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Kristin’s not surprised when she sees him back in front of her door.
“I thought you went searching for her,” she tells him.
He doesn’t say a word, letting himself in and stepping past her. He makes his way down the stairs as if making himself at home, even slipping off his shoes and throwing himself into the center of her couch. His body sinks into the cushions, and he lets out a sigh.
She locks her door again, before descending to the living room and joining him on the couch. She sits next to the armrest, propping her chin up as her eyes look him up and down.
He’s in his own sleeve now — probably a product of a few exchanges, plenty of Meth money, and judging by his blank stare, possibly a decommissioned sleeve or two. This is the only real time Kristin’s had a good look at Takashi Kovacs in the original form; last time, they were fighting to real death against someone that obtained a copy of his sleeve.
In Elias’s sleeve, he had a habit of looking down at his hands and rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand methodically. It’s completely gone away now.
“You look comfortable,” she says, trying to meet his eyes. “At home.”
He turns his head to her, his thought chain broken. “No offense, but your ex’s body was not my thing.”
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “He’s not my ex,” she corrects him.
“Well, he’s not exactly your boyfriend right now either,” he replies.
She exhales sharply, sitting back into the couch. “He needs some space right now, and I’m glad he’s taking it.” She pauses for a moment. “He got a really bad case of Sleeve Shock.”
Kovacs gives her a strange look. “He got Sleeve Shock when cast back in his own sleeve?”
Kristin shrugs. “Psychologists are still studying it. Something about being cast back into your original when someone else has been living in it for a while,” she explains. She looks over at him. “You do know you were in the only copy of him, right?”
“Oh, I was well reminded by his best friends,” he snorts sarcastically.
“He was recast in whatever available sleeves were rotating in prison,” she says. “You know, because Bancroft wanted his sleeve. Prison doesn’t like the idea of stacks without any bodies to experience prison in, so he was switched on a week-to-week basis. They do it on purpose, I think, recasting prisoners in each other’s bodies.”
Kovacs nods slowly.
“And then suddenly his sentence is cleared and he comes back to his body, but his body’s been poorly maintained by some Envoy,” she continues, narrowing her eyes at him. “I think, yeah, he needs some time to get comfortable in his own body.” She snaps her lips shut, pausing for a moment. “And I told him about us.”
“Us?”
She nods, pressing her lips together and meeting his eyes. “Us,” she confirms.
Kovacs holds her eyes in an intense stare for a minute or so.
A few seconds in, she notices she’s not breathing, frozen in his gaze. Kristin can’t explain it but his stare feels exactly the same as it did when he was in Elias’s sleeve. She registers the difference in eye colors and thickness of eyelash but how he is looking at her now feels no different than when he was looking at her before.
She slowly takes a breath in and breaks from the eye contact. “I thought you went searching for her,” she says. Again.
“I am,” he affirms.
“How’s that going?”
“I haven’t found her yet,” he answers simply.
Frustrated by his cryptic responses, she breathes out sharply through her nose. “Why are you here?” she asks, finally.
He doesn’t reply, just continues to sit with his arms crossed, staring at some spot on the wall across the room. After a few seconds of watching him, she gives up and unfolds her legs from under her, rising from the couch.
“You ever wonder how long love lasts?”
She gradually sits herself back down into the couch. “Maybe,” she replies cautiously, clasping her hands together in her lap. She’s careful to keep her body perched on a separate cushion.
“Well, I do,” he tells her. “If there’s one thing that I learned from the Bancrofts, it’s that one hundred years might be the expiration date.”
Kristin laughs softly. “I think they fell in love with each other’s money.”
A smile cracks over his lips. “You’re right,” he says. “I guess if you love something… someone enough, that’ll last forever.”
“You worried that you’ll eventually run out of steam and give up looking for her?” she rephrases for him.
“I killed my only lead,” he reminds her. He looks at her. “And now, it’s only been a month, and I’m back here. With you.”
Kristin thinks this might be the answer she was looking for. She relaxes her body, sitting and letting gravity slip her bodyweight over the next cushion.
“You know what I think?” she tells him, poking his chest playfully. “I think humans naturally have an infinite amount of love within them, but that we, for some reason, feel like there’s a limit to it and then start choosing exactly how much of it we want to offer when we really can just give to no end.”
“Hm,” he replies, his eyes looking down at where her knees are touching his thigh, her legs angled toward him.
“So don’t worry about how much you have left because you’re always making more,” she says. “No matter how long it takes, you will still love her.” She gives him another smile. “I at least know that about you. That you love her with all of your heart.”
His eyes flicker up to meet her eyes. “Is that what you think?”
She nods. “And you know what else I think?” she asks him in a low voice, her body further leaning toward him.
She sees him swallow slowly, his eyes dipping down to her lips. “What?” The words barely make it out of his throat when he sees how at how little space there is between them.
“I think life’s too long for just one love,” she says, and she closes the distance.