Élie is not even panicking a little bit about how Naima probably wants a divorce! Maybe a little bit. Just a smidge. A smidge which he can acknowledge is completely irrational. Look at how much progress he's making. 

"Of course. Is anything wrong?"

Well. 

"Actually I lied, I don't want to have this conversation at all, but I'm going to anyway!" That's got to be one of the least reassuring things she could have said, whoops. "Nothing's wrong. I mean, nothing's really wrong, in the sense that I guess technically something is wrong, but this time I'm trying to do the thing where you say words before we both hare off in stupid directions and decide that we don't like each other, when the original problem was actually very minor and not a big deal at all and certainly much less of a big deal than the stupid directions themselves."

...maybe she should have planned this beforehand.

"Anyway! This is very awkward but I don't think you can reasonably criticize me for talking about it after how not talking about it went last time, so! I have noticed that we have not gone back to having sex. I think this is totally normal after having a baby, but it's been a couple months and we both have rings of sustenance so neither of us are sleep deprived, and I got everything fully healed up right after the baby was born, so I think there are not any actual reasons to delay anymore if we both want to do that, except I guess I don't actually know whether you do, because I haven't asked, apart from this conversation, which I guess sort of obliquely counts as asking? And I know what I would normally do about this, but whenever I think about doing that it feels impossible, and if you were a different person I would figure this was fine, right, because probably you would take some kind of action about it yourself at some point, except based on your past behavior I really don't expect that to happen, so instead I'm trying to have a conversation about it, which I realize is probably not strictly speaking the ideal thing to do, but I can't really think of any more straightforward ways of handling this, if you're not going to and I'm not going to, so."

She kind of feels like seven-charisma people should be drowned, sometimes. Oh well.

Oh. That. Yeah, Élie's been thinking about that. 

"I'm sorry. I've missed you. I didn't know when you'd feel ready for sex again, and I thought you'd tell me – and now that I'm saying that out loud I see where this went wrong."  

"That does seem like it has historically never happened."

"You didn't actually say that you want to start having sex again. Just that you didn't know if I wanted to. And – if you're not comfortable being naked around me yet, are you sure – ?" 

" - well I don't want to now, now I'm busy dying of having said all of that. Sorry, that's much more confusing than I meant to make this. I had about half a step of a plan that was supposed to end in that, but the plan failed to account for the sheer level of awkwardness of this conversation. Ugh."

"I don't know why it should be so awkward – I'm not blaming you for it, I'm just as bad. But we're ostensibly two married people and both of age. We've got a baby. One we made in the traditional manner, even." 

"I know! One would really expect to have figured something out by now!"

Sigh. Maybe she'll just flop down beside him and see if snuggling makes this conversation less awful. She thinks it does, actually, having some channel for reassurance that isn't blocked by her general incompetence at personal expression.

"Okay. Proposal, open to counterproposals. I will tell you what I want, with the understanding that anything I say about this will be said about as artfully as one really ought to have expected, given the manner in which I proposed to you, and you can think less of me for it anyway, but if you do you'll be being at least as ridiculous as I am. And then you have to tell me what you want, too."

Oh, that's nice. He pets her hair. 

"I wouldn't think less of you. I like that you're blunt. It reminds me that you couldn't lie to me."

Aww, hair pets are nice. She leans into his touch and tells herself that people mostly don't give hair pets to people who they are totally neutral about touching.

"I think there's a difference between bluntness and whatever this is? But since you presumably mean the thing that you have observed me to do, that does in fact make me feel better. You still have to actually agree to this proposal before I go ahead with it. Or suggest something else that you think is better."

"I like this one. ...I'm worried I like this one too much. Since it puts all the burden of the asking on you." 

"Oh, sorry, that wasn't a general proposal for solving this problem entirely. That was a very specific right now proposal for continuing this conversation, in which I agree to give you even more context on what I am feeling, which I assure you will be even more embarrassing, so come to think of it I'm not even entirely sure you want it, except you pretty much said you did, so you probably do? And in exchange you agree to give me some amount more context on what you are feeling, because I do not feel like I have a particularly clear enough picture of it to be getting on with, right now. One of the things that I am feeling is that expecting both of us to always be able to rely entirely on my signals, and, apparently, failing that, my conversational flailing, seems like it is probably a deeply inefficient system on multiple levels. You can have that one for free."

It's possible that they could be closer together. Élie should fix that.

"That sounds agonizing. Let's do it." 

"Okay!" she says brightly, and then snuggles up as close as she can, because it does, actually, sound agonizing.

Snuggle.

"I love you very much, and I believe that with patience and effort we will one day have an intimate conversation in a manner befitting rational adults." 

"Okay."

Deep breath.

"I think I actually mostly want to know that you want to have sex with me. Like, I will then want to have sex with you about it, but I think mostly what I want isn't specifically the sex itself, and more the part where I get obvious evidence that I have not metaphorically transformed into an annis hag, or something, yes I'm aware that it doesn't actually make sense to expect you to think that, and that you still think I'm really pretty and are happy about getting to be with me, not just because of all of my objectively impressive qualities but also because you think I am, additionally, incredibly physically desirable. But you don't do that unless I'm already acting like it has to be true, and acting like it has to be true when I don't feel like it is sounds - hard. And kind of unpleasant. I am deeply unclear on how reasonable any part of this is, except the part about being an annis hag, which I guess is not literally true, but exaggerating makes it easier for you to contradict it, you know, in the case where there's a grain of truth to the feeling but the feeling is taking the grain and running with it in a direction where the truth is being exaggerated into something obviously ridiculous."

He is going to bury his face in her shoulder, how about that. 

"In the first place, I don't think you're anything like an annis hag. Except for the sometimes disguising yourself by wearing other creature's skins – sorry. Not relevant.  I've always found you beautiful. I didn't know that I was – " 

– and as he says it he realizes that it isn't strictly true – 

"– no. The truth is, I did worry that you'd be hurt if I never showed that I wanted you. But then, you seemed happy, and things were working, so I convinced myself that I didn't need to do better. " 

I can try to explain why I think I'm like this, but it's stupid and shameful and I'm having trouble saying words about it with my mouth. 

Maybe Élie should get hair pets, too, if he's actually worried about this. Is that weird? She probably can't really be expected not to do weird things sometimes. Hair pets seem appropriate.

Mind words are fine. You're hardly going to scare me off, love.

Ohhh, hair pets are nice. Naima should keep doing that.

The truth – and you really have to promise you won't laugh – is that it frightens me. I'm not afraid of you, it isn't that. There is simply a small, treacherous, unreasonable corner of my soul which has the fixed idea that if I ask someone to sleep with me I'll – lose. Give them power over me. They'll know I want something from them, and use that to extract something I value more. 

I wish I had a more rational explanation. I've never worried you'd do something like this. I do want you. I don't actually feel any particular aversion to telling you I want you. I don't mind asking for other things. I could blame my upbringing, but there are thousands raised just the same who don't suffer from this particular brand of cowardice. It is a failing for which I have no excuse, and which I owe it to you to correct. 

Cowardice seems like a strong word.

I'm doing something that hurts someone I love because I'm afraid. 

That's - a technically accurate but very dramatic way of putting it? I'm not exactly experiencing any great suffering, here. I just... have noticed that I want something, and you want something, and we're not getting it, and it seems like this should be a fixable problem.

I don't suppose it's at all helpful to point out that I do in fact want various things from you and mostly already try to tell you about them? ...although I guess I can't claim that I've been successfully telling you about this, which I suppose is how we've ended up in this situation. Just, in terms of extracting other things, uh, the sane way to get those is - asking, right? I don't see why I'd pull some complicated scheme where you don't get to have sex unless you trade me something else. Also that sounds vanishingly unlikely to work on you in particular. I think I'd have a much higher chance of success if I just made sad faces at you.

I'm sorry, I know you already know all of this, it's just the first thing I thought of. Hm.

If I thought you were likely to try something like that I wouldn't have married you. It's – actually, do you have an Owl's Wisdom?

Not prepped. I can if you want to wait fifteen minutes, I've got very little to do with spells down here.

I can do it in a minute if I just get my spellbook, but that would require getting up and no longer having my hair stroked. 

He does so, very reluctantly. 

Well, hair pets can resume as soon as he gets back? If that is still desirable?

Very much so. 

I should really invest in a headband that does wisdom and intelligence both, I can't always get by substituting one for the other. 

Owl's Wisdom. 

And he turns the painful thought over in his mind until it settles into focus, as clear and plain and obvious a lead. 

It's not really about sex at all, is it? It's about affection. Wanting to be held, wanting to be – wanted. And not wanting anything to know I'd want anything so – heh – silly. 

That's not silly. ...I actually thought you were the one who was clearer on that not being silly.

Sorry, I'm trying to characterize a strain of – let's not even dignify it by calling it thought – which my faculty of higher reason can't seem to do anything about. 

That's fair.

Well, he can have lots more snuggles about it, anyway. That seems like it might be helping.

I'm admittedly not immediately sure what to do about it if I can't reason at it. I guess if you generally want lots of affection and find it very hard to say anything about it, then I feel somewhat less weird about the idea being very affectionate without any sort of invitation, and not necessarily expecting it to mean anything about sex. Although that might be moving us backward on the original problem.

I think I'm the only one who can do anything about it. I just have to acclimate myself to the fact that if I initiate sex it doesn't make you any more likely to laugh in my face if I want to stay in bed with you afterwards. 

I guess that makes sense. On the bright side, it should be very easy to gather the desired kind of data, since I really can't imagine that happening. Maybe if there's an apocalypse in the middle.

Even then, I don't think you'd laugh. Not like – well, you wouldn't, anyway. 

That's probably true. I guess maybe if it were a really sudden apocalypse and I were stress laughing? - you know what, this is not the most helpful thing to be trying to figure out, is it. I am not going to think you're ridiculous or pathetic for wanting to be with me. Or for caring about whether I care about you. Which I do. A lot.

I know. I know. 

My first really serious lover used to think it was very funny when I wanted to stay the night. I think about him sometimes. He's dead now. I don't know if he lived long enough to love someone else, or allow himself to be loved. I used to worry I'd die like that. 

She cannot think of any reasonable or clever responses to that for a little while. She knows it makes her want to hug him tight, so she does that, at least.

I keep wanting to point out that we literally have the same bed and the same house. I am aware that this is not actually the point, but - or maybe it is. I guess the fact that I have set up my life to avoid being in different places from you as much as I can - without interfering with work, anyway - is still information about what I want and what I expect to want in the future.

I know you know all of this. Just.

I do hope your lover had a better time at some point. I'm - sorry. For and about everyone who left you like this.

There's no one to blame for it. You can't raise children thinking it's wrong to expect their parents to hold them, or comfort them when they're sick or hurt, and then when they're older tell them that sex is the only reason to want to be close – I mean, physically close – to another person, and expect them to grow up entirely sane. 

I think my generation – Charles-Alexandre included, that's his name – handled it rather better than our parents. I don't want to promise I'll raise our children without some sort of deficiency of spirit that's only obvious in retrospect, but I'm sure they'll be better off than me.  

She thinks there are totally people to blame for it, just not the people who are coming up in this conversation. No reason to dwell too much on theories of blame now, though.

I very much doubt that any mortal has ever been raised without any deficiencies in spirit.

But you must acknowledge that our children are extraordinarily gifted. 

Of course.

...I didn't mean to get us on the subject of our children. 

Thank you. For bringing this up. Gods know I wouldn't have. 

Well, you're welcome then. Happy to try to figure out solutions to social and emotional problems by ramming into them with all the subtlety of a hippo. Actually I guess I am not always happy to do that, but I am happy that it works pretty well when tried, despite the drawbacks.

Hey, Élie?

Yes?

You don't - ugh - just, as long as we're ramming into annoying and awkward questions that happen to have occurred to me as potential ramming targets -

You don't - think that - well, you were framing this as a moral failing, earlier, and now I feel weird about not asking if -

Do you think it's bad or unfair or anything if I don't really, uh, want to directly ask you for sex? I realize I'm basically doing that now, but - it just seems like if I know you don't really think of things as having gendered components and you feel like you're being unfair to me here then I should at least ask if I'm also being unfair to you by having, uh - I mean I don't even think of it as a problem, just, now I'm thinking about it in terms of how inconvenient it might be for you, if you've got all this stuff, and I don't have all this stuff, and it seems -

Am I making you sad?

...I would ask you to elaborate on gender-based expectations in your culture but my experience is that you do directly ask me for sex. 

I nonverbally indicate that sex would be welcome. Which is different. According to me.

That's interesting. Why do you think that is?

Well - I mean honestly it's a mildly ridiculous hacked-together chain of reasoning and I am a little worried that staring too closely at the convenient assumptions it's relying on will break the whole structure, which would be kind of inconvenient because it seems to be the only thing that generally results in sex occurring ever at all, but as long as we're cutting through all of our nonsense anyway - 

Uh, I guess - I think about it as not wanting to be a nag, sometimes, and that's some of it but it's not the whole of it, it's more - self-centered than that? I guess in general want to have sex under circumstances where you want that to happen and not otherwise. Maybe this is just the same thing you talked about before we got married, but - no, it's not exactly the same thing, I'd expect it to be skew from that. It's -

I guess I have - a story, or something, a model of the world in which to a first approximation men actively desire women and women want to be desired by their husbands, where men enjoy women and women enjoy being enjoyed? Cannot believe I am actually trying to articulate this. Anyway, you can only have that dynamic if you're having sex because your husband actively wants to have sex with you. And - I guess the rule I came up with is that it counts as that occurring if I am deliberately bringing this about by reminding you that your wife is desirable and you might want to have sex with her about it, and would not count if I were bringing it up by suggesting that maybe you should have sex with me because I wanted to have sex with you. 

Yes I am aware that the fact that I in fact do this whenever I already want you to have sex with me kind of punches a little bit of a hole in the fundamental premise. And also now that I have thought all of that it occurs to me that I have literally no idea whether any of that was happening on your end or if you have just ended up parsing nudity as equivalent to me saying the words 'I would like to have sex', which I suppose would be reasonable and unsurprising but might make me slightly grumpy.

Naima does not often feel the need to hide when talking about things, because there are very few things that she has any innate sense shouldn't be said. She does, however, have a sense of propriety around this in particular, and so now it is her turn to bury her head in Elie's shoulder and hope that he doesn't tell her that all of this is stupid. She doesn't, actually, think it's stupid, although she's not at all sure that she's explaining it in a way that makes it sound non-stupid.

Oh, does Naima want her hair stroked now? He can do that. 

Do you really believe that only men experience active desire? I don't think that's true – though it does sound like you don't either. Would you be happier if it was true in our marriage? I want to find a – maybe a story is the best way of putting it – that we can both be happy with, and that isn't one where I want you but you never want me. 

The hair pets are nice, although she's not really ready to stop hiding yet.

....I guess I don't actually believe that this is an entirely accurate description of the world as it actually exists. And I wouldn't put it that way, either, it's - but I guess I can see how it kind of ends up sounding like that.

I would like to understand better what you actually believe, and – what you want to believe, what attitude towards sex you'd prefer me to have. 

She sighs heavily. She's still hiding.

I guess that's only fair.

Okay. What she actually believes, what she wants to believe, what attitude she wants Élie to have. Are those three separate questions? She doesn't want to believe something that isn't true. Except that apparently she does, given that she can see that her model leaves several key facts unexplained, and she's been deliberately avoiding looking at those facts too hard, even though they're obvious enough that she already knows what some of them are without even looking, because the story she has now is comfortable, and the facts that don't fit it are not comfortable.

But her story isn't comfortable for Élie, and if they're going to talk about things and line up their stories, they do need to find one that works for both of them.

What I actually believe, then. I don't... not believe any of that, exactly? I think there are a lot of people it's true of, a lot of women who primarily enjoy sex because it demonstrates their value to someone they care about, and who they want to care about them. I guess it seems pretty undeniable that there are also people it's not true for, and that... it certainly doesn't seem to provide a complete explanation of everything I do and feel in this area. I think maybe it did once. And I didn't think it was a bad story then. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable way for things to work. It still seems like a pretty reasonable way for things to work. It just doesn't seem to be a complete explanation of how things actually work.

I guess maybe the facts that don't fit with it, and that I've been avoiding looking too hard at - well, I guess maybe some of them are the sorts of things that would be important to you, the way some of the ones you don't want to look at might be important to me. So I ought to look at them at least enough to tell you, and really also enough to determine whether they're even all that bad, once they're already being looked at.

I... do like having sex with you. Obviously. I like being wanted, and I like feeling beautiful and desirable, and I like being able to give you incredible experiences, and I want you to adore me and count yourself lucky to have me - and right now I am most acutely missing being wanted and feeling beautiful, but that isn't the complete list of the reasons I like having sex with you, is it. 

...I guess I should probably try to list the rest of the reasons, shouldn't I, that's the reasonable thing to do here, but it's really surprisingly hard to do, not in the sense that I don't know them - I mean, I haven't thought about this very hard, so I guess I actually probably don't know all of them, but mostly I mean in the sense that it doesn't really feel like the sort of thing you ought to come out and say. But that doesn't really make any sense, does it, if nobody else can hear it and you want to hear it and we are, after all, married.

Oh. He really loves her. 

Sweetheart, I'm luckier than I thought possible. 

And it's really hot when you tell me exactly what you're feeling in lots of detail including the embarrassing parts. – That sounded flippant but I meant it. You understand yourself much more clearly than almost anyone else I've ever met. You know who you are – and you care about actually knowing, about getting it right – and you're willing to share that person with me. Before we were married, I'd never thought I'd have something like that with anyone. Hadn't hoped for it. I'm not sure I believed it was possible. 

...sorry for interrupting you. I just wanted to say that. 

Oh.

She comes out hiding enough to smile at him. She's still not not embarrassed, but that is very much how she wants him to feel, and maybe if being a little embarrassed makes him feel it, then it's all right to be a little embarrassed. Embarrassment isn't really so bad if it isn't a sign that you're messing something up horribly.

"This is silly, isn't it," she says, aloud, and takes a deep breath. "I like having sex with you because it feels nice. Also. There."

"I endeavor to give satisfaction." 

Snort. The tips of her ears are red. "Well I've noticed a lot of satisfaction. - that wasn't sarcastic, did it sound sarcastic? I just mean that when it happens it's really nice. I like it. Uh. I know you just said that details are good, and I think if you think so then I don't mind you having them, but I haven't really been thinking about this because it didn't seem - like something I wanted to think too hard about - so I think I may have reached the limit of things that I already knew while not really looking at them. Probably if I spend any time actually looking at them then I'll notice more information than just the fact that it's nice, but I haven't done that, so right now I just have the obvious thing. - I am not at all sure that I agree with you that I understand myself more clearly than anyone you've ever met, but I guess now that I say that I'm not sure who in particular I know you to have met who I think obviously outclasses me, it just seems like there ought to be someone."

She's rambling. But he's probably used to that, by now, there's no call to feel any more embarrassed about it.

"It's possible I've met people who have a better understanding themselves, but they don't tell me about it, and that's important too. Besides, I really do think you have unusually little – dissonance, within yourself. You must have noticed – when I've decided I'm being a bad husband, my first three or four impulses are to feel terrible about it, at which point I'll try to convince myself I'm really not so bad, and only when I've gotten over myself will I do anything about the problem. You just try to fix it." 

"...well. Little sense in not at least trying. I don't know that I always do it immediately. And I'm not sure that's the same thing as knowing yourself very well? Doing something about it when you do notice isn't the same as noticing in the first place."

"In my experience, most people do a great deal of work not to notice at all." 

"Maybe."

Okay, now she's back to wanting Elie to want her, and to bask in the evidence like a dragon with a particularly silly treasure hoard. There's gotta be a way to make this happen that isn't awful. They're supposedly very clever people, and this doesn't seem like it ought to be an unsolvable problem.

You said it's really hot when I tell you exactly what I'm feeling.

If Naima was looking at his face right now, she might see the slightest hint of a blush. 

"I like it when you show that you trust me. And that you know what you want." 

I don't think I know everything I want. I'll give it a shot, though. At the risk of sacrificing anything approaching subtlety, I am wondering right now whether talking about what I want and what I'm thinking provides an alternative way of seducing you, as confusing as that taste seems. I think I still want to collect a probably unreasonable amount of evidence that you still want me. I think that you're incredibly considerate, and have far more self control and commitment to principle than most people, and that these are some of your very best qualities. But also, it's been eight months, and I'd like to believe - I mean, I'm hoping - that you were missing something during them. 

And what the hell, she can kiss the part of his neck that's accessible and see if that gets anything in the way of a reaction. Empiricism demands taking at least a few risks in the course of collecting evidence.

I was, I did, I – I think I've had too many chances in my life to practice not wanting things I've decided I can't have. I could let that skill atrophy, hmm? 

You could. I mean, I guess it might be unpleasant the next time it comes up, and I guess you probably shouldn't weigh my opinions about your feelings higher than your own opinions about your feelings, but if you'd really just as well, or you're deliberately trying to be considerate by not wanting things - I like it when you want things. 

Élie experiences twenty seconds of panic, tilts Naima's head up, and kisses her. 

Sweetheart. This is really an awful lot of talking about wanting. 

Oh good. Some of the worry unclenches a little. She doesn’t have to be embarrassed if he wants her. She’s kind of unsure whether she should say anything about that, or whether she should say anything else at all. 

She’s going to kiss him back while she figures this out. That much is easy. And it’s maybe a lot of what she wanted in the first place.