Page 119 of Legacy Ascended

For a while the only sound in the room is two people breathing.

He doesn't let go. I lift my head to look at him: his arm is still around my back, his other hand has come up to cup the side of my neck, and he isn't stepping away, and he isn't looking at the door.

"Finally," I say.

He gets me down off the table with a hand under my arm, which I don't need and don't object to. Then he goes out to the corridor washroom and comes back with the water bottle from his bag and a folded paper towel, and makes me drink some before he drinks any himself.

We sort ourselves out with the minimum of discussion. He takes his turn, then I fix what can be fixed, which is not everything.

"For the record," I say, "I suspect that works even better with no clothes on."

He laughs — a real one, startled out of him — and the flush that comes up the side of his neck is so satisfying.

"I have no difficulty believing you," Jon says.

He pulls a chair around with his foot so it's beside his instead of across the table, and sits, and looks at me with his eyebrows up until I sit in it.

We finish the task, because it's ten minutes' work.

"Give me the batch," I say.

Jon reads them out, and I write them down.

"This is useful. When we send the request, it means we're not asking them to explain a general practice, we're asking them about one specific card." He sits back. "The accession record or the conservation record for that item, and the recopying schedule for the batch. If neither record exists, that's an answer as well."

"Put my name on it."

"It is about your family."

"Put both our names. You found it." I cap the pen. "And if it turns out somebody just wrote the wrong word two hundred years ago—"

"Then we'll have established that, and I'll be delighted, and this will be just a wasted evening."

"I would not call this a wasted evening."

"No," Jon says. "Nor would I."

He switches off the lamp, picks up the folder, and walks out with me — down two flights and the length of the east corridor, talking about nothing.

At the arch where the paths split he stops.

He looks once down the corridor, then catches the front of my coat and pulls me in and kisses me, one hand at my jaw.

"Go on," he says, when he lets me go. "Before I walk you all the way to your door and give the entire building something to discuss."

"Would that be so bad?"

He stands there with the folder under his arm while I go, and this time I do turn around.

He hasn't moved. He lifts a hand.

I lift mine, then turn and head back to my room.

The residence desk has a letter for me when I get back.

I recognize Elise's handwriting on the envelope.

I open it before I make it upstairs.