prickling sensation ebbed, the imp maybe realizing it was being too obvious, and sliding away again.
“All right.”
The letdown in tension was immediate, and I could feel the change in Venec’s core, sliding from a tight, hard knot into a softer coiling. My own, almost frozen, thawed a little. But not entirely. I could still feel that pricking awareness on my skin, and I knew that the imp had only retreated, not gone away for good.
“Well. That was fun,” Nick said, leaning back and breathing again. “Next time warn me before we go all reality show showdown, okay?”
Lou hit him, hard, before I could.
*pietr?* I risked pinging him, just to let him know that the situation was on hold for the moment, and got back a flash of excitement and concern and... something else, I wasn’t quite understanding. It flooded over me, and then was gone, the way pings did. Damn it. Already I was getting spoiled by how much deeper the communication between me and Venec was; the annoyance and fear of being always-connected that I’d been fretting over seemed a long way away, right then.
I blinked, coming back to the moment, and looked around the room. The others had settled back down after that bit of excitement: Nifty and Venec in a tight little tête- -tête that looked to be some serious dog-to-pup reassurances, while Lou was scribbling something in her notebook, and Nick busied himself pouring coffee out of the carafe in the middle of the table, trying very hard not to eavesdrop on the other two guys.
I studied Nifty and Venec for a moment, trying to be less obvious than Nick. Funny; Nifty was always so confident, so assured, that you forgot that he spent most of his life following a coach’s direction, one way or another. But Venec never forgot.
Even now, his attention on one pup, I’d swear I could feel this roving lighthouse spotlight sense coming from him, swooping around the room to touch on each of us in a constant, passive loop. It should have felt awkward, or annoying, but... it wasn’t anything I hadn’t already suspected he did, only now I knew he did it. More, because he was letting me see it.
No walls. No barriers. The only secrets we were keeping were the ones we let the other keep; a gentleman’s agreement not to look. It was a level of trust I’d never really imagined, even in my most open relationship, and I don’t think Venec ever believed it existed. I was pretty sure he didn’t think it was healthy.
He might be right. I remembered the feeling of not being able to lie from the ki-rin case, when Sharon had used me as a test case for her truth-spell. It had driven me into a near panic. I don’t think people are meant to share that much, that openly, without the option to say no. It goes against all our self-protective instincts, that loss of choice, and having to trust someone else to keep those private places safe.
And yet, even with all that, those thoughts going through my head, I couldn’t find any upset at the sense of Ben so close, so... intimate.
I tried to remind myself not to get used to it, that it wasn’t real any more than The Roblin’s manipulated emotions, just the Merge, and the moment The Roblin was caught – or got bored – we’d be back to walls and distances.
Assuming we could. The thought caught at me like a fishhook into flesh, and the more I tried to ignore it, the deeper it settled into my brain. Would we be able to rebuild those walls? Just sitting here, not even trying, I could feel his presence like flesh to flesh, sense the gentle patience at war with his frustration – not directed at Nifty, but the world in general, and his bandage specifically. It was chafing him.
A lot of the world chafed him.
I didn’t want to know that about him, but I did. Without looking, without trying to look, I also knew that his sweater had an emotional memory attached to it, which was why he wore it so often, and that he was worried about Sharon and Pietr, and that he knew where Stosser was and what he was doing, and was deliberately not thinking about it.
And that he was as hyperaware of me as I was of him.
That realization got me up and out of the room, muttering an excuse I forgot the moment