I don't know even know where this went but maybe that's a good thing? Dreams. Dueling. Doaist Meditation...and Rodin? Goooo!

There was something wrong with her. A defect. She felt it deep within her, but it wasn't a mass, a tumor growing in her and changing her and engulfing her. It was more of a hollowness. Something was wrong with her. It was the distinct feeling of a very prominent nothing in the pit of her stomach, and she felt it all the time.

It wasn't as if she didn't feel. She felt everything, but at times she was out of her own body. Her mind would wander, and then she'd be pointing a rifle right at Isaac's head. Her mind would wander and leave her behind, and she wondered where she'd left her body. What was it doing while she was away, chasing her own shadow?

It scared her more than anything, and her shame at losing herself rendered her embarrassingly apologetic at all times.

Show me what to do.

She hadn't known. She didn't know.

But his words recycled over and over in her head.

Allison. Breathe.

Until she couldn't discern the words from her reality and her dreams.

"Show me what to do." His voice was raspy, hoarse.

Her eyes snapped into focus. "What?" Allison whispered harshly under the droning of their Art History teacher.

Isaac looked at her blankly. "I said, can you show me your homework?"

Allison rolled her eyes. "Really?"

"Really," Isaac said.

She leafed through her notebook, unceremoniously whipping the pages back. She found the one, began to hand it over to him, but snapped it back. "Maybe you should stop hanging around my apartment all the time and you'd have time to do some of this."

Isaac's mouth turned up. "Oh, yeah?" he said.

"Yeah," she snapped back.

"You want me to stop?" He practically drawled.

The sheet of notebook paper hung in the air between them as their eyes locked and burned into one another's. Their mouths curled up in unison, devilish half smiles relishing in the electrifying, thick air of a stalemate. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Lydia studying them intently.

Finally the situation was over. It could have been a wavering of her hand or his snatching it, but both of them moved and he had the homework, smugly settling back in his seat and sprawling his legs out carelessly. Allison sat up haughtily, her back pin straight. They came away both thinking they had won.

And it went on like that. Isaac always seemed to just be there. In the hallway, in the parking lot, crawling through her window nearly every night with some sleuthing excuse. And when they did have a mission, they paired up. Allison couldn't say she minded, she enjoyed the game they were playing. Though she felt nervous and awkward around him, she worked hard not to let it show. Clinical Allison, just diverting the eyes enough to feign disinterest, just smiling with closed lips enough to show her dimples and her amusement, just cool enough to deadpan with him as he so enjoyed. And so she never objected, she never acquiesced, and he just kept showing up.

.

.

"You want me to stop?"

Brittle pieces of notebook paper crumpled under her back when she arched it. His voice hummed on her inner thigh, where his lips had been trailing and teasing her into oblivion, slowly making their way up towards her underwear.

"If you stop I'll stab you again," she said airily.

He did stop, but only to cruelly skip to the jagged line of her hip bone, skidding his bottom lip along it as if atop of a wave and moving to the cove just between her breasts. His hands roamed and skated along the sides of them.

"How about now?" he asked and his hands travelled further north to her arms, which were up above her head. They travelled to where her wrists met and crossed, tied together by a piece of rope. He held them in one hand while the other's finger traced invisible masterpieces, swirling starry nights around her nipples and long, unbroken Picasso paths down to the black lace of her panties, where he practiced the light touch of his Monet atop the thin fabric there.

Allison mewled and gasped. "No. Keep going."

Isaac's nose was centimeters from hers, his lips just hovering over her parted and parched ones. And he only just dipped a finger underneath the fabric when her eyes snapped open and her body lurched her forward. She was sweating, and tried to relieve the stifling heat she felt within her with a cool shower, but it was futile. She couldn't dive into it.

.

.

"I have an idea," he said one night before he was even fully through her window.

"What's that?" she said flatly, eyes fixed on her textbook and absolutely not turning and laughing at the tangle of limbs bending and twisting their way in.

When he safely landed two clumsy feet on the floor and stilled himself he huffed out a short breath. "Meditation."

"Meditation?"

"Yeah. You know the thing where you breathe and sigh and close your eyes with your legs crossed? That thing," he said sarcastically.

"Okay," she said with a long pull on the A. "But…why," she was absolutely not following his train of thought and looked at him dumbly.

"So you know when I said show me what to do and you said I don't know and later I told you to breathe and you did and you made the shot and it was basically perfect so…"

Isaac was doing this little rotating circular movement with this two pointer fingers as he filled her in on the missing pieces of logic within his brain. She couldn't help but watch them rotate-like an old paddle steamer-and become entranced by them.

"…and basically we should try it," he finished and she gulped and looked back up at his face innocently. She hadn't been listening whatsoever.

"We?" she asked teasingly.

He paused and then gave her that slightly mischievous, mostly slyly amused look again. "Yeah," he said, the single word filled with so much goddamn…stuff. Whenever they reached a threshold that could easily be crossed over into some sort of confrontation of whatever the hell they were doing, that's when the singular, staccato words came out, heavy with so many silent words piled on top of them.

Isaac moved to sit next to her on the bed and she felt a jolt course through her, from her fingers up her arms and through her shoulders. She hoped he didn't notice.

He spoke softer now, less frenzied. "We could try the generic western secular practices, but I think Buddhist or actually maybe even Daoist meditation practices would be more fitting if you-"

"You researched this?" she interrupted him. She wanted to be coy, skeptical, or apathetic, but she couldn't help just being entirely dumbfounded. Her eyes searched for his but again, like in woods, he dropped his lids and gave her his lashes instead.

"Yeah I…" he fidgeted, his palm stretching out rigid fingers and pressing down on his knee before snapping back up to his hair. "It's stupid… nevermind. I just thought maybe-"

She stood up. "Well let's try it. Lead the way."

They sat on the floor, cross legged and shifting, clearing throats. Allison had turned off her lights and lit candles. He'd closed her window so the room was still, silent, warming up slowly.

"You don't have to close your eyes," he said quietly. His voice was velvety and deep, but low enough so as not to disturb the manufactured peace they created.

"Mmk," she nodded.

"I'm just making this up," he said.

"It's okay," she matched his tone, low and full and reassuring.

They locked eyes, backs straight and as they grounded one another in the depth of irises - one bright and constellatory, the other dark and endless. They stopped fidgeting.

"There are three basic types of Daoist meditation. The first is Ding. Now repeat these words after me, okay?" he began.

She nodded slightly, trying to even her breath from the clipped, hitching breaths of rising self-consciousness.

"Decide. Settle. Stabilize," he said evenly.

"Decide. Settle. Stabilize," she repeated shakily. She didn't know why.

"This is the stage when you need to draw your bow, okay? And you're panicking, you're doubting and shaking. This stage is deep, meditative contemplation or intense concentration. When you master it, you'll tap into it first and move through those words, those steps."

"Okay," she breathed out.

"This is just the survey coarse, okay?" he said. She nodded again, working to take deep breaths, but they caught at the top of her chest each time.

He smiled. A genuine one, before getting back to business. He straightened his back and found her gaze again. "The next step is Guan. Repeat after me again. Watch. Observe. Scrutinize."

"Watch. Observe. Scrutinize," she repeated.

"Good. Now instead of ceasing all thoughts and surroundings and striving to reach a singularity, Guan is about opening yourself up to all of the sensory information around you. See, it's not about emptiness, it's about insight into all that surrounds you. Perfect for when you're about to aim. Use Guan to study the wind breaking, the distance, everything that's contributing to this moment right here."

Allison held her breath during his mantra and forgot to start again. She was so intent on listening to him, experiencing him like this. So confident, so soft and soothing and leading her…that it came to be that her breathing was deafening loud and disturbing this perfect peace she wanted so badly to retain.

"Allison," he whispered. "Allison, breathe."

She shook her head and sucked in a quick, desperate breath. "I can't I don't know…:"

Isaac scooted forward until his knees touched hers. His thumb settled under her chin and pushed her gently upright again, letting it linger there as he held her gaze, closer now. "Breathe," he whispered and she let out a staccato burst of air. Sucked in another. Deeper this time. Let out a more even breath. And continued.

Isaac nodded and waited, never taking his eyes off of her, never releasing his slight hold on her chin between his thumb and forefinger. He waited until she found a rhythm, and soon she felt so relaxed she wanted to slump over and pile her limbs like spaghetti atop one another.

"Wanna keep going? There are only three stages," he said.

"Yeah," she responded, but almost regretted it when her chin suddenly had to hold itself up. It felt heavy as gravity worked to pull it down.

"The final meditation is Cun. Exist. Be present. Remain. But it can be more like…um…to cause to exist. to make present."

"Exist. Be present," she said evenly.

"Well you uh…cause certain energies to be present in certain parts of the body," Isaac stuttered, then gulped.

It was odd that once she gained her breath and felt as if under a heavy blanket of serenity where everything was slow and warm and kind…that he had seemed to lose some of his composure. Still, she stared so intently and quietly at him that he finally cocked his head to the side and continued on.

"This final meditation would be manifesting itself in your bow arm, but before you let go you see where it will go. You see it happening. So the word can be Visualize. But…but presence is highly regarded in the definition of Cun that to visualize doesn't quite go far enough. You'll actual be present in the meditation, so Actualize or actualization too. Did that make sense?"

Allison nodded and finally broke from her trance with hooded eyes but a dimpled smile. "Where'd you get all of this?"

"Wikipedia," Isaac said and she laughed.

Their knees still touched.

.

.

She opened her eyes and found herself straddling his hips on the edge of his bed. His shirt was off, her shirt was off, and his eyes gleamed in the dusk that filled the room.

"Shhh," she said, though he hadn't made a sound, and brought a finger to his lips. "We're supposed to be meditating."

"We are," he whispered. "Decide," he said and gripped her hips.

"Settle," she parried and closed the gap between their torsos, so that they were welded as one, her breasts flattened out against him and not a wisp of air could travel between their bodies.

And they remained for some time, without breaking eye contact, without breaking at all, until the downing sun turned the world fiery and orange and the hue washed over them.

Allison broke the mould to flutter in his ear. "Watch," she said before peeling herself away and dipping her head back, bending her spine and bearing her taught torso, her breasts, her collarbone, ribcage, navel…all to him. His fingers dug into her hips as he held her in place, the ends of her hair falling behind her and tickling his knees. Isaac watched the muscles move and flex and retract beneath her milky skin.

When she pulled herself back he murmured Scrutinize upon the tip of her shoulder. But this wasn't scrutiny in the oppressive sense. This was examination by hands and lips and eyes of every mole, every bone, every muscle and freckle. Especially not clinical, as she fluttered the pads of her fingers lightly over a jagged scar under his ribcage. She remembered pictures of marbled pairs, naked and smooth and twisting limbs in their embraces as they explored one another. She remembered one in particular, and twisted and kneaded their malleable positions so that she was just right.

On her knees. On his bed. Leaning back slightly so that she could grab her toes with her hands behind her. Did he know this image too? He kneeled on the floor before her, hands behind his back as if worshipping at her alter. His breath was heavy and their bodies still drenched in deep orange and gleaming with the slightest sheen of sweat.

Isaac dipped his head and placed an open mouthed kiss right between her ribs, the curls of his hair ghosting in between her breasts.

And the image was complete.

Allison opened the eyes she never remembered closing, to a dark blue room and her Art History book opened to Rodin's Pure Adoration: Eternelle Idole.

Cun. Actualization.

She slammed her book shut.

yoooo I don't really know! Tell me things because I don't know them tbh.