30 – Night Steps
The steps were the same. The stone worn smooth near the bottom from decades of Marines sitting between drills. The harbor below, the moon on the water, the execution platform standing against the skyline, lit from below. I'd sat on these steps in my third week and she'd told me my Observation was reaching for things it couldn't hold yet, and the gap between our knees had been a foot and a half.
Gion was sitting with Konpira across her knees and her coat off. Pink ruffled shirt, heels, the curly black hair loose on her shoulders. No coat meant this wasn't official, and Gion never did anything without knowing which version of herself she was doing it as.
She heard me on the steps. She didn't turn.
I sat down beside her. The stone was cool through my trousers. The gap between our knees was where it had been for weeks. The harbor was quiet. A patrol cutter was making its circuit past the seawall, running lights bright against the dark water. Somewhere in the compound a door slammed and a voice shouted about a missing requisition form and the voice faded and the night was still.
"I've been thinking about what Hina said," Gion said.
I waited. The breeze off the harbor moved her hair and the curl along her jaw shifted and settled and the mole below her mouth was dark in the moonlight.
"She's right. About all of it." She was talking to the harbor. "My hands stay longer than they need to. I gave you private sessions in three weeks when I've never done that in less than three months. Your Haki reaches for me when we're in the same room and mine doesn't push you away." Her hands were on Konpira's sheath, fingers resting on the lacquer. "I'm forty-one years old. You're a recruit. I'm your commanding officer. I could lose my position, my candidacy, my reputation. I could lose everything I've spent twenty years building."
Measured. Clear.
"And I've been sitting on these steps for an hour waiting for you to come out, which means the assessment doesn't matter, which means I'm in worse trouble than I thought."
I looked at her. She was looking at the harbor. Her jaw was set and her mouth was a thin line and the execution platform was lit behind her.
"What do you want?" I said.
She turned. Her eyes found mine. Dark and close. The composure was there and it was fragile and she was letting it be fragile.
"I want to make a terrible decision," she said. "With complete awareness of how terrible it is."
"That's the most Vice Admiral answer to that question I've ever heard."
Her mouth changed. The almost-smile arrived, warmer than any I'd counted, and it was still on her face when she reached across the gap between our knees and put her hand on the side of my face.
Her palm was warm. The calluses from Konpira were rough against my cheek. She turned my face toward hers, gentle and firm, and she was sitting above me on the step and in heels she had enough height that she angled my face up toward hers. Her eyes were open. Mine were open. Her knee pressed against mine when she leaned in.
She kissed me.
Slow. Her lips were warm and she tasted like wine and underneath the wine she tasted like herself and the lipstick was waxy against my mouth. She held my face with one hand and the other stayed on Konpira's sheath and my hand went to her waist and the fabric of her shirt was thin and warm and she let it stay. Her ribs under my palm. The expansion of her breathing. Steady and unhurried and nothing like the corridor.
The kiss deepened. Her mouth opened against mine and her hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck and her fingers found the groove along my hairline, the same spot she'd touched during corrections, and pressed. My hand tightened on her waist. I pulled her closer and she let me and her knee was against my thigh and the stone was cold under us and the harbor breeze was cool on my neck where her hand wasn't and her mouth was warm.
She pulled back. Rested her forehead against mine. Her breathing was faster than she'd let it be. Her eyes were closed. Her lipstick was on my mouth and the waxy floral smell was close.
"This is a mistake," she said.
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
"Your mouth keeps disagreeing."
Her lips pressed together. Then her shoulders moved and the sound that came out of her was quiet and compressed and closer to laughter than anything I'd heard from her, and her forehead was still against mine and her breath was warm on my face.
She kissed me again. Shorter. Her mouth firm and quick and then gone and her hand on the back of my neck squeezed once and released.
"Come with me," she said.
She stood. Picked up Konpira. I stood. We walked side by side through the compound with a foot of space between us and anyone watching would see a Vice Admiral and a recruit walking in the same direction.
Her quarters were on the fourth floor of the officers' wing. A door with her name on a brass plate. She unlocked it without looking at me and went in and left the door open.
The room was larger than the barracks had prepared me for. A bed against the far wall, neatly made, dark blue sheets. A desk covered in papers and tactical assessments. Konpira's cleaning kit on a cloth near the window. A bookshelf crammed with volumes I couldn't read the spines of in the dim light. The room smelled like floor polish and underneath it the faint floral of her lipstick and the faint lived-in smell of a space that belonged to someone.
She sat on the bed. I sat beside her.
"Tsuru told me once," Gion said, "that a woman in the Marines has to be twice as good and half as visible. She said if you want to last, you give them nothing to talk about." She was looking at her hands in her lap. The calluses. The short nails. "I was twenty-two when she said that. I've followed it for nineteen years."
"And now you're on a bed with a recruit."
"And now I'm on a bed with a recruit." She exhaled. "Tsuru would be disappointed. Or she'd understand. I don't know which, and that bothers me more than either one."
She told me about the Admiral seat. How she and Tokikake had both been in the running and how the seat had gone to external candidates and the official reason was experience in large-scale operations and the unofficial reason was politics, and she'd accepted it because accepting it was what you did when the alternative was becoming the person who complained about decisions above your rank.
She told me about the proposals. A Vice Admiral whose name she didn't say who'd asked her to dinner a hundred times over the years and who'd taken her silence as encouragement and her refusal as a challenge and who'd eventually been transferred to another base after Hina had a conversation with someone in fleet personnel that Gion hadn't asked for and hadn't known about until it was done. "Hina handles things," Gion said. "She doesn't ask permission and she doesn't report results. She just handles things and tells you about it at dinner like she's describing the weather."
She was leaning against the headboard with her shoes off and her bare feet tucked under her on the blue sheets and her hair was on her shoulders and the lipstick was smudged from the steps. Without the coat she looked younger and more tired.
I listened. My mouth was doing the smart thing for once.
She fell asleep mid-sentence. She was telling me about the first time she'd met Sengoku, and the sentence involved a door she'd walked through too fast and a tea set she'd knocked off a desk, and her voice slowed and her breathing changed and her shoulder settled against my arm and her head tilted onto my shoulder and the sentence ended with "and the tea went everywhere and he just-" and she was asleep.
Her breathing was slow and steady. Her weight was against my arm and her hair smelled clean and the curl along her jaw was resting against my collar and her bare feet were curled on the blue sheets.
I stayed.
The room was quiet. Her papers on the desk. Konpira's cleaning kit by the window. The moonlight through the glass making a bright rectangle on the floor. A pipe somewhere in the walls ticked as it cooled.
I left when the moonlight rectangle had moved halfway across the floor. Eased her onto the pillow and her head settled and her breathing didn't change. I pulled the blue sheet over her feet because the room was cold. Her lipstick was on my mouth. The waxy residue on my lower lip.
I walked to the door. The corridor was dark and empty and the brass plate with her name caught the light from the room behind me. I closed the door quietly.
The lipstick was on my mouth. I didn't wipe it off.
The compound was dark and the moon was lower and the execution platform was a silhouette against the sky. My mouth tasted like wine and lipstick. The mess hall kitchen had a light on where the early shift was prepping, and the smell of rice drifted across the compound.
My bunk. The recruit above me asleep. I lay down and her lipstick was still on my mouth.
Thursday was a long time ago. This was past Thursday.