“So did you guys talk at all?” Emma says, leaning between the seats.
“I didn’t try,” Drin says. “He’s just not tracking. You can see his eyes stare out past you when some smell distracts him. It must be pretty overwhelming.”
“I noticed how he doesn’t want to leave the car for very long,” Emma says, scrubbing at her brows and making them all rumpled. There’s a red crease-line where a fold of fabric pressed into her cheek. Drin can’t explain why all of that makes her seem more fem and girly and perfectly adorable to him than if she was wearing perfect makeup. When Dance says he wants to lick her all over like an ice cream cone, Drin totally understands.
“He got used to how the car smells, maybe it’s not so much all at once,” Drin says.
“Like he’s trying to crawl back in his lair,” Emma says, not trying to whisper. “He acts like he’s got PMS, if you ask me. How come?”
“Well, I think part of the never-ending erection is smelling that you’re ovulating,” Drin says.
Emma is a frozen statue in the back seat. Then, slowly, she rests her face in her hand. The car rattles, going over cracks and pitting in the pavement, and then in the rear view mirror he can see a tear line running down her wrist. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t help it–”
“Hussshhh,” Drin says, eyes flicking back to the road. “Just another theory. I think it wouldn’t matter where we were, it’s probably tied together. Give him a week or so and I think it’ll calm down a bit.”
Drin glances over at the figure huddled against the front passenger door. Dance had come to, briefly, when Emma draped her warm coat around him, and he’d murmured happily, sighing into it, and promptly zonked out again. Drin was grateful for that. Dance was looking hollow around the eyes. The matching scars on his cheekbones stand out in sharp pale lines. Drin thinks he’s lost weight in just the last two days. He hasn’t been eating much.
“So he wants to get me pregnant?” Emma says.
Drin gives her a crooked smile. “Not upstairs, no. Downstairs…”
Emma smacks his knee, annoyed.
“Ow,” Drin says. His sigh is resigned.
“What if it was your kid, not his?” Emma says then. “Would it smell weird to him and he wouldn’t– wouldn’t be able to handle it?”
“I don’t know,” Drin says.
They both jump when the coat rustles. Dance turns his head, opens his eyes, squints at Drin. “God, it’s fucking bright out here,” he says.
Emma is silent, frown lines between her brows.
Then Dance says, a little hoarse, “Em, don’t worry. Drin’s baby won’t smell weird to me. It’d smell wonderful. I love how babies smell anyway.”
“I had…heard…they have a smell, but I never–” Emma says, and they can both hear her choking up.
“They smell great,” Dance says, peaceful, relaxed, head tipped back into the door. “And that’s not even when you’re in love with the mom and dad.”
Emma turns her head down into both her hands.
“It’s okay,” Dance says, in that rough sleepy voice. “Must be the hormones going crazy on us. I’m probably setting you off, too, just like it’s making me crazy wanting both of you.”
“And random lampposts,” Emma says, snorting in her palm, and then she’s laughing while she’s crying.
“Yeah, and random objects which pass,” Dance agrees, smiling a little. He rubs at his face. “God, it is so fucking bright, how can you stand it?”