Pending, Resolved The New World of SwapTech chapter 6 by witeja9199

Jack drained the glass, set it down like a man defusing something, and said, "Yes."

Priya's pencil-sharp smile went blunt with surprise. "Yes?"

"Yes. You. Not the roster. There is no roster. I'm going to burn the roster."

"You're sure?"

"My mouth is sure. The rest of me is a committee that hasn't voted."

"Then we'll let it vote at my place." She scooped up the handcuffs, flung a twenty at the nearest cardigan, and towed him into the October dark by the belt loop.

Her flat sat above a shop called Second Thoughts, which sold pre-owned engagement rings. The window had caused a great many couples to walk faster. The stairs were steep, and Del's legs took them two at a time without being asked. At the top, Del's shoulder met the sticking door at exactly the correct angle.

"You remembered the door," said Priya, pleased.

"I remember a lot of things," said Jack, which was true and appalling. Del's muscles had apparently been keeping a map: the creaky floorboard, the cat's hiding spot, and the nightstand drawer that made the cat leave the room.

A tabby on the bookshelf regarded him with the weary contempt of the well-read.

"That's Foucault," said Priya. "He watches."

"Does he judge?"

"Constantly. Ignore him."

"Sorry, Foucault," said Jack, for no reason he could name.

"You apologized to my cat."

"Habit."

"Since when?"

"Since... Tuesday."

Then she kissed him and backed him against the wall, and conversation, as it will, abandoned its post. Her hands undid his buttons with the focus of a safecracker. Jack had spent twenty-two years believing seduction was something done at a person, and he now learned it was also a weather system. Del's body leaned into it like a sunflower with a mortgage. His knees went the consistency of warm custard.

"Safe word's Aristotle," Priya murmured. She locked one cuff around his wrist and the other around the brass bedpost, with the brisk efficiency of a woman who kept receipts.

"Why Aristotle?"

"Because you said philosophers kill the mood, and I wanted to prove you wrong."

"That's... actually quite romantic."

"Don't ruin it." She kissed his collarbone. Then his ribs. Then went somewhere considerably south of Jack's previous theories about geography, and he stopped being able to form sentences. His free hand grabbed the pillow. Del's body made a sound he would deny to his grave, a sort of sustained apology to the ceiling.

And then, from a long way off, Jack's conscience arrived, wearing his mother's voice and a very small cardigan.

Jack, it said. She thinks you're Delphine.

"Not now," Jack whispered.

She's consenting to Delphine. You're a man from Applied Statistics who owns a label maker.

"I know."

You're cuffed to a bed.

"I KNOW."

"Know what?" said Priya, surfacing.

"Aristotle," said Jack.

She stopped instantly. Her hands left him, and she sat back on her heels, flushed and rumpled, and looked at him with such unguarded concern that something in Jack's chest folded itself neatly in half.

"Okay," she said gently. "Okay. Are you alright?"

"I just... I need a second."

"You can have as many seconds as you want." She pulled the duvet over his midsection like a woman tucking in a child, which made it worse. "Del. You've never used it. Not once."

"I'm... evolving."

"You keep saying that." She tucked her hair back and drew a long breath. "I'm going to tell you something, and I need you not to bolt. You can't, because you're cuffed, but I need it spiritually."

"That sounds ominous."

"I'm a TA for Professor Oyelaran's swap class. Compliance." Her voice had gone very flat and very kind. "Swaptyx gives us a list of tells. Things a swapped person does that they can't help."

Jack's blood stopped, and then, rather insultingly, started again.

"You said 'merchandise,'" Priya went on, counting on her fingers. "You hid your chest like you were smuggling explosives. You ordered the wings and then looked betrayed by them. You apologized to a cat. You forgot the safe word you invented. And you described Jack Hollis as beige with this wounded accuracy. Delphine doesn't do wounded accuracy. Delphine does gleeful exaggeration."

"That's circumstantial."

"That's nine, actually. I stopped counting after the cat." She held up the cuff key between two fingers, where it swung like a tiny, metallic pendulum. "I'm required to report suspected unreported swaps. But there's a stronger authority than the syllabus, and it's me, and I don't sleep with strangers who are wearing my girlfriend's skin."

"Girlfriend?" said Jack.

"Pending," said Priya, and her voice cracked at the edge. "She said pending. Which I was prepared to live with, because I love her, I think. And now I'm sitting in my own bedroom wondering who just kissed me for twenty minutes."

"It was a very good twenty minutes."

"Thank you. That's actually the most upsetting part." She leaned in until their noses nearly touched. "Aristotle gets you one free pass. Use it or lose it. Who's in there?"

Jack opened his mouth. Page eleven, footnote two floated before his eyes like a sign on a cliff: Disclosure of a swap to any non-participant constitutes failure of the course. The syllabus defined "participant" in a glossary on page forty, which nobody had ever located, because page forty was a map of the cafeteria.

Foucault, from the bookshelf, yawned.

Somewhere in the apartment's pipes, something gurgled like a laugh.

"Well?" said Priya.