss Lavoe. I already know well about the iron men.”
Kasey pauses, narrows her eyes at me. “What, um - the iron men?”
I furrow my eyebrows at her, baffled. “Surely you know of them? Surely they are not so newfangled anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The machines.” I wait for a moment, but Kasey is still staring at me in obvious confusion. “The iron machines brought in to do the work of the coal miners, to replace the men. The iron men.”
Kasey’s expression clears instantly, and she stares at me with wide eyes. “Is that - what people called those machines, back then? Iron men?”
“Ay, among the colliers they did. Word passes through the workmen, regardless of trade.” I make a face at Kasey, wrinkling my nose at her. “The iron men produced double the coal waste, they said, but the companies saved a fortune on paying out wages. Those machines were the death blow to the strikes the coalmen were organizing to get better conditions down in the pits. I always thought they were a shame.”
Kasey looks into my eyes in motionless silence, then lets out a quiet, dazed-sounding laugh.
“Oh, man,” she says softly, reaching down to trace a fingertip over my cheek. “It’s wild, dating you.”
“What did I do?”
“Nothing, just…” Kasey stares at me with burning brightness in her dark eyes. “I - didn’t know that. And, um - sometimes it just hits me all over again that I’m hearing about history directly from the mouth of someone who was - was really…”
She trails off into incredulous silence, then blushes, looking down at me.
“And I get to make out with you, too? And you look like this?” She flings herself down over me again, knocking me onto my back. “What a combo deal, honestly!”
“A - combo deal?”
“Oh, man, if I could go back and tell my dorky-ass history-nerd middle school self about you, Will! I’m really glad that’s not the version of me that took eternal form, by the way. There were - regrettable choices involved in that look. Don’t ask Jamie if he has any pictures, by the way, because he doesn’t.”
“Sounds as if that’s not so,” I laugh, wrapping my arms closely around her. “I’d love to see little Kasey. I imagine her just as fiery, if not so eloquent.”
“That’s - accurate.” Kasey lifts her head and nuzzles her nose into mine, smiling warmly. “She would’ve been doodling your name in hearts on her notebook if she ever learned about you in history class.”
I let out a surprised, delighted laugh, and Kasey smiles.
“Oh, goddamnit - Will! I was supposed to do something for you, and instead you did something for me.”
“Oh, but you did do something for me,” I murmur, touching my fingertips to her cheek. “You did.”
She sits back and looks down at me again. Her knees on either side of me, her hands spread on my chest, the heat of her melting through my body.
There’s a little silence. The wind rushes against the trees, cold and harsh. But my vivid shade sits perfectly still and warm, beyond, the moonlight glittering in her dark eyes. An incandescent, pure flame of being.
“Did you - did you say that we’re dating?” I ask tentatively, when I manage to recover my voice.
Kasey arches an eyebrow at me. “I mean - aren’t we?”
“I suppose I - hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Oh, that’s right. Dating wasn’t exactly a thing in your time, was it? They’d have called that courting.”
“Yes.”
“So what would they call what we’re doing?”
I hesitate for a second, smoothing my thumb over the supple softness of her thigh. “They’d call us lovers.”
She pauses, then slowly trails a fingertip down the bridge of my nose, all the way down to my mouth, where it stops on my lips.
“Is that how you think of me, Will?” she murmurs, gazing deep into my eyes. “As your lover?”
I stare up at her with wide eyes, unable to move or speak, a shy, flaming blush rising in my cheeks.
“Oh,” Kasey laughs, her eyes flitting to my cheeks. “I overwhelmed my good little country boy, didn’t I?”
“My god in heaven, yes, ma’am,” I stammer weakly, and Kasey giggles again, gently slips off of my lap to sit beside me. I sit up and swallow hard, flustered and all out of breath. “You look like what the Devil would send to lure a man into temptation.”
“Oh, now that’s a compliment, baby.”
“Conjured by unholy prayers, you.”
“Oh my god, keep it coming, Will, you’re on fire.”
“What-?” I dissolve into indignant laughter, then shake my head as Kasey grins widely. “Lord send me strength.”
Kasey laughs, too, then stretches out flat on her front beside me. She rests her head on her arms, turns her face to me.
“I love being snuggled up here with you,” she sighs. “I can’t believe Aiden found us this old place. You forget how much history this area has, sometimes.”
“Ah, people forget. The place doesn’t, though. It’s kept this waiting for us all this time, hasn’t it?” I nod at our strange, cozy little home. “Something tells me that the old forest remembers the days of horsemen and archers. And the days before those, too.”
Kasey looks at me in warm, contemplative silence for a moment. “What a thought, sexy.”
She laughs softly when this deepens the blush in my cheeks, but then grows quiet, serious.
“That’s what I thought we were, at first,” she murmurs. “Memories. I thought that might be the type of energy that makes us up. Now I think that can’t be what it means, to be a ghost. We’re more than that, aren’t we? Memories don’t - grow. Memories don’t have lovers.”
“I suppose - we are ghosts of our own kind, Kasey. Guardian Ghosts.” I turn on my side and fold my arm beneath my head, my eyes lingering on hers. “If I truly am one of only two in the world, I’m thankful beyond measure that it’s you who is the other.”
She smiles at me, the intimate glow in her gaze so warm I can almost feel it touching my face.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she says softly.
Silence falls for a moment. She looks away, deep in thought.
“You know, Will… the thought of marriage and kids and all that stuff never appealed to me at all. It’s just never something I could see myself wanting.” Kasey turns to meet my gaze again, her dark eyes blazing with warmth. “But eternal lovers… now that, I can get on board with.”
I hold very still, then reach out and weave my fingers through hers, draw them to my mouth. I press an adoring kiss onto her knuckles, and she leans forward to put one on my lips.
“How did I go for two hundred years without you?” I groan helplessly, gathering her close into my arms. “Now if I had to go longer than a day I would die all over again.”
She doesn’t answer, but she curls deeper into my embrace, her soft glow melding with mine.
She seems so perfectly tranquil in my arms, right now. Like she would be content not to move again until an age has passed.
“Kasey,” I say quietly, after a long moment. “I’ve - noticed that your style has changed, as foreman of the Ghost Office. We’ve taken this case at an easy pace, as of late. I felt you chomping at the bit, before. But Aiden and Jamie have been busy lately, and I haven’t felt any impatience from you as they see to their other commitments.”
“That’s - true.”
“I - wondered why? Not that you’re impatient, my love, but - eager, perhaps was the word-”
“No, I know what you mean.” Kasey lapses into thoughtful silence, takes a deep breath. “I guess… before, I was in a big rush to get the case solved, so we’d have the material to make our battery and we could leave Ketterbridge. Travel, like I always wanted to.”
“Is that… not so, anymore?”
“No, I still want to do that, but…” Kasey draws back to look at me, speaking haltingly, a rosy blush rising in her cheeks. “I’m - I’m happy here. I’m so happy, I just… I don’t want to rush, anymore. We can take our time with the case, right?”
I’m so caught by surprise that I don’t answer, and she keeps going before I can find my words.
“You and I, we have all the time in the world to go explore what’s out there beyond Ketterbridge. But why rush towards that when we can have nights like this, on the journey to get there? This - this makes me happy, Will. I want to slow down, and savor it, and - honestly, I don’t even remember the last time I was so happy that I just wanted to get up and start dancing, that I actually did get up and start dancing-”
Kasey abruptly falls silent, her eyes having glanced off of my face and then come back swiftly, wide and startled.
“Oh, you’re cute when you smile like that,” she giggles, sitting up on her elbows.
“You’re sexy,” I tell her.
Kasey blinks at me, then lets out a burst of startled laughter. “Will, oh my god!”
With each laugh I draw from Kasey, the fiery love blazes higher in my heart. I look down at myself, amazed that the light isn’t shining right out through my translucent body.
Kasey is, as always, right. We are not memories.
This, what I feel for her - it’s more, so much more than that.
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