“Your gift-giving skills are tremendously good. That’s another one of the first things I learned about you.”
His fingers curl into hers, with a squeeze of acknowledgment. Even for him, there’s that little internal jab of relief at hearing they’re on the same page, at finding out that he’s not going to be disappointing her in this regard (if rifters even can have children at all, which— the jury’s still out). And besides, Stephen’s of an age now that that’s probably a conversation he ought to be having with partners, some women aware of their biological clocks ticking.
And so, only now, it finally somehow belatedly occurs to him, looking at Gwenaëlle, that he’d never actually asked—
There’s another faint crinkle in his brow: from mild perplexment this time, as he considers. They’ve had some surprising gaps in knowledge between them, thanks to instinctive acts of omission on his part, which she’d practically interrogated out of him. But he’s realising now that somehow there’s another gigantic gaping everyday omission which they just never filled in. He hadn’t thought to ask.
There is a small chasm opening up in his stomach with a kind of slow-dawning horror, a cold-sweat worry that this answer might skew lower than he thought.
“Gwenaëlle,” he says, “you know what I just realised— I mean, I don’t think I ever— I don’t think I even know how old you are.”
no subject
His fingers curl into hers, with a squeeze of acknowledgment. Even for him, there’s that little internal jab of relief at hearing they’re on the same page, at finding out that he’s not going to be disappointing her in this regard (if rifters even can have children at all, which— the jury’s still out). And besides, Stephen’s of an age now that that’s probably a conversation he ought to be having with partners, some women aware of their biological clocks ticking.
And so, only now, it finally somehow belatedly occurs to him, looking at Gwenaëlle, that he’d never actually asked—
There’s another faint crinkle in his brow: from mild perplexment this time, as he considers. They’ve had some surprising gaps in knowledge between them, thanks to instinctive acts of omission on his part, which she’d practically interrogated out of him. But he’s realising now that somehow there’s another gigantic gaping everyday omission which they just never filled in. He hadn’t thought to ask.
There is a small chasm opening up in his stomach with a kind of slow-dawning horror, a cold-sweat worry that this answer might skew lower than he thought.
“Gwenaëlle,” he says, “you know what I just realised— I mean, I don’t think I ever— I don’t think I even know how old you are.”