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Including this morning, the extraction-of-the-century Bugs's team had just pulled off, it had been three days.
Their sex life had hardly been healthy, in quantity or quality. Whose was at their stage of life? But the last week or so-- precisely, since they first met Thomas in the coffee shop-- Chad had been much more amorous. Reasserting his claim without words, in tandem with the private longing that blistered in her heart. Like the universe knew, and was guilting her for daring to look at Thomas.
He'd caught her playing the video game, laughed at her and, as if to get her back on side, kissed her all the way into the shower. She'd gone along, still hating herself for laughing with him, her head fuzzy and confused with self-coercion. Afterwards she threw up.
Then it had been most nights. Of course Tiff wouldn't imagine cheating; but the nebulous grief she carried like a phantom limb was both inflamed and soothed when she saw Thomas. So guilt, with longing and shame at the idealised woman-in-leather who she was not gnawed in her chest; and giving in to Chad seemed like what she was supposed to do.
''I... I need a little time," she murmured apologetically.
If she felt guilt in the matrix, it was nothing to the nature of the grief she felt here. Clarity like hot floodlights, like interrogation, and she felt blinded by its harshness. Neo was gentle and calm, pain and compassion and love. She clung tight to his hand, to the feel of his fingers squeezing her shoulder, moving on her arm as they sat on his bunk
He looked surprised she would bring it up so soon. "Hey, of course. You could barely stand up out there."
She hadn't been thinking about this. Not until Neo had opened the door for her to his cabin.
It washed over her again. Guilt. That's not why. She looked at him, mouth ajar. How could she possibly tell him?
''What is it, Trin?"
Three days since Chad had last had her. She felt like two people at once, glitching. The euphoria of being reunited with her love, and the sickening, horrible feeling. The first time she was extracted there hadn't been this whiplash. Her lips still felt warm from the memory of Neo's kiss.
Chad barely bothered to kiss her at all. Until that time this week.
Somehow that made it worse.
She tried to pin down what it was. She felt revulsion. Bile rising. She couldn't do this to Neo. No, no, no. It was too much, too fast, to be in Tiff's bed with him and then here, hours apart--
"You're okay, deep breaths."
She huffed out a laugh. Neo was the one whose life had been really terrible. Drinking, suicide attempts, crushingly alone in a way that allowed no space for hope. She looked up at him, searching those miraculous eyes of his, full of concern for her, whose life had been full.
"There you go, that's it. You want to lie down?''
"...Yeah."
The urge to hold and be held by him was overwhelming. He was desperate for it too, she could tell, though he seemed a little on edge under the surface, awkward and terrified of messing this up. Just holding, she could do that. Her hunger to be close to him crowded out everything else.
Her head spun a little as Neo lay her down and plugged an IV drip into her arm jack, then climbed in around her, her head under his chin. She felt him breathing her in, though she knew she wouldn't smell like herself yet, the stick of pod fluid on her skin. Neo didn't seem to care what she smelled like.
"Love you," he murmured, and the storm in Trinity's mind began to ebb. She thought of the sunrise she'd watched an hour ago, the soft golden warmth and freshness in the air, like dew on cold grass even in a city of skyscrapers. She'd been trapped in the night, but Neo was her morning.
His arms tightened a little, holding her like a vase, fragile and precious. "No one's taking you," he said.