Chapter 5

For the next month they float along, happy, everything new and delightful. Clashing habits don't matter. The fact that they can't touch doesn't matter. Every day they lie next to each other. Sometimes they keep clothes on and rock against each other. Sometimes they touch and suck on each other as best they can through clothes or sheets. Sometimes he uses Alisha's toy on her. Creativity is key, they decide. Their love feels magic.

They are careful not to touch, which sometimes is maddening and sometimes feels almost normal. When they do by accident—the back of her bare hand bumping against his when they're walking, him misjudging where her shirt ended—it's the same as it always has been with him: Simon says something bizarre and disturbing, but doesn't try to grab her. For the first time, she wonders what that's about. Before she had any, uh, first hand knowledge of Simon as a sexual being, she assumed that her power was sort of like truth serum: it revealed and enhanced people's desires, and then pointed them in her direction. But then sex with future-Simon hadn't been anything he'd shouted when affected by her power, and sex (sex-ish?) with present-Simon didn't involve pee or armpit fetishes either. She wondered if those kinks were gone. Or had they ever existed?

Even in the loved up, blissed out honeymoon stage, is there ever a good way to ask your boyfriend why he said he wanted to piss on your tits and fuck your hairy armpit? Not a question she'd ever thought she'd need answered, but here she is. One afternoon Alisha tries sort of a round about way of asking. She asks if they can watch porn together.

Simon soothes his hair down uncomfortably. She realizes he hadn't done that in a while now. He stammers an objection.

"Come on, it'd be fun," she coaxes.

"What do you want to watch?" he answers, obviously unconvinced.

"What do you like to look at?" she asks. Her brilliant plan.

"I don't want to watch that with you," Simon shakes his head.

"Why not?"

"It's embarrassing."

"Is it kinky or something?"

"No. Why does everyone assume I'm a pervert?" His face twists up, angry and hurt. Brilliant plan? Not so brilliant.

"Simon," she says gently, and puts an arm around his waist. "I don't think that. And even if you did like that…"

"Is this because of those things I said when you touched me? I didn't mean them. I don't even remember saying them."

"I know," she says, but of course, that's exactly what it's about. "But I do wonder why do you think you said those things and not, you know, just 'I want to shag you,' or whatever?"

He shakes his head. "I don't want that. I don't even look at that kind of thing." The way he says it, though, it sounds like there's something else that he needs to add. She waits, but he doesn't say anything else.

"But?" she prompts.

He flops back on the bed. "It's humiliating."

She stretches out next to him. "I love you. I'm your girlfriend. No weird thing you maybe wanked off to is going to change that."

"It's not that." He looks away. "The summer before I started high school, my friend Matt, his parents put all sorts of blocks on his computer so he couldn't watch porn. So he would come over to mine. Sometimes he'd try to find outrageous things and leave them on my computer. It was a stupid joke. I started trying find even more bizarre porn and leaving on there for him. We'd try to out do each other. Some of the images… We laughed about it. We shouldn't have. It was the sort of things I say to you when you touch me. Men pissing on women like that. That sort of thing." He finally looks at Alisha's eyes, which are kind. "And then we got to high school and Matt stopped speaking to me, it was another thing to bully me about. He told everyone I liked those things. Everyone said I was a pervert. For years."

"Oh, Simon," she says sympathetically.

"Don't feel sorry for me."

Unsure what to say, she puts her palm over his heart.

"So what do you actually like to look at?" she asks finally.

"Normal things," he says defensively.

"What I'm saying is, we could still watch porn and it could be fun."

"I thought you were just trying to figure out why I said those things."

"Maybe I was," she shrugs. "But now I want to wank off with you and see what gets you going."

"You get me going," he insists, putting a hand over her clothed arm.

She rolls her eyes. "I know. But what else? I promise to be nice about it."

They compromise. He shows her a video on his computer—nothing objectionable really, except that it's stupid and typical. His porn is just pretty girls groping each other and then getting fucked by a standard-issue gross porn guy. It's boring, she thinks. They don't have fake boobs and the girls seem like they're maybe actually having a good time, but that's about it. She's nice about it and Simon seems relieved.

After about ten minutes of it, Alisha volunteers to find something he might like. It takes some searching, but she finds an okay video. There are two girls at the beginning, having what seems to be real sex rather than a fake, exaggerated version for the camera. One girl snaps on a latex glove and starts easing fingers into the other girl's pussy when the guy shows up and starts going down on the girl whose genitals don't have a hand inside them.

Alisha literally slaps her forehead. "Gloves!" she exclaims.

"What?" Simon seems pretty into the video and not focused on her new, much more brilliant plan.

"Latex gloves," she points to the screen. "Think those might work?"

His eyes pop open. "Why didn't we think of that before?"

She shrugs. "Want to go buy some now?"

It turns out you can buy latex medical gloves more places than you think, in different sizes. Alisha snaps hers on first and practically tears Simon's clothes off. She runs her gloved hands all over his body. Does he look so uncomfortable that he's practically wincing? Yes. Alisha pauses and gives him some space.

"Does it feel good?" she asks.

He nods, fixes his hair, which she had just raked her fingers through.

"So why do you look so miserable?" she says, forcing herself to sound playful.

"I think I'd rather if I could touch you first," he says sheepishly. "I've been waiting a long time."

She almost says that she's been waiting just as long, but realizes that isn't true. She's touched him before, future him anyway. He's never touched her except through clothes and bedsheets. Besides, should she really complain about being touched by Simon?

"You get dressed. I'll get undressed," she says, pulling the gloves off and wiggling out of her clothes.

Once their positions are reversed, Simon tries to touch her just the way she's said she likes. He's gentle moving his palms over her arms, her legs, squeezing her hips with his fingers, brushing his thumb across her cheek. He gets lost playing with her breasts.

"You look so happy," she giggles.

"I am," he says, realizing for maybe the first time that he is, in his life, actually happy, maybe for the first time really.

"Me too. Want to make me really happy?" she coos.

His mouth goes dry. "Yes." More than anything, he thinks. And he does what she wants.

Afterward, she thinks about he noticed everything. He paid attention. And it makes her hotter to know that he actually really has been listening all this time. I had a good teacher. You. That she taught him this, how to please her, turns her on. She remembers a conversation they had long ago, before he found the flat, back in her old bedroom. Back when she was diligently getting to know him, asking him loads of questions, and he first started asking her questions in return. She told him about her favorite class in college, one she hadn't skipped almost ever, an art history class of all stupid things. And he listened and looked in her eyes and asked her opinion about street art moving into mainstream art, and then actually listened to her thoughts, and asked relevant follow up questions. It was one of the first real conversations they had, one of the first times present-day Simon was deeply appealing to her. She wouldn't have noticed it before her power, but being actually listened to, being related to as an intelligent, interesting, good person as a turn-on. He wasn't flirting, wasn't trying to charm her. She thought, I'm being treated with respect. I don't have to prove I'm something beyond pretty or sexy, because he already believes I am. She wanted to climb on top of him right then.

And of course she thinks of the first time he called her beautiful. Sometimes I think it's difficult for beautiful girls; people don't see past their looks. She loved his earnestness, his sincerity, and the way he saw her: as a person, not as a thing. This is someone who actually listens to me, she realized quickly, and doesn't just look. Here is someone who takes me seriously, whether I'm expressing an opinion or buying him a drink or telling him how to get me off. She looks at his face, and feels something bigger than desire start clenching inside her.

Simon realizes, after she's had her turn and he's had his, that giving a girl pleasure a better feeling than anyone tells you. It's not just a turn-on, seeing her come, (though it obviously is that), it's also feels magic to get her off. To actually bring her off, because of what he did, he can't help feeling proud and powerful and content with his life.

She lies on his chest and he touches her face. They both still have gloves on. She remembers it with her skin, that this is exactly how future-him touched her face. Will touch her face. She remembers the feel of his skin on hers, and for a second she's heartbroken with how close they are to being able to touch skin to skin. Almost, but not quite.

"I really wish I could kiss you," she says, biting her lower lip.

"Me too." Alisha runs a finger over his lips, and he kisses it, sucks her fingers into his mouth, kisses all of her gloved hand that he can.

"Like the gloves?" she asks.

He nods. He looks beautiful, she thinks. He's been working out, lifting weights, and all that stupid pakour, so now his body is almost as it was when she first saw him like this. She puts a hand over his naked chest for a minute before she takes her gloves off.

They dress, and he spoons her in their bed and compliments her good thinking. It's all nice pillow talk, and then he asks, anxiously, "Do you think condoms would work as well?"

She shakes her head, her curls brushing his face as she does. "There'd still be other exposed skin."

"I could keep my trousers on."

"And keep you balls inside your pants? No. What if it slides around? Or breaks?" She looks at his hand on her arm. "I don't want any chance that you won't remember it. I want it to be special, like it was." Immediately, she regrets saying it and feels him tense up. "Like it is now, like this," she adds, but he doesn't relax.

"I just want to make you happy," he says sadly. "And I know you miss sex, the sex you had with him."

"With you," she insists and turns around to face him. "And you do make me happy. This, right now, makes me happy."

"I think it's not enough for you," he admits.

She wants to roll her eyes. The insecurity sometimes annoys her, but she tries to soothe him through it. "I love you. This is the best relationship I've ever been in. I am happy with the sex that we have now, and I'm going to be happy with the sex we will have when we figure out a way around my bullshit power. Is this enough for you?"

"Yes," he says quickly. "I never imagined I could be with someone like you."

"Good," she snaps. After a beat she says, "Condoms would work for blowjobs though."

He shakes his head.

"You don't want me to? Were you not there when I demonstrated what I got done for?"

"I want you to. I really want you to," he says, memory of Alisha with a bottle still giving him a jolt. "But not if I can't…give to you that way."

She runs her fingers over his hair, careful not to get too close to his scalp. "Aren't you generous," she teases.

"It isn't fair the other way," he insists.

"I guess there are these dental dam things," she says. "They're like latex you have to hold over me, and maybe then we could try."

"Good," he says.

She stares at his lips, and he catches her looking.

"But there's no way around the kissing?" he asks softly.

"Not that I can think of," she says sadly.

He twists a finger in her curls. "I love you, Alisha."

"I love you too."

For tonight, they pretend that is enough.

Their sex life expands to include watching each other and touching each other with latex gloves. The attempts at oral sex are less successful, and they both say that can wait, not saying how disappointed they both are. She tries not to think about how much she misses the feel of his skin, and he tries not to wonder about how she tastes, and both of them avoid talking about what they can't have.

Everybody accepts it, after some initial cautioning from a suspicious Curtis and some practice not thinking about sex in front of Kelly. Simon's parents are annoyingly delighted and Alisha's parents are cautious at first and then decide that he is a good influence. They both work, Simon starts working out and running around on buildings (to less than ideal results, but he insists), and mostly Alisha thinks he looks quite fit. Everything is good.

Until, of course, it isn't. They have a fight about something stupid, after he gets hurt with the parkour bullshit. Simon gives in right away, which makes Alisha madder. When she cools down, and Simon apologizes for the millionth time, she admits something to herself. She loves him and doesn't want him to get hurt on some mission to become somebody else. She doesn't want him to go back, to die in her arms, to travel through time, to save anybody. She wants them to be normal and happy and free of all the powers and bullshit. And she does really, really, really miss kissing him. Touching him. The sex. All of that.

She sees the sign right before Christmas, the sign offering what she's missing. For a moment, she thinks maybe everything will be fine.