life

Pepper knows, intellectually, that there will be seams and scars, a rag doll dressed in business casual and labcoat, but he's a scientist and he's come to mistake intellectual knowledge for truth.

His fingers race over buttons, tugging too much, and he freezes when they slip free. Then he hates himself for reacting, and he's reaching for her skin and hoping she didn't notice.

She noticed. She smiles a little, while his attention is elsewhere, and pulls his tie out of its knot. His fingers trace down the length of the thick, ropey scar that bisects her chest. The scar continues down past her waistband and so do his hands, unsnapping the fasteners and pushing the skirt away.

Sliding out of the shirt as she sits up, she unbuttons his top and leans in, tracing her tongue over his smooth chest and lingering on one of his nipples just long enough to make him shiver. He can see the nest of wild lines in her shoulder now, and as he lays his head on top of them, he can just make out the scars on her back, welt lines near the shoulders and a strange puddle of scarred tissue in the small of her back.

He wraps his arms around her, brushing fingertips against the thick, sensitive lower scar tissue. Each scar has a name and she reads them off to him like constellations as she removes his pants. The only stars he can see are the ones in her eyes anyway, so he doesn't seem to mind.

The skin just about the connections, he's been told, is more sensitive. He tests the hypothesis with a few well-placed caresses, feels her writhe in his arms, and smiles. She guides his hands, showing him how to unfasten them. He nods, but leaves them clicked into place.

Dead limbs don't interest him, only life. He kisses her, hard, and realizes that life is what he's been missing.