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Capheus wakes with a lethargy that’s not his own weighing down his bones. His limbs feel immovably heavy; even lifting his eyelids takes an effort so great that he barely manages.
Riley, he thinks. He’s learned, by now, to differentiate between his cluster-mates. He can recognize Sun’s bright, controlled passion in an instant; the brush of Lito’s consciousness against his own when Lito rises each morning and his chest swells with love for the man sleeping beside him is as familiar as Capheus’s own love for his mother.
Thousands of miles away across land and water and more water, Riley drags herself upright, feeling like she’s fighting against the overpowering weight of her own body. Capheus feels her sit up; himself, he stays laying down for several more seconds. Then he takes a breath (he breathes in the hot, thick air of home and the crisp, wet air of Riley’s surroundings all at once) and heaves himself to standing.
Riley gives him a smile, but it’s tired, perfunctory. In the dawn-dark shadows of his home she is small and pale, her white hair a bright burst in the dimness. Capheus rubs sleep from his eyes and stretches grandly, raising his arms above his head and out to the side. Wind ripples his clothing; the smell of the sea fills his mouth and his lungs.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks Riley.
“Yes,” she says politely, nodding with a kind smile. Capheus knows she’s telling the truth the same way he knows that she’s thirsty and that the tickle of her hair in the breeze is making the left side of her jaw itch. He also knows that she’s thinking: It doesn’t matter how I sleep; getting up in the morning is always just as hard. He knows, too, that she would never willingly tell him this.
“I have a long drive today,” he tells her. He rests his hands on the edge of the boat, looking out at the water stretching away in all directions. Riley joins him quietly; he smiles at her. “Driving is a good way to relax,” he says, turning his eyes back to the water. Riley doesn’t say anything. “It is also boring as hell,” he says, grinning.
Riley breathes a laugh; the sound is soft but clear in the close confines of Capheus’s home, even as it’s swept away by the whipping air of the ocean. He feels the bubble of her amusement in his own chest; it blends with his own joy at having made her happy, if just for a moment, and his mouth stretches with a wide smile. This sharing emotions business, this double pain and double pleasure—it is sure something.
“Would you like to go for a drive today?” he asks her. “I would not mind.”
She looks at him, teeth catching her bottom lip.
Capheus feels all the things she’s feeling that stop her from giving a quick answer. He feels her memory of the long, lonely hours she’s already spent on this boat; he feels her desire to be somewhere else, somewhere warm, somewhere where there are people and voices and life. He feels a clench of obligation in her stomach: Will saved me. I have to take care of him. He feels, too, the warm flicker of her affection for him, the solace she takes in long hours with just him as a silent companion. Capheus feels the hot spark of surprise and gratitude directed at himself for his offer; he grins at her, his chest warm, his cheeks warm.
He ducks his head away from her then, glancing to the blanket-draped form laid carefully on the deck, head cradled on dark fabric that Capheus knows, through Riley, is one of Riley’s jackets.
When he looks back to her, he knows that just as he’s felt her feelings, she’s felt his: the truth that he doesn’t mind if she drives for him today; his want to ease her journey; even, he’s sure (and this makes him flush but not look away), the twinge of attraction he feels to her.
She stares at him a moment. In the shadows of his room, she squints slightly. He feels surprise, curiosity, something warm like amusement and affection all swirled up together. She takes a step closer to him. He blinks. Her pale skin is bright in the darkness, and almost translucent in the pale sunlight. Her mouth curves up, widens with a smile. She has a very beautiful smile, Capheus thinks, and knows she feels the sentiment.
“Sure,” she says. She is standing only a few feet from him, just close enough to touch. “I could go for a drive.”
“Good,” he says, smiling, nodding. He is pleased to be able to do something for her.
She takes a small step closer to him; she is slight and quiet, but in this moment she is all he can see, pale against the steely blue backdrop of the water. He feels a wash of her emotion: a warm tingle of excitement; curiosity; a brush of uncertainty. Most strangely, he feels what Riley is feeling about him right now: that he is kind, and that she likes his smile, and that she admires his positivity, and that she’d like to place her hands on his arms and find out what that kind smile of his tastes like.
It is a weird, narcissistic experience, Capheus thinks, and not entirely unenjoyable.
"I wasn't sure," she says, tucking hair behind her ear.
"Sure of what?" he asks her.
She takes in a breath, her eyes giving a twinkle of laughter. "How you felt," she clarifies. She takes one more step towards him, and she is very, very close now. She raises one hand with a slowness that kills him. Her palm is warm when it finally rests against the side of his neck. "That you wanted to kiss me."
She is shorter than he is; he stares down at her, basking in the happy sparkle in her dark eyes. With her hand cradling his neck as it is, he wonders if she can feel his pulse, speeding away in his throat.
“There was so much—else—going on, the other times we spoke,” she says, her voice quiet. “I couldn’t be sure.”
Capheus smiles at her, the sea air cold in his throat. "Are you sure now?”
The thin morning sunlight washes her face with brightness; her smile glitters white. “Yes,” she says. “I think you want to kiss me.”
He feels a surging hot wave in his chest that he realizes comes from her: the want to step closer still, to lean up on tip-toe, to press her lips against his mouth. Still, he waits for her to say it.
Her voice is soft, full of amusement: “And I think I want to kiss you, too.”
With a laugh he pulls her to him, his palms flat against the small of her back. She’s small and thin in his arms but warm and sturdy, and her lips taste like salt, like the fresh air of the ocean.
When she pulls back from him, not leaving the circle of his arms but leaning backward to look him in the eyes, she’s smiling so wide her face might split.
“What?” he asks, though he’s smiling too.
She shakes her head, ducking her nose to his shoulder. “It’s just—” she says. “I have this feeling." She leans back in his arms to give him a grin; the wind ruffles the ends of her hair. "Like I’m going to have a really good day today.”
"Good," Capheus says, smiling. They both leave it unspoken that good days are rare, for Riley. They are safe, and they are together, and the sun is coming up in Nairobi, and there is no reason that today can't be good. "I feel that way, too."