"No,"
A quiet smile tried to climb into his words and he did not let it. "Good. I hate unfairness."
His breath warmed the small space between them, then faded. The joke should have nudged her nerves. It didn't. It set a peg in the stone for a tired smile to hook on later.
She almost smiled. She didn't pay for it with words. Breath conservation felt like a kind of discipline too.
The slot was tighter than she had admitted even to herself. When they lay, their faces naturally aligned—forehead to forehead if they let it, nose to nose if they were careless. With the marsh padding their edges, it felt like being pressed between two kinds of soft—his and the gel. There was nowhere to put awkwardness but in the air, and there was not much air either.
They talked because silence here had sharp corners. Words sanded them down.
