He has his feet on her coffee table. It was a gift from a friend. The top was normal, but everything below was a fish tank. She feeds them lovingly every morning; a million tiny sea-plants in the water. The fish shine in brilliant shades of blue, green, yellow, red. She sometimes overhears them talking to each other in a language that hasn't been heard since the destruction of Thera. The fish were a gift from the same friend.

His feet on her coffee table. He'd looked at the fish when he came in and smirked. "Fish," he'd said, something significant and shallow in his voice. "I like *fish*."

She knows he does. She watches the fish murmur to each other, swim, eat sea-plants only she could see. His feet on her coffee table. Beside his foot, a book on Zen Gardening. Beside his other, a tall twisted martini glass full of the sweet tang of a plant's ancient blood. He raises the glass and sipped. She decided not to tell him that the glass had been a gift fron her friend. She hadn't told him about the coffee table either. He likely knows, and if he doesn't, he wouldn't appreciate her telling him.

"Do we have a deal?" she asks.

He shrugs, sprawled, the movement sliding hair over skin, a ghost of skin on skin. A memory. "Of course. A very modest proposal." He raises her friend's gift glass to her in salute, then drinks. "I'm all for protecting humanity." For his own use.

"Good," she says. "Good."

"Tell me, my sweet. Have you ever fucked on a coffee table?"

She'd made love there, when she received it.

Laughing. But Eli! What would the fish say?

His eyes, twinkling, his feet bracing himself over her, on her coffee table, in a push-up position. Let them gossip.

"No," she says. "I'm afraid not."