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The earrings were small in the palm of Major Kimblee’s hand. They looked like silver, with a flat hammered circle at the end of each post, and might have once had a stone inlaid; it was difficult to tell in the twilight. Riza Hawkeye didn’t know where they had come from, and she wasn’t brave enough to ask. She knew Kimblee would tell her the truth.
“Drink up,” he said, holding out his cup of gin. “It’ll help.”
Riza took the cup and turned it, sipping from the clean section of the rim. She wasn’t afraid of needles, or pain, but Kimblee didn’t know that, and his intense observation as she drank was enough to make her grateful for the liquor. This whole thing had been his idea. She hoped his hands were steadier than hers.
“You can sleep on your back, I hope?” he said.
Riza shook her head. “But I didn’t expect to get much sleep my first night here, anyway. Between the heat, and the...noise.”
“How unsentimental. Yes.” Kimblee’s fingers brushed hers as he took the cup again. “You’ll get used to it before long. But for tonight, I imagine a little pain should be a nice distraction.”
He crooked his wrist as he lifted the cup, so that his lips landed squarely over the same place hers had just been. He'd performed the maneuver so quickly that Riza wasn’t sure at first of what she had seen. But as he drank, he glanced at her again, and she knew then that she had been intended to notice.
There were questions Kimblee wasn’t asking, either, she realized. Such as whether she still wanted to go through with this. He must have thought there was a chance she would say no.
Kimblee set the cup down and dipped the tips of his fingers into it. “Hold still.” He rubbed her earlobe; as a weak breeze struggled by, the gin felt incredibly cold. Kimblee opened his first aid tin and produced the needle from it. “Do you have matches?” he asked. Riza felt around her pockets and handed him a matchbook. “Thank you.”
He struck a match. “This used to be common in some cultures,” he told her as he passed the needle back and forth through the flame. “Fathers would pierce the ears of their sons when they became men.”
Riza almost laughed. “Well, I’m not a man,” she said.
“Killing someone makes you a man regardless of age.”
“I haven’t killed anyone.”
He pressed the matchbook back into her hand and curled her fingers around it. “It’s only a matter of time, miss. Brace your head against the wall.”
Riza leaned back against the stone, and Kimblee fixed the unlit end of the match between his teeth. “I need to see,” he mumbled around it. The little flame was hot beside her cheek as he leaned down toward her.
He’d been so polite to her all day. Perhaps that was why she had agreed to come out here with him. All it had taken was a few kind words after she stepped out of the truck, and now she was sitting out in the dark with him, waiting, staring at the canopy of stars beyond his sleek black hair. Was she destined always to go racing into the arms of any man who was kind to her, and lay down before his will? Was that the kind of girl she was?
He gave her no warning. One moment Riza was looking up at the sky, trying to quell her racing thoughts; and the next all the air had vanished from her lungs as the needle punched through her flesh. It was a bright, searing dart of pain, but the breathtaking quality lasted only an instant, as she had known it would. She inhaled, and Kimblee fiddled with something at the site, which stung again. “Just a moment,” he murmured. Riza felt the back of the earring pinch into place, and then Kimblee let go of her.
“How does it feel?” he asked.
“Fine, sir,” said Riza, sitting up. Her voice didn’t even shake.
Kimblee pulled the match from his teeth and smiled. “Easier than expected? You should be proud of yourself.”
He popped the burning head of the match into his mouth, extinguishing it.
Riza was so astonished that she couldn’t move. In the sudden darkness, she almost felt like she was floating. She was aware of her breath and blood, but it was almost as though her body was gone, and had been replaced by something stranger. As though she could flee through the desert, all the way back to the last outpost or the academy or the old boarded-up house halfway across the country.
Then Kimblee’s mouth was on hers. He kissed softly, almost shyly; when, after a moment, Riza let her lips part, it took him a few seconds to respond in kind. The tip of his tongue tasted like ash and phosphorus. A small noise escaped his throat, too hungry to be called a sigh, and his hand curled around the back of Riza's neck. The pulse of pain in her heavy earlobe might have been her beating heart.
Riza fumbled a single match free and struck it—it flared to life between them with a hiss. Kimblee jerked away.
“I’m ready for the other one,” said Riza.
His gaze never wavered. “I want to kiss you again,” he said quietly.
“Are you going to do it or not?”
In the white circle of light, Kimblee didn’t look angry, or even very surprised. Instead the emotion in his eyes was something closer to exultation. It made Riza feel sick to contemplate for too long. She looked away. Kimblee raised the needle. As he passed it through the flame again, Riza saw the dark stain on its length.
That, she thought, was what she wanted to remember as she lay in her cot that night, waiting for dawn to come: not the kiss, not the piercing, but the blood, flashing a sickening crimson in the firelight.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.