The Leaf

Skin

Raymond

Claire lowered her eyes to the thin strap digging into her shoulder, and Raymond found his words again.

"You were already naked, coming out of the bathroom."

She moved to undress, smiling -- her hair wasn't completely dried yet and it made her look more desperate, as if in a hurry to get to him. With Wesley, she had the usual braid wrapped tight around itself, where no strand moved.

"You don't have to take it off now, I was just saying because you wanted to be corrected. The rest you got quite right," he made her stop with one finger under her strap.

"Then you take it off," she challenged him. "Although you already know how I look like naked."

"Generally," he admitted. "But not now, at this moment." And she also had an approximate idea of how his body looked.

Raymond brought down the straps with a symmetrical movement of both hands, passing her elbows, stopping to verify, because she stood still. She'd been more active with Wesley, it worried him.

"Is something wrong?" he asked her, and she took a deep breath, to encourage herself. Then let the top of her dress fall around her, her arms escaping it, crossing over her small breasts to hide them.

"It's going to sound weird, especially to someone so rational," she said, leaning into him so that he'd see less of her, using her palms to feel his shoulders -- to distract herself. "But I wanted this to be different for you. If someone who has never touched someone else -- ever -- doesn't find me special, then I really have no purpose. It's kinda one of my only skills," she joked.

Raymond didn't know what to say to that, because he didn't want to lie, not even with good intentions -- to reassure an unnecessarily self-conscious woman. The society he knew depended on all humans being honest: ethical behavior was considered the base of its success. A small lie wouldn't matter, maybe it would make her feel better, but Raymond had the feeling that Claire didn't need lies, she'd taken the truth very well, every time.

"It doesn't feel different," he said, running his hands up and down her arms' defensive layer, a transparent white that rarely saw sunlight, thanks to Claire's inability to enjoy herself outside of the house.

He wanted to feel more of her skin, so they rested on her back, embracing her. "Touching someone. All senses are calibrated the same. There is no reason why this, the two of us, should feel different."

"No reason at all," she smiled over her disappointment. She kissed his neck to make him stop talking.

"What makes..." Raymond searched for a word, "This... special is not some technical reason, about how we connect physically, or about how virtual life compares to real life. It's not exterior, because of how new our bodies feel against each other or because here the air is different or something. What makes this special is that it's us. I'm not touching your skin, I'm touching you."

Claire closed his mouth, her lips warm over his, pushing him back over the bed, to enable her to climb him. Which reminded Raymond, "It's not how this goes," as she pushed his shirt up to have access to kiss more of him.

"We'll do that later," she said into his chest.

Claire

Stopping only to let him take off his shirt, Claire got herself upright on top of Raymond, his strong body spread over the sheets, almost as dark as their black. On his stomach and chest -- a tattoo she'd never seen before.

"Is this yours?" she was almost afraid to touch it.

"Yes, it's the only time I can show it to you, when we're out of the glitch I need to keep the flaming Grim Reaper. It's a simple rule for an AI to follow: tattoos can't change on a person in 2019."

She ran her hands down a system of gears and pipes, drawn in ones and zeros instead of lines, too small for even the steadiest tattoo artist's hand. Not a human one, it looked printed on.

"I'm not sure you would call it a tattoo, now, as the concept also involves pain for some reason," Raymond continued to not understand how irrationally set in their ways humans could be. "In my time, you can have whatever drawn on your skin, this is just my most frequent pattern. No pain," he showed his white teeth, as if mocking his own lack of manliness.

"This is the only time I'll see it?" she kissed a grey line, trying to remember the geometry it was drawing, knowing she'd forget it. It was just how her mind worked, never remembering what something was, but how it felt, the general idea. She would remember kissing it, so she followed a straight line of ones occasionally interrupted by a lonely zero, to the waistband of his pants.

"It's one of those rules we'll have to obey. Like you taking birth control pills until you're forty, although I can't have children," he said.

"No one in my time can -- not by natural means," he explained, although Claire didn't care. Children weren't on her bucket list. He sounded unapologetic, like he knew that, probably from her life choices. "We pick our baby's DNA, have full liberty on what traits we want on them. My parents picked me out of a catalog. It's why I am a clone of your husband: we can instantiate any person that has lived, any gene combination, test any outcome. They're not really your children, they're people you created."

"So no one gives birth, in the future?" she ran a finger down a labyrinth of pipes.

"You can of course live the experience. There is no 'being born', we call it 'being instantiated', as, for us who have access to time travel, time is irrelevant."

"Okay, you need to stop, my brain is popcorning," Claire covered his mouth with her hand.

It made Raymond laugh in a new way, she could only see his eyes, black tar simmering. She took her hand back, putting both her palms to work on his chest, feeling his tattoo like she wanted to sear it into her memory forever.

"Are you inventing verbs now?" he teased her. Claire was busy finding the perfect place to drag his underwear and pants off from, deciding on the sides, where the elastic stretched over his hip bone. Her fingers tensed in preparation.

"Well, how do the ones we use now came to be? Someone invented them," she got down from the bed so that she could pull the rest of his clothes off. Escaping her useless nightgown, gathered around her waist, by letting it fall on the floor.