His skin was a little sunburt. It already had a definite red cast to it had been baked by the sun a quixotic brown. His hair was cut short, his shoulders broader, chest deeper, the breadth of him breathtaking as he held open his door. The edges of his jaw stern wings, his nose high bridged and imperious, his eyes that lovely black color, with liquid lids and the slight epicanthic folds. The fine lines radiating from his eyes were few, as before, but deeper. He had been out in the sun without sunglasses, Ororo surmised. "Hulo, Forge," she said. He held a knife in one hand, the one opening the door, and held it down by his pelvis as he stepped back to allow her in. He his knuckle in his mouth. "You're injured." His eyes gentled, "'cut myself. "C'mon in." And Ororo blinked, because he didn't know how close she had come to becoming a vampire once. She followed him into the dark hall. Votives floated in water in oval glass holders set in alcoves in the halls. By their light the walls were old yellow, or mustard, or pain golden (no shine, just forceful, even in the darkened hall). The tiles beneath her feet were wide and set in gray. They were the color Safflower honey. She passed a framed mirror to her right. The frame was wrought metal, or enameled metal, enamaled something nacrous and dark, maybe black, or more brown. Her reflection looked startled. She saw that a bit of light has fallen aslant her face, and that she looked young. Younger than when she had first met Forge, younger than the day his gun, shot by Henry Gyrich robbed her of the skies. Why did she wear blue? Ororo wondered. She never wore this color, but Remy had insisted on shopping. Did she still look herself? Did Forge still have hundreds of images of her to obsess over? If he did, did he still? The strap of her dress sliped off her shoulder and she considered leaving it thus. She pushed out of her shoes, taking them into her hands and free arm bent at the elbow and wrist, followed Forge into the kitchen. Which smelled of fermenting teff, and hot coffee grounds, and coal fire. "It is good to see you," he said, washing his hands at the sink. Just inside the entryway to the kitchen, she held her shoes in her hand. The kitchen smelled of roast ginger and coal fire, the sour smell of fermenting teff of all things, wreathed with the scent of hot coffee grounds and simmering beans. Food of Ethiopia. He stood below the central, recessed skylight at a wooden block. Copper pans hung from the walls. A string of dried garlic swayed from a corner near skylight. His kitchen was much brighter than the hallway. It was square. Part of the walls were square brick. Red brick, well, orangish mixed with some dun and black. Plants and cacti crowded amongst shelves and cookery, hung from the ceiling. "Your plants. They are lovely." she said, but she was looking at him. His eyes were liquid, quicker than thought and he chuckled. Her cheeks grew warm. "I've learned a thing or two," he said, "about keeping some species alive. At least, I haven't figured out a way to kill them yet." A bell pepper, a wholesome, valiant yellow, paler was on the side. The tomatoes he cut more rapidly and expertly than his steady concentration on them implied he needed. Pale, thin not like paper, bread almost mauvey tan bread flattend in wide air bubbled rounds cooled beside a basket of starfruit and mangoes. Desert next to what looked like pears. The cuisin of ethiopia. Once upon a time she would have made her home with him. For a while, on another earth, she had - they had. He'd been sick. His muscles thinner, tightly defined over his broad rib cage and broader shoulders. His flesh had been striated, and the times she bathed him he'd tried to look down at himself, so surprised he'd been at the stick-like ness of his limbs. He'd lean on her as she walked them to the river, and strip without any of her help. And she'd step in the water after him. These were her memories. Their memories. She left him in the kitchen, and wandered down another long hall. There were windchimes on the patio. Metallic. There they ate and chatted quality. There was no champagne. But a small radio on the bar counter, Ororo assumed it was a radio. It was black and perhaps plastic and it had dials instead of touch studs. There was a grill, perhaps for the speaker, but it was thin. Thin as a postcard, and there was no obvious powersource. "Lovely," Ororo said of it at one point, not the Mercer song that was playing. Forge looked at her, "No. You're lovely." "I am inspired," she replied, and chin in his hand Forge chuckled. There was more patio than dwelling, she had found of his penthous apartment, and she wondered, how many of them did the man really have. It was mostly garden, largely unplanned, but with pool and fountain and, of course, helipad. She wished to help with the dishes, he told her no. He cleaned up, leaning his hip against the sink counter because his back was paining him. She could tell. He may have been unused to siting on the floor at the small woven Ethiopian table. Ororo had found a bottle of wine. He had opened it while they lingered over Coconut ice-cream and bananas on the patio. When he was done he had gone into his living room and built a fire. Sometimes she watched him setting it up through the carved wooden screen that pretended at a wall between the living room and the night air, sometimes she tried to glimpse stars beyond the light polloution. They sat in silence in the living room. He kept the forcefield off, and moths, drawn by the glow came in and confused themselves between the flames and subdued night glow. Silence was their third companion. Breathing, and thinking its own thoughts between them. She sat with her arms folded around her legs, and at one point she felt his hand lightly tug the brief scarf holding her hair into a pony-tail away. This made her shiver. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that he lay on his stomach. She reached for him, dug her fingers behind into his back. He groaned loudly, into his crossed arms. "You don't have to --" "You have forgotten," she chuckled, as she settled lightly astride him hands smoothing out over his shoulders and gliding down along his spine. "This has ever been a pleasure." "Oh, nooooooo," and he laughed a little, because the woman he asked to marry, and unasked to marry all in a day had a touch he never thought'd be duplicated. Forge had always been beautiful to Ororo. Even when she hated him. It was his color, especially beneath her hands. She could do this for a life time, shifting muscles on his back patient as wind and time did sand, and his groans fall away, but he is not asleep. He could not fall asleep. The movement of her hips over him. The sweetness of her body across his ass and the moving heat spreading up and down his spine and into everywhere she cared to touch, the patience with which she massaged his hands...he felt full and careless and aware and relaxed, the sister of sleepy but nowhere near as unaware. When Ororo gave a great sigh and lay herself along his back, her arms bent along his she was more than a little sweaty, and Forge's face, which in profile, the other side of it pressed against the carpetting was serene and not at all smug. "Thank you," he said. Not wanting to move. Her hair slipped, fell over her shoulder and onto his. He bent his fingers and grasped some silky strands of it between finger and thumb. She did not notice. "So you will not forget," she said. "I could never forget how good you are at this," he murmured. And his murmur was pulling something out of her, something jagged and deep and almost painful and Ororo suspected that it was time for her to leave. No, it was time for her to leave. They stood near the edge of the rooftop and she hugged him good-bye. His waist was smooth beneath her arms as she held him and this was far different from their touch earlier. His open shirt brushed like wings against her skin as he hugged her back, and they were noisless and almost gauzy about them. "I should go?" she said. "If you're not sure otherwise," he replied, his hands bunching and unbunching the blue fabric covering her hips. She could feel the dampness from his hand. Her hands had not left off their grasping motions, and were pulling him tighter against her, almost of their own will. He released her dress. She stepped away from him and off the ledge, into a waiting wind. His shirt blows up behind him with the force of the called breeze. He was smiling as she left.