Aborigen

The day. The horrid day.

How on earth could anyone have asked Layton to spend an entire day apart from her little man? Especially after a night like that, good Lord.

She brought him to the bathroom, every step heavy with knowing where this was going, and tenderly washed him in the sink. He let her. She meditated over him, dabbing at him with the bunched washcloth, steeped in hot water and slathered in soap, running over his little arms and rubbing circles over his chest and—holy fuck—wiping both their fluids from his thighs. She took it as slowly as she could: a once-over with hot water, letting his release and her spit break up, then gently scrubbing away at his fragile flesh. He never complained, not for a second, only broke her heart by staring up at her with huge little eyes full of trust, desire, and the question of what was going to come next.

Words would not come. They were blocked in her throat. She couldn’t, wouldn’t explain anything as she sopped him clean, rolled him in a microfiber cloth to sip up every droplet of moisture, and then just stared at him. The cloth spread over her palms like a ritual sheet over an altar, with this jewel-like little man glowing in the center of it. How could he be here, she wondered. How was this real. She wanted it, yes, more than anything, but it was impossible. He was impossible. Was there another world of tiny people scurrying beneath the surface of the world she grew up with? Or was her lifelong longing somehow strong enough to compel him into being? So many questions that he might not even know the answers to, and she didn’t even want them answered lest they break the spell in which they lived.

Her bare thighs pressed against the cold vanity, and her heart put itself through the paces once again as she held him between her breasts, cradled him in her palms, worshipped him. Goddamn it, this day.

There was no getting around it. If it had been a vendor visit, that’d be one thing. Over the last two months, this small-but-rugged office had been lading her with greater responsibilities. Currently she was managing a dozen smaller contracts for vendors and a couple important ones for suppliers. She was smart and personable, great with clients, remembering their preferences—increasingly indispensable. That worked against her on a day like today, the quarterly critical inventory and order audit. She could hear the conversation now: “I can’t come in, I’m super sick.”

“Layton, if it were any other day, you know I’d have no problem with this.”

“You don’t understand, my joints are sore, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. Hoping it’s not Lyme disease.”

“I can give you the rest of the week off, but I need you to rally today. If we don’t get this done today and get it right, we’ll miss orders for seed, fertilizer, livestock feed—”

“I know, Frank, but listen—”

“And that means lost crops, lost income, a real hit to this community. We’re all on thin ice out here.”

“Please, I feel like I’m going to vomit. Can’t you get Barton in on this?”

“Barton? The kid who told Trudy in HR that he was stepping out to his see-aye-are for some pot?”

The curse of competence.

The rest was a blur: scraping the moisture off her own body, digging around for mostly clean business-casual clothes. She left her yummy little man on the shelf, forlorn beside his house, grumbled that she’d be back as soon as she could but it might be a while. She could not look at him when she left or she might never leave. Her father had gotten up hours before her, so no need for oblique warnings to avoid her room. But as she drove off, she felt something like a thin metal cable tugging at her heart, at her hips, calling her back the farther she went. In the office parking lot she needed a moment to soak up the tears in a handful of fast food napkins.

If there was a blessing, it was in the cognitive demands of her job. Yes, it was a small office; no, there was no competition; yes, most days were sleepy and indolent. Importantly, no, there were no jobs anywhere else. The four days a year like this one were something completely different. People relied on her—Frank nearly hugged her when she stepped in from the harsh late-morning sun—and she fell into the flow promptly. Numbers referencing other numbers; documents upon which hundreds of other documents hinged. Phone calls, switching to her game-face. Someone ordered pizzas; someone else brought a case of piss-water lager from their truck. Impossibly, there were even times she didn’t think about her little lover, her possession. Her pet. Pet. Her pet. Fuck.

And because these things can never run smoothly, everyone was there an extra three hours. Disruptions in the global spiderweb of supply chains made organization extremely difficult. Tariffs. That nearly tore the office apart, the single-issue voters who acted blindsided when all the other threats and warnings came true with a vengeance, deeply jeopardizing their own livelihood. It was all Layton could do to not bring a T-ball bat to work for every time someone wondered who could have seen this coming. For all the people who insisted, so generously, that Layton should’ve been excepted from all the legislation they voted for to persecute and oppress people like her.

That’s who she had to celebrate with, when it was all done. The game-face wasn’t just for the phone, the clients. It was to keep the pizza down, to preserve the harmony of the office just long enough to wrap this all up. Usually it was just to get the hell out of the office and away from these … people. Usually it was just to not be there, but now she had somewhere else she wanted to be. Badly. It was almost a form of payment, if she thought about it, guaranteeing a fortuitous cosmic balance, packing away two beers and a third of a large meat-lover’s pizza, nodding along to the deeply insulting, 60-year-old jokes about people like her, biding her time. Penance. No, Purgatory, that was a good way to see it. If she could tolerate these people another few minutes, surely the universe would bend or break its laws in her favor.

Then it was done. Out the door, waving from her car, zipping home a modest four miles over the limit, chancing nothing. Her heart softened when she saw that her father had made dinner, kept a plate warmed in the microwave with a note saying he’d gone out with friends. The universe, giving her a break. She wrapped the plate up and stuck it in the fridge, and her feet nearly thundered the stairs to splinters as she ran to her room.

There was the rumpled bed, there was the white bookcase, and peering around the edge of it was his dark little head.

It. Was like. Someone flipped a switch.

The grueling day of work was gone, falling behind her in a cloud of dust, without so much as an echo.

She might have closed her door, it was hard to tell.

Off came her top, her bra fell from her shoulders, one flick loosened the waistband of her skirt and she stepped out of it like water. She couldn’t breathe, closing the impassable distance between her groping hands and his waiting body. Then she had him and electricity crackled through her limbs. Shoes off, underwear gone, scootching backward on the bed to where they belonged, clutching him, oh, hope she didn’t hurt him but clutching him to her chest.

Improbably she said, “I need a minute,” and she inhaled until her sternum popped. She closed her eyes and her heavy head sank into the pillows. Her palm pressed his hot little mass against her heartbeat, and her whole being felt like a spool of cable unwinding. She may have moaned.

The tiny man, her tiny man lay on her chest, against the same boob he came on last night. Her fingertip, soft and warm, ran down his spine, rubbed tight little circles over his shoulder blades. Likely she was saying things to him or just humming quietly, praying him into her body.

“You are so beautiful,” she whispered.

Having received, unquestioningly all this adoration, now he looked up at her. “I didn’t do anything.” His tone was almost apologetic.

She bent her head to smile upon him. “You gave yourself to me. That’s everything.”

Slowly Layton petted him with her whole palm. She just need to feel him, all of him, so badly. She pawed at him, rubbing him into her chest, clearing the dust of the day from her lungs with lungfuls of deep longing. This. This. This is what she needed. This, she’d waited for all day, just this.

Biting her lip, she reached over the edge of the bed, then held him to her chest as she sidled over and fumbled the nightstand drawer open. Wood and metal and plastic clattered around her fingers, until she pulled out a small slip of fabric and knuckled the drawer shut again. She resettled in the bed, in the pillows, and placed the fabric just in front of him, under her collarbone.

It was his own nightshirt. A simple cotton jobber, old and soft, stitched meticulously by her last week, as finely as she could manage, with her big, thick fingers. Seeing herself through his eyes was always such a trip.

“I made it a while ago.” She sounded shy to herself. “Didn’t want to rush you. But I hoped …”

The tiny man pushed himself up on his arms and crawled the short distance to the garment. One thin arm reached out, one tiny palm ran over the fabric, and then he stared up at her. The way he looked at her stole her breath. It wasn’t just thanks or pleasant surprise for the thoughtful gesture. It was more like a few more pieces fell into place for him, fitting neatly, strengthening his devotion to her. Yes, he stared at her with devotion, a rising need for him to be with and stay with her, the woman he’d chosen.

Only then did it occur to her, in a half-thought, that maybe he had been aware of her much longer than she’d guessed. Maybe it wasn’t an accident that she found him in her trap. Maybe.

He pushed himself up to his knees and she pinched the shirt’s shoulders, holding it over him where he raised his arms to guide it. No boast, but she nailed the sizing. It was loose enough to be comfortable and allow wide ranges of motion, but it was clearly tailored for his immaculate little body, no question of that. It was only a little simple, she saw where she could clip a little line down the neckline for comfort, but the rest … was ritual. He rolled his shoulders, letting it settle around his body in its own kind of hug from her; he wrapped his arms around his own body. The goddess had dressed her worshipper in his own raiment, and he was blessed, visibly blessed.

He lay back down upon her chest, right over her heart, spreading out to take in as much of her skin as he could reach. Her fingertip glided over his spine, softened by fabric, and rubbed loving little whorls over his butt.

He didn’t want to raise his voice, that was apparent, but he wanted to speak so she could hear her. Without lifting his head he said, “Can I stay here? Tonight?”

He must have felt the way her heart skipped beneath him. There’s no way he couldn’t.

Her jaw worked briefly before she managed to breathe “every night.”

That’s how it was, then. Not peeking at her from the injection-molded windowpanes across the room. Not panting with tension and wanting on the pillow beside her. She was his landscape and he crashed out on her chest, one cheek against her skin, rising and falling with her excitable breathing, melting under her touch. That was how, eventually, they went to sleep.