Ben felt some sympathy for Shona as he shut and locked the back door, but he knew that he and Marcie were doing enough to help out now. Marcie had drained the washing up water away and was drying her hands on a tea-towel as he asked her whether she really had got everything sorted for their picnic already. She confirmed she had, but suggested he might want to put the cool bag in his small rucksack if they were carrying the travel blanket, anoraks, a bottle of water and perhaps even sun cream too. Ben agreed, but pointed out with a laugh that his big rucksack might actually be better, and he might pack a hat too if they were preparing for changeable North Sea weather.
That gave him an excuse to pop to the bedroom, once he’d taken a diversion to finish his morning bathroom routine, to recover the special tiny box that he’d hidden at the back of his underwear drawer. He stuffed this deep into the pocket of his jeans, remembering to pick up his beanie too, then got his rucksack out of the hallway cupboard. He met Marcie in the living room, where she helped him pack their lunch, drink, coats and her small handbag into the larger bag as she asked him about CDs to take for the car. He admitted that he’d quite like to try the BBC recording of the Wizard of Earthsea that she had helped him find in the library, following their long slog through The Lord of the Rings, but he also suggested that they could listen to the album from Lamb that she’d mentioned instead. Marcie told him it was his choice today, but they could pick both up. As she found them, Ben thought to pick up the Playmobil pirate and pop her into the rucksack’s top pocket too, saying that she’d like to see the sea, deliberately indulging their shared childish imaginative fancy.
With a final check that they had everything, they moved to put their walking boots on, then left the flat to get into the car. Marcie insisted that she’d drive as Ben put the rucksack on the back seat, stuffing the car’s travel blanket inside too in case he forgot later. Then as she started the car and pulled away, Marcie wondered whether Ben’s new pirate friend shouldn’t have a name. She told him that she thought she remembered some real female pirates, like Anne Bonny who was Calico Jack’s lover, and her companion Mary Read who dressed as a boy. Ben said they sounded like they had interesting stories, but he’d imagined her taking a name from one of Marcie’s more exotic myths, and Danaë popped into his mind. Marcie checked that he’d remembered she was the mother of the hero who was impregnated by Zeus, and not the hero’s beautiful princess Andromeda, but Ben said he thought that Danaë seemed to suit her better, perhaps because she survived being cast onto the sea by her father. He said that she surely had a fascinating beauty too, and he admitted that the Klimt image of her had stuck in his mind.
Marcie gave a light scoffing laugh, seemingly in mild exasperation at his “hetro male libido” as she called it, conceding, “Little Danaë it is then.” She went on to more practical matters, confirming the route they were taking out of the city. Then Ben suggested he put the library CD on, and they began listening to the spellbinding story.
The traffic seemed a little heavy, but they made good time, prompting Ben to check the dashboard clock against the tide times that Marcie had jotted in her Filofax as they approached the causeway to the island. He confirmed that they’d planned it about right, that the tide was only a few hours out and they’d have at least five hours before it came back in. Marcie was quite excited by driving down onto the road across the tidal beach, rolling down the windows and slowing down to enjoy the sense of occasion. Ben relished the smell of the sea and the wind gusting through the windows too as he looked up into the widening horizon over the water. The blue sky seemed to grow overhead as the mainland fell away behind them, with the scattered clouds so well defined that they could almost be floating islands themselves.
They drove on around the island to reach the carpark close to the village, then found an information board, once Ben had shouldered the rucksack and Marcie had locked the car. Though they’d already planned what they might do, Ben checked the circular walk around the island’s east and north coast on the board’s decorated map and confirmed that Marcie would be happy with that, even if it meant they didn’t get time to linger around the abbey and castle. She said she was very happy to fit in with what he wanted, that she’d be up for stretching her legs on a walk of decent length, and that it would be fun to explore those quite northern dunes he’d mentioned, “To see if there’s a quiet nook where no one would disturb our celebratory birthday picnic.”
Ben wondered if Marcie had her own thoughts about what they might get up to the quiet spot she imagined, and he sincerely hoped she might be imagining a little intimacy in the outdoors again. He did not want to pressure her into doing anything that she might feel awkward about, or that carried a risk of extreme embarrassment if they were caught, but he did want to find a special place for just the two of them so that he could go through with his own planned surprise.
They set a good pace on their walk, without pausing to look at the ancient sites that they were both somewhat familiar with already, though Ben soaked up the history and stories that Marcie told him as they went along. He was unsurprised that she knew about the monastery’s founder Saint Aidan, who she explained came along a couple of generations before the Venerable Bede, who’d written his important mythic history of Britain in his own monastery in Jarrow. She also told him about Saint Cuthbert, who was very highly thought of in his lifetime, and who retreated to a tiny island just off the coast of Holy Island, and then further out to the Farne Islands, so that he could live as a hermit and get closer to God. Ben wondered about these early Christian’s sailing skills, and if they measured up the Vikings, which led Marcie into stories about Saint Brendan’s fantastical odyssey, which perhaps encoded exaggerated eye-witness descriptions of icebergs and volcanic activity around Iceland.
She brought this back to Narnia too, remarking that Brendan’s story had directly fed into Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Marcie enthusiastically described her own childish excitement at the children’s sea voyage adventure to enchanted islands and the edge of the world, where the sea meets Aslan’s own kingdom. Ben said he’d look forward to reading it, prompting Marcie to confirm that he was genuinely enjoying The Magician’s Nephew. Ben assured her that he was, but admitted he’d also been really enjoying the story they’d been listening to in the car. Marcie said she was glad, as she’d loved The Wizard of Earthsea books too as a girl, moving onto them soon after she’d consumed The Chronicles of Narnia, and she was sure she still had her copies of the original trilogy in the flat. She observed that whilst those books had been categorised as suitable for children or young teenagers, they actually had powerful adult themes running through them too, even more so than Lewis’s books, with Ursula Le Guin’s interest in Taoism, and with Jungian themes being deeply embedded in them. Ben asked what she meant, but she teasingly said that she wouldn’t spoil the surprises of Ged’s adventures for him.
By now the dramatic lump of Lindisfarne Castle was already falling behind them as they walked up the wild beach that ran along the eastern edge of the island, under the vast sky and beside the open sea. Ben’s sailing senses were kicking in as he noticed the way that the wind gusted about. The clouds drifting out over the North Sea didn’t seem to threaten rain, and there was none of the sea mist that he’d seen here before, but he was aware that the shifting breeze may be bringing more unsettled weather in from the Cheviots or from further north. He pointed this out to Marcie, but she seemed unconcerned, reminding him that they had their raincoats, and it wouldn’t matter if they got a bit wet. She said it might even be a relief, as she admitted that even in just her thin top, she was sweating a little from the exertion of their brisk walk and the sun, with almost summer heat in it when it was out and the breeze dropped.
Ben remarked, “I thought sweat was just for men, and women perspire.”
“‘Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies just glow,’” Marcie corrected him, putting on a plummy accent, then giving him a beaming smile as she continued, “Well, you know me better than that, Ben. My perspiration, and my tears too, they’re just the start of what seeps from my body aren’t they?”
“I’ve seen you glow too,” Ben responded, grinning broadly back, “Sometimes when you are a bit wet elsewhere.”
“Ben!” she scolded with exaggerated shock, “I’m sure a gentleman shouldn’t say such things to a lady, even when they’re alone by the lapping surf.”
“What? I was thinking of when you’d got out of your hot bath,” Ben immediately replied with his own performance of the injured innocent, making her laugh out loud.
They’d been walking along the worn path above the stony beach, but Ben suggested they get try getting right down to the surf. They made their own way across the strip of short tough grass that separated the path from the shore, slipping down a miniature cliff at the edge of the turf. Ben went first, bracing his hand against the peaty soil, then he helped Marcie down, keeping hold of her hand as they picked their way across the pebbles, around the larger rocks and patches of mud. Ben noticed how fresh the sea air seemed, deliberately filling his lungs as they came to the shoreline, then saying how good it felt. Marcie said she was glad, giving his chest a vigorous rub with her free hand. She reassured him that he was doing well, praising him for getting into his new fitness regime since he’d seen the consultant, taking his responsibilities with his inhalers seriously, and doing his best to avoid smoky venues.
“But it’s you really,” Ben assured her in turn, dropping her hand to throw his arms wide, whilst Marcie took the opportunity to snuggle up against his chest, “It’s all thanks to you, your help. And it’s right here, isn’t it? This is the open sky, the fresh air we’ve found. I’m drawing it in, filling my lungs, and I feel confident doing that, but it’s our coming together really, that’s what makes it possible, what’s given me a future. And so that’s what I actually feel when my chest expands, when the air reaches down into my belly, when that feels good and right. It’s a magical force that’s filling me. We’re just two folk, up from Newcastle, enjoying a walk on the beach. But it feels like we’re creatures of the air too, born into that open sky, given new life, a new horizon. The air is in us, and we are in it, soaring to the heavens, through the blue and the clouds, reaching the sun and the stars. We’re on the way now, together. And it’s because we’re together, because we’re two become one, that we can fly like this, that we are one with the fresh clean air.”
He was returning Marcie’s hug now as they stood just above the waves’ foamy reach, trickling across the shingle with the slow rhythm of the gentle surf. He dropped his eyes from the sky to gaze into hers, beneath her glasses, seeing in their sparkling wide brown light the happiness and assured contentment that matched his own. As their gaze lingered, he felt as if he were looking directly into Marcie’s soul, seeing that it was indeed braided to his own now, and by this he knew with utter conviction that he was planning the right thing to do with her today. After a long moment, Marcie drew her own deep breath, then let out a deeply satisfied sigh before saying, “Oh Ben, you express yourself in such a thoughtful and heartfelt way, and it’s all so true. But I still think there’s another way to see it that can be put far more simply. We are in love. That’s the truth, isn’t it? It is the real thing, it’s Nature’s way, and it’s binding us together. We are just a couple from Newcastle now.”
“You’re right. But you don’t need to say ‘just’. There’s true magic at work here, in the hands of Nature, that spirit of all life. She’s reforging us, using that fire we kindled, that’s bedding down really well, using its fierce steady heat to fuse our souls together, all as part of her divine plan,” Ben said, stooping down briefly to peck her lips. He wondered if the moment for his planned surprise was on them, but he could see other people on the path and he didn’t want anyone intruding on them when he made the grand gesture, so he decided to bide his time. Instead he tried to get them into moving on again by saying, “But there are other natural forces too, more everyday ones. I’m getting hungry, and I’d like to find that quiet spot in the dunes, if we can, before we get stuck in.”
Marcie laughed, then gave a sympathetic pout, saying, “Yes, you poor thing. You were working so hard this morning, we’ve had a long drive, and now we’ve got stuck into a great hike the long way around the island. Let’s get back onto the path where we can make easier progress and set the brisk pace we managed before. I’ll do my best to keep up with your long strides, then we’ll be around the headland and into the dunes in no time.”
Ben happily went along with her plan, adjusting the rucksack on his back once they’d scrambled back off the beach and onto the short-grazed turf. The walk did seem to become a bit of a slog as they followed the path around the coast, passing the monumental yet utilitarian white pyramid that marked the headland. Ben confirmed Marcie’s guess that the dressed cairn was a useful landmark to boats navigating up the coast, which led her back to the stories from Earthsea. She promised that there were a lot more sea journeys to remote islands and stirring adventures with strange goings-on in store for Ben as he followed Ged’s progress. Then she admitted that she’d not realised before how easy it was to imagine this Northumbrian coast - and by extension the Scottish islands, Scandanavia, Iceland and so on - as a template for Le Guin’s fantasy world.
Ben promised to look out for the similarities as he listened to more of the story, and when he got around to reading the books too. Then he wondered aloud about the significance of the magical and supernatural sea journey as the common theme behind all these stories - in The Wizard of Earthsea, the Narnia book that he’d not read yet, the ancient voyage of the Celtic saint that Marcie had also mentioned, and the original Greek Odyssey that she’d told him about too.
Marcie apologised for bringing up Jung and the psychotherapists again, but she guessed their ideas might have something to do with it. They would say the sea was like the vast and changeable unconscious, the mysterious inner world of dreams, desires and the powerful stormy forces that drive people’s lives, all without their sensible conscious mind’s understanding. She speculated that those forces actually often seem to run directly against a person’s rational plans and expectations, and therefore lead to all that strife and drama that drives epic stories and makes them so interesting. She suggested that the author and their reader may have some deep sense of that conflict, between the hubris of the mortal ego and the immortal powers at work beneath. Their stream of consciousness or their minds’ language centres, employed in writing and reading the story, might identify with the fragile boats, bobbing about on the interface with something vast and dangerous. They know instinctively that they are prey to the dark sea which lies within themselves and everyone else, borne irresistibly by the currents and tides of fate or divine capriciousness. Marcie explained that must be what makes the stories call out to so many, throughout time, just as if they came from the readers’ own dreams, even though the settings and the monsters are fantastical.
Ben said that he thought he understood, and that he’d felt there were moments when he’d been in the grip of those forces himself recently, in his far more mundane adventures through the hospital and the fire. He admitted that perhaps it had been like being out at sea on his own, in the dark, fearful of the heaving waves, feeling small and deeply uncertain of his ability in the face of nature, trying to trim his sail to the power of the wind that gripped his vessel.
That prompted Marcie to note that she’d missed a key thing, that there were two realms at work on the fragile sailboat of the ego. Ben had made the wind and the air sound almost as dangerous as the sea, yet they’d already been talking about the wind being linked to the angelic fires of love. Marcie stopped Ben from denying that this was the same wind he’d meant, making the point that she’d also been scared, but scared of the force of that love. She pondered that it could be just as destructive as the deadly threat of those crashing waves of fate, that threw the cruel dust and the savage workshop fire their way.
Ben felt she was onto something, and said as much, but he also said that perhaps the two of them should just remember that these stories were meant for simple entertainment too. Likewise he thought they could take some simple pleasure in the real sea and sky, letting their senses soak them up, making the most of the moment now to enjoy this special day out that they’d arranged. Marcie laughed as she agreed, and started berating herself for being pretentious and overthinking everything, but Ben pointed out that he’d been as guilty of that as her. He also voiced his thought that their busy minds and imaginative ideas were great too, but it was just that he’d wanted to make the point that they didn’t need to take them too seriously, and that they could take a childish excitement at playing in the sand too.
They’d been heading deeper into the trackless dunes for a while now, which meant that Marcie could take Ben at his word immediately. She told him he was right, then unexpectedly gave him a great shove with all her might just as he was bringing his foot down on the sloping sand. He overbalanced and went over, giving himself up to the fall as he came down against the softly yielding drift on his side. Meanwhile Marcie ran off with an incoherent shrieking cry, reaching the crest of the dune where the tough spiny grass grew in just a few steps. As he lay on the ground laughing, she turned, dancing on the spot with both arms raised in the air, hollering and cheering to herself, before jumping back down onto the slope of the dune. She let her feet slip beneath her so that she fell down herself, landing on her bottom and sliding a little of the way towards Ben.
Ben rolled onto his front, with the rucksack still strapped to his back, and made a lurching crawl to catch her ankles. She shrieked again as he used his grip as well as his legs to clamber up her body, pumping against the shifting sand with his elbows and knees, pinning her to the ground beneath him. They were both breathless by the time he reached her eye-level, and he didn’t hesitate to clasp her around the chest, feeling the damp cloth beneath her armpits, then plant a firm kiss against her smirking lips. He felt her relax in his arms, then respond with a slower considered strength, wrapping him in her own arms and her legs too now. Her jaw relaxed, and she parted her lips to let him pass his tongue softly over her own. Then they kissed with sudden passion and urgency, mouths moving as if they were trying to consume the other, knocking their lips hard against each other’s teeth. Ben dislodged Marcie’s glasses, whilst she tugged at his hair and clawed at his scalp.
The moment passed quickly though, leaving them both panting. As he stared with unreserved love into Marcie’s eyes, beneath her long dark lashes, Ben listened to the sound of their breath. In the stillness of their hollow within the dunes, out of the gusting breeze, he could also hear the distant crump of the folding surf’s pulses, the softened call of the seabirds drifting along the seashore, and perhaps a skylark from further inland too. Then he heard a long gurgling rumble from his stomach, which Marcie obviously caught too as she laughed, then said, “Oh, you poor thing. You really are starving, aren’t you? Come on, let’s have our picnic right here, then we can get back to more kissing when our tummies are full.”
They laid out the travel blanket as a rug, facing a notch in the dune’s bowl that gave them a view out to sea. Marcie said a little apologetically that she wanted to take her walking boots and socks off, to stretch her hot sweaty feet and feel the sand under them. Ben told her not to be so daft as to worry about her petite feet offending him, announcing that he’d do the same himself as he immediately set to unlacing his own boots. At his suggestion, once they’d wriggled their toes in the soft sand, they took it turns to splash their hands with a little of the water they’d brought, before patting them dry on the kitchen roll Marcie had packed. She agreed with Ben that she hoped all this had at least helped somewhat towards washing off anything foul they’d touched on the ground. Then Marcie got out the Tupperware with their clingfilm-wrapped salmon stotties, as well as a punnet of cherry tomatoes and the bottle of sparkling wine she’d remembered to bring.
“It’s still quite cold,” she reassured Ben, clasping the bottle as he dug the plastic glasses out of the bag, then handing it to him when he offered to open it. After the shaking that the bottle had had, he expected it to go off with a bit of a bang, but he was surprised himself by the force of the pop. Marcie gave a shriek of delight at the sound, then chuckled as he managed to catch most of the foaming gush that followed in one of the glasses, saying, “Ooh, you’re such a pro. I can tell you knew that was coming, and you just knew what to do with it.”
Ben chuckled with her as he handed the half-filled glass over, then poured about the same for himself before propping the bottle up safely and recovering the cork. He went to put the cork in the rucksack’s top pocket for safekeeping, then remembered Marcie’s playful birthday gift, so he retrieved the Playmobil pirate and sat her carefully on the rug beside the bag. Feeling a little foolish, he said, “Little Danaë can join in too.”
Marcie agreed enthusiastically, smiling contentedly but perhaps also a little indulgently. Then she raised her plastic cup seriously, as if were genuinely an elegant crystal wineglass, solemnly saying, “Happy birthday Ben. I’m so unbelievably happy that I’m here to celebrate it with you.”
“Aye, well if weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here now to enjoy it. So, here’s to us,” Ben replied with a wide smile, despite the melancholy thought, then took a good gulp of the fizzy wine. He immediately put it aside to pick up a sandwich though, thanking Marcie again for organising everything as he plucked a few tomatoes too. She admitted that Shona had helped, seemingly happy to move straight on from his hint at his boundless gratitude to her for saving his life, as they both knew they’d had that conversation often enough and could leave their thoughts on it unspoken.
Ben remembered then the apparent challenge and suggestive subtext in Shona’s attitude that morning, and once he’d gratefully swallowed his first mouthful, he decided to ask Marcie about it, “Is Shona okay with me, do you think? She doesn’t think I’m taking advantage of you, does she? This is really delicious by the way, really tasty and creamy.”
Marcie smiled sympathetically at him around a full mouthful, gesticulating as if keen to speak, before she swallowed and answered, “Hmm, no. She really likes you, I think. She’s a bit of a tough cookie, a hard lass, I guess, ‘Made from girders.’ She’s maybe had to put up with some stick for her choices in life, which puts her on the defensive a little. She’s opened up to me a lot this last month and shared all sorts that I don’t need to blab about. And I’ve shared things with her too, so she knows we’re a very close couple now.”
“She knows we’ve got an active sex life, you mean,” Ben clarified with a bit of a smirk, even though he felt a bit ashamed at the thought of Shona knowing the details of what he and Marcie got up to.
“Yes, I guess I do, but don’t worry, it’s not like I talk her through an action replay of what we get up to,” Marcie said, perhaps a little shiftily Ben thought, covering her mouth as she popped in a tomato. She went on, as if reassuring herself as well as him that she’d not over-shared with Shona, “No, she knows we’re lovers, that we’re serious about each other, and that we’re enjoying ourselves. I guess she’s maybe just a tiny bit jealous of that, and perhaps a part of her regrets starting her family with Ali when she was so young.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ben admitted, genuinely feeling sympathy for her.
“No, she wouldn’t want you to be sorry for her,” Marcie clarified urgently, speaking around her mouthful, “She’s really into being a mum, and I think she’s doing a great job. But perhaps when she looks at you, a genuinely handsome big blonde male, there’s a tiny part of her that sees a different path in life that she could have taken.”
“Well, I’ll be kind to her then, but without teasing or flirting,” Ben resolved.
“You’re doing all that already, Ben,” Marcie reassured him, reaching over to give his knee a squeeze, “I’m very proud of you when we’re all together, and you’re so good with the kids. I’m happy that you and I getting together has made us a strong team when it comes to all being good neighbours too. And that’s true for Geoff and Sofie as well, now that I think of it. It’s as if as well as finding a proper boyfriend who looks after me, I’ve gained some really good friends who I’d trust with anything now.”
“Aye, well I feel I’ve got closer to them too, since that first night you met them. It’s like Geoff thinks of me a bit differently now, like I’m on the same page as him. And Sofie’s a bit chattier with me too.”
“You mean she flirts with you more,” Marcie said with a laugh, “No! You don’t need to deny it or try to be coy about it. I know what she’s like, and I know you’ve got that cheeky playful sparkle too. But Ben, I also know you well enough, both of you, to be absolutely sure that you are truly faithful people. Maybe Sofie knew she could be more playful only once she’d seen you’d made a serious faithful connection to someone else. She and I both know you see genuine romantic love and intimacy as something that’s not to be spread about.”
“Romantic love, is that what you call it?” Ben mused, grasping her hand tenderly as he finished his stottie quarter.
“It doesn’t really do it justice, does it?” Marcie admitted, dropping his hand to take a sip of wine whilst Ben claimed another stuffed quarter and more tomatoes, “They say the ancient Greeks had seven or more words for love, and we’re sharing eros I guess, though it feels as if goes far beyond the mere satisfaction of our erotic coupling. Philia, brotherly love, maybe something that we’re talking about sharing with Geoff and Sofie.”
“Aye, maybe,” Ben agreed as he swallowed, “Though I’m closer to Geoff than my brother, I reckon. I’d trust him more, and I’d rather be with him.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Marcie said a little sadly, “But as I grew up I realised from my friends that having siblings was often just a nuisance really. Also, though I can easily imagine Geoff as your brother, in your character and mannerisms as well as your appearance, maybe seeing philia as just brotherly love is too narrow. Though I can certainly also imagine Sofie will become as close as a sister to me as we go on, that’s maybe missing a key point. When I see you with her, it is as if you’re something like brother and sister, or sister-in-law maybe, unquestionably close. But there’s also some kind of unspoken mutual understanding between you two that means it will also always remain indubitably platonic.”
“Aye, you can count on that, truly,” Ben reassured her, offering more wine even as he kept wolfing down his food. As he poured he reassured her that he could drive home, took a gulp of water for himself, then asked if she could tell him the other words that the Greeks had.
“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Marcie admitted, “But there’s something different about what you’re showing to Ali, Shona and the kids especially I think. They say, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ don’t they? I guess they mean that as well as the parents there’s the midwife, the doctor, the babysitter, the grandparents, aunts, uncles and so on, the schoolteachers, the other schoolkids, the village elders too, even if they’re not ordained religious figures, and perhaps the negative characters as well, the naughty children and local ne’re-do-wells who make an object lesson for how not to behave. Well, when you’re sharing your old Lego with the boys, and now that you’ve arranged for that tree to be dropped off for them to play on, you’re definitely demonstrating some kind of selfless giving love that’s helping to raise them well, whether that’s what the Greeks called agape or not.”
“You know though, I can’t imagine talking to Geoff or Ali about these things,” Ben reflected.
“We don’t need to,” Marcie assured him with a smile, “It’s just what we do as humans - make friends, find a mate, help look after each other’s kids.”
“Maybe at some level, what I’m doing with Zain and Cal, it’s practising too, for when I’ve got kids,” Ben found himself saying.
“‘When we’ve got kids,’ I think you wanted to say there,” Marcie said, looking it up at him shyly, “It’s okay. We’ve talked about it already. It’s not happening tomorrow, but we know that’s what it means when two furry mammals make a mated pair. It’s nature’s way, and I do think we both know it will come around in time, ‘In sha’Allah,’ as Ali’s imams might say, ‘If God wills it.’ And perhaps that is something you can talk to Geoff about too, planning ahead for a family, I mean, not God’s will.”
“Aye, we’ve not spoken about it, but maybe that’s why he proposed to Sofie,” Ben said without thinking. He was suddenly panicked that he’d stepped into a trap within this conversation that he wasn’t quite ready for. He was relieved when Marcie lightened the mood, perhaps even in response to her acute perception of his sudden anxiety.
“Well, I can’t imagine you getting around to talking about such things with him this evening, with what you two cooked up. ‘We thought we might watch The Matrix again, Geoff’s got the DVD, just to refresh our memories, before the new films come out,’” Marcie quoted with a chuckle, putting on a deep voice to imitate him. She went on, “You’ll both be glued to the gymnastics of Carrie Anne-Moss in her PVC catsuit, ogling her superpower moves in bullet time freeze-frame, if I’m right in thinking that Geoff is as bad as you for such things. I was wondering whether the two of you would need little bibs, like little Fiona’s, to catch the drool!”
“Well, you and Sofie get Keanu Reeves, in a baggy jumper,” Ben countered, with a hurt tone of voice but a guilty smile too.
But Marcie laughed, “Oh, you’re so easy to tease! I want you to enjoy it. I might be able to squeeze into a fantasy nurse costume for you, but I can only imagine what an awful sight it would be for everyone involved if I tried stuffing my short bumpy figure into PVC. I’d be like a scary black pudding Muppet with bits bulging in shrink-wrapped plastic! So your dark BDSM ninja angel will have to stay just on the screen I’m afraid.”
“That costume was amazing,” Ben tried to reassure her, sidling up to her to put an arm around her shoulder and a hand on her knee now that she’d almost finished her salmon sandwich too. He tried explaining his thoughts, “It went way beyond anything I’d expect, anything I’d dreamt of doing with you, in reality. You really did bring a fantasy to life, and it was amazing. But you know you didn’t need to, that I’d never expect anything.”
“I know,” Marcie reassured him, taking a swig of water then popping the last of her sandwich into her mouth before stroking his cheek with the back of her fingers. After this seeming pause for thought, perhaps to consider the points she could make about their mutual expectations, she wound up simply saying, “I wanted to though.”
“Well thank you, I’m deeply grateful, and for all the work you put into preparing it,” Ben said earnestly, but he was also thinking about Marcie’s self-critical remarks. He didn’t want to admit that he’d enjoyed seeing bigger women than her squeezed into PVC at some raves that he blearily remembered, or risk comparing Marcie to those trashy vamps, so he just meekly said, “But you must know too, I think you’d look awesome in a Matrix catsuit. I really like your bulges.”
“Hmm, and I quite like some of yours too,” Marcie replied in a seductively syrupy way with a minxish grin, dropping her arm to run her hand very deliberately over Ben’s groin, pressing her fingers firmly against his masculinity through the thick denim of his jeans.