She laughed. He didn't need a memory to tell him it was a very good sign when a woman laughed at his jokes at this point. Experimentally, gently, he pulled her down to face him. Hooray for science. Let's see what happens. He kissed her. She kissed him back. He melted.

Speech and science were both put aside for a time, after that. Not to mention the green coat and all the layers underneath. Her body was as lovely as he'd imagined, a pure aesthetic of line and curve, softness and floral, hidden places. His own body contrasted vividly, a little rack of bones scored with shocking red scars.

An intense consciousness of his recent death welled up in him, and he found himself kissing her frantically, passionately, as if she were life itself and he could so consume and possess her. He didn't know if she was enemy or friend, if this was a right or wrong thing. But it was warm and liquid and moving, not icy and still, surely the most opposite thing imaginable to cryo-stasis. Seize the day. Because the night waited, coldly implacable. This lesson burned from his center outward, like radiation. Her eyes widened. Only his shortness of breath forced him to slow down to a more decorous, reasonable pace.

His ugliness ought to have bothered him, but it didn't, and he wondered why. We make love with our eyes closed. Who had told him that? The same woman who'd told him, It's not the meat, it's the motion? Opening Rowan's body was like facing that pile of field-stripped weaponry. He knew what to do, what parts counted and which were camouflage, but could not remember how he'd learned it all. The training was there, yet the trainer was erased. It was a more deeply disturbing coupling of the familiar with the strange than any he'd yet experienced here.

She shivered, sighed, and relaxed, and he kissed his way back up her body to murmur in her ear, "Um . . . doan' think I can do push-ups, jus' yet."

"Oh." Her glazed eyes opened, and focused. "My. Yes." A few moments of experiment found a medically-approved position, flat on his back in great comfort with no pressure or strain on his chest, arms, or abdomen, and then it was his turn. That felt right, ladies first and then he wouldn't have pillows thrown at him for falling asleep immediately afterwards. A terribly familiar pattern, with all the details wrong. Rowan had done this before too, he judged, though perhaps not often. But great expertise on her part was scarcely required. His body worked just fine. . . .

"Dr. D," he sighed up at her, "yr a gen'ius. Aes . . .  Asku . . . Aesch . . . that Greek guy coul' tak' lessons in resurr'ction from you."

She laughed, and oozed down beside him, body to body. My height doesn't matter when we're lying down. He'd known that, too. They exchanged less-hurried, exploratory kisses, savored slowly like after-dinner mints.