John's thumbs sweep across her brow, and she lets her eyes slip shut as she works at the first and largest knot with the bent knuckle of her thumb.

Maybe there was a time when she would have called the reverent pass of his hands over her with such shameless intimacy funny business. In university, in the first days, when she was the hard-buttoned-down piercing point of their queer triangle. When she could hardly stand for anyone to touch her at all.

It's been a long time since then, and they were never any good at the sorts of boundaries healthy people are supposed to have. His fingers stay on top of her skin. She doesn't feel the a foreign nudge at her pulse like a cat's wet nose. When he scrubbed her hand clean, she caught his fingers for a moment in hers, tangled like branches.

"It's not the slime I mind," she murmurs, ridiculously, "If it's a good, honest slime. I should go back up and get some of it on a slide before -"

She falls silent. She shifts her legs underneath her so she's more balanced on one hip than the other, knees tucked to the side, a position that demands the bracing of her forearm on his shoulder to support.

"I don't even know if you have a lab."