The Long Way Back
Copyright© 2026 by Star Again
Chapter 11: Home for Christmas
The lab building did not become kinder because Christmas was near.
By Tuesday evening, most of Leuven had begun pretending the holiday was already happening. Shops stayed open late. Students moved through the streets with bags of laundry and faces emptied by study. The library had the smell it took on in exam weeks: coffee, damp paper, and fear.
At six, I closed my anatomy atlas with more force than the book deserved and walked across town with two wrapped sandwiches, a paper bag of pastries, and a thermos Marieke had once insulted so thoroughly that I had kept using it out of respect.
The research wing stood behind glass doors and a reception desk with no interest in romance. A security guard looked at my student card, then at the paper bag.
“She knows you are coming?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He picked up the phone. “Name?”
“James Vandael.”
He repeated it into the receiver, listened, then looked back at me. “She says you are carrying food and should therefore be permitted.”
“That sounds like her.”
“It sounded hungry.”
He pointed me toward the lifts. The corridor upstairs was too bright and almost empty. Doors carried labels, numbers, warnings, names. Machines hummed behind walls. Somewhere, water ran in a sink. The place smelled of disinfectant, old coffee, plastic, and something metallic underneath. It was not beautiful. It was working.
Marieke was in a small lab at the end of the corridor, hair tied badly, white coat open over a dark sweater, one glove on and one glove discarded beside a notebook. She was leaning over a tray with the stillness of someone trying to convince an experiment not to become personal. She looked up when I stopped in the doorway.
“You brought the ugly thermos.”
“And food.”
“That improves its character.”
“Can I come in?”
“Stay there until I finish this. I do not want you seducing the samples with military posture.”
I stayed in the doorway. She worked for another minute. Her movements were small and exact. Pipette, label, glance at the notebook, adjustment of the tray. There was nothing theatrical in it. There was no audience and no easy charm in it. She belonged to the work. I had known that in theory. Watching it was different.
When she stripped off the glove and dropped it into the bin, her shoulders lowered half an inch.
“Now,” she said. “You may enter as a civilian.”
“I am not sure I qualify.”
“You brought sandwiches. That is civilian enough.”
The lab had a tiny office attached to it, barely more than a desk, two chairs, shelves, and a window facing another wall. Papers were stacked in three piles that probably meant something to her. A mug sat beside an open article, the coffee inside gone dark and cold. She took one sandwich from the bag, unwrapped it, and ate standing for the first three bites.
“When did you last eat?” I asked.
She gave me a look.
“I know,” I said. “I heard it.”
“Good.”
She sat, finally. “Noon. Maybe.”
“That is what people say when the answer is bad.”
“You have been speaking to Saar too much.”
“She would have used fewer words.”
“She would be right to.”
I poured coffee from the thermos. It smelled better than it deserved. Marieke took the cup, held it in both hands, and drank with her eyes closed for one second. The lab light made the skin under her eyes look thinner.
“Long day?” I asked.
“Long week. Long month. The sample behaved badly, my supervisor behaved normally, and one of the assistants labelled a tray as if letters were decorative.”
“That serious?”
“In a lab, handwriting is character.”
I smiled.
She saw it and pointed at me with the sandwich. “Do not enjoy me at my most unreasonable.”
“I am trying to learn the full range.”
She started to say something sharp, then rubbed her eyes instead. “I am too tired to be witty. Just eat.”
The word notebook landed between us and then passed. Neither of us reached for it. She ate half the sandwich before she spoke again.
“You go home tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“For Christmas Eve?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “And you are pretending this is a travel arrangement.”
“I bought a ticket. It became one.”
“That was almost funny.”
“It cost me.”
She looked at the desk, at the papers, at the cup in her hands. The joke ended there.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The word came more easily than I expected. Since that evening with her, I trusted polished answers less. The attention in her face changed.
“Of him?”
“Partly.”
“Of the house?”
“No. Of myself.”
She took that in without improving it.
“Good,” she said. “I was afraid you would explain.”
“So was I.”
She gave a tired breath. “Then we are both improving in ways that feel unpleasant.”
She set the coffee down and rubbed the place between her eyes with two fingers.
“I thought about autumn today,” she said.
The word altered my breathing before I let it alter my face.
“The placement?”
“Yes. My supervisor is writing to London after New Year. And a few others, when he remembers they exist.”
“You want London.”
“I want the work. London would be good for it.”
“That is a careful answer.”
“It is the true one.”
Somewhere below us a machine finished a cycle and began another. The building did that all night whether or not anyone was in it to hear, and I thought that she must have learned to work inside the sound the way people learn to sleep beside a road.
I leaned back in the chair. It was too low, and my knees almost touched the desk.
“Six months to a year,” I said.
“If it happens.”
“If it happens.”
She watched me over the rim of the cup. “You are doing it again.”
“What?”
“You have gone quiet in that way.”
I looked at my hands. They were resting on my knees, open, almost relaxed.
“I don’t want to make it harder for you,” I said.
“That is a noble sentence. I dislike it.”
“Why?”
“Because I am tired, James. I do not want to be the woman you bravely endure.”
I breathed through my nose once. Outside the office window, the facing wall gave nothing back.
“I hate that you might go,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I want you to take it if it is yours.”
Her gaze stayed on me.
“Both are true,” I said.
“I know.”
“I did not ask you to choose between them.”
“No.” Her voice lowered. “You did not.”
The office was too small for the amount of future inside it. The thermos clicked faintly as it cooled. Somewhere in the corridor, a door opened and closed. Marieke looked tired enough to sleep sitting up and alive enough to make sleep impossible.
“I need to want this without feeling as if I am hurting you on purpose,” she said.
“I’ll try.”
“Do not polish it first,” she said. “I know when you do that.”
“I can do ugly.”
“We will see.”
That got a small smile out of her.
“Good.”
She finished the sandwich. I gave her a pastry. She looked at it with suspicion.
“What is inside?”
“Apricot, I think.”
“You think?”
“The woman said it quickly.”
“And you trusted her?”
“She looked like she had authority over pastry.”
Marieke broke it in half and handed me the smaller part. “You may share the consequences.”
We ate in the office with lab equipment humming beyond the door and Christmas lights shining somewhere in the city without us. It should have felt like a stolen hour. It felt simpler than that. We were there. She was eating. I was sitting close enough to see ink near her thumbnail and a faint red mark at her wrist from the glove.
When she stood to clean the cups, I followed her into the lab. She rinsed the mug, set it upside down on a rack, checked one note, locked one cabinet, and turned off the bench light. The room changed immediately. Less bright. More private, though it had no right to be. At the door, she stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“I am deciding whether to kiss you here and regret my standards.”
“Which way is the decision going?”
“Poorly.”
She stepped closer and took the front of my coat in one hand. The kiss began with her mouth cold from the coffee and the corridor air, then warmed quickly. I held still for half a second, then my hand came to her waist. Under the coat and sweater she was solid, tired, breathing. She made a quiet sound and leaned into me.
The lab behind her smelled of plastic and disinfectant. Her hair brushed my cheek. I wanted her there, immediately and inconveniently, with a force that made the corridor narrow. She pulled back first.
“Not here,” she said.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Her hand stayed in my coat.
“That is irritating,” she said.
“What?”
“When you are obedient at the correct time.”
“I can stop.”
“Do not.”
She kissed me once more, shorter, then let go and locked the lab door.
“Come,” she said.
Her room was warmer than the lab and less orderly.
The bed was unmade. Articles lay on the desk, on the chair, and on the floor beside a pair of boots. A sweater had been dropped over the radiator and smelled faintly of wool and rain. She took it away before it burned and threw it toward the chair without caring whether it landed.
“You are looking at my room as if it has failed an inspection,” she said.
“It has personality.”
“It has neglect.”
“I brought food. I have no moral position left.”
She laughed then, a tired small laugh that opened something in me. I had missed that sound without knowing I was counting its absence.
I took off my coat. She watched me do it. The watching had changed since the coffee shop. It had less challenge in it and more decision. She knew exactly what she wanted and did not pretend the knowledge made things safe.
“You leave tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And tonight you are here.”
“Yes.”
She crossed the room and kissed me again. There was no test in it. Her hands went under my sweater, cold at first against my skin, and I drew in sharply.
“Still dramatic,” she said against my mouth.
“Your hands are freezing.”
“They were working. Be grateful.”
“I am becoming grateful.”
“Too slowly.”
She pushed the sweater up and I lifted my arms. Her mouth touched my chest before the fabric had cleared my head. It was not careful. That helped. I had spent too many days with every feeling requiring handling instructions.
I pulled her sweater over her head. Her hair came loose with it. She stood in front of me in a dark bra, skirt, tights, and socks, one strap crooked from haste. The sight moved through me in a way no sentence would have improved.
“Do not look as if you are about to apologize,” she said.
“I wasn’t.”
“You considered it.”
“I considered several things.”
“Choose better.”
I did. I put my hands on her waist and kissed the place below her ear. Her body answered by leaning in before she seemed to decide to. That was what undid me: the moment before control returned. The tired woman from the lab. The ambitious woman who might leave. The woman who had waited for a message and hated that she had waited. All of her was here, and she was not making herself smaller so I could bear it.
Her fingers went to my belt. I caught her wrist, gently. She looked up.
“Are we using this to avoid tomorrow?” I asked.
“No,” she said. Her breathing had changed. “Tomorrow is coming anyway.”
I nodded.
“If you ask me that again while I am undressing you,” she said, “I may become less philosophical.”
“That would be a loss.”
“No. It would be efficient.”
She undid the belt. I stopped trying to make the moment cleaner than it was.
We moved to the bed badly, as adults do when desire has waited too long and the room is full of furniture. My knee hit the side of the desk. She laughed into my mouth. I pulled her down with me, and for a while there were only hands, breath, wool, cotton, skin. Her tights caught at one heel. She cursed quietly. I helped. She told me I was taking too long and then kissed me hard enough to make complaint irrelevant.
I wanted speed. She wanted it too. We did not give ourselves only that.
I kissed her throat, the hollow above her collarbone, the slope of her breast where the bra had shifted. She arched under my mouth and pressed her fingers into my hair. Her body was warm from the room now, warmer still where my hands moved over her stomach, her ribs, the soft place at her hip. She reached behind herself and opened the clasp. I took the bra away and heard her breath catch when my mouth closed over her nipple.
“James.”
I looked up.
“Stay with me,” she said.
“I am.”
“Good.”
Her voice was not sharp. That made the instruction heavier.
I kept my eyes open when she touched me. Her hand slowed. The room became very quiet except for our breathing and the faint complaint of the radiator.
“Too much?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then why do you look angry?”
“I don’t know where to put it.”
“Then don’t put it anywhere yet.”
She kissed me and pushed me onto my back. There was confidence in the movement, but no performance. She straddled my thighs, hair loose around her face, and looked down at me as if she had decided to remember me exactly like this. That thought should have frightened me. It did. I reached for her anyway.
She was wet when my fingers found her. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, stubbornly, almost angrily. I touched her slowly at first. She shook her head.
“Not careful.”
“No?”
“Present.”
I understood the difference late enough to be ashamed of it and soon enough to obey.
Her hips moved against my hand. I stayed with the rhythm she gave me. Her mouth opened. Her hand pressed against my chest for balance. When she came, she lowered herself against me and made a sound that was partly my name and partly nothing a word could hold. I held her through it. Her body shook once, twice, then settled into weight. After, she rested her forehead on my sternum.
“I needed that,” she said.
The plainness warmed me more than praise would have.
“So did I.”
She lifted her head. “I noticed.”
I laughed. She smiled, and the smile stayed when she reached toward the drawer beside the bed.
“Condoms,” she said before I could ask.
“Adult.”
“Tired adult. Do not make me repeat practicalities.”
I took one from her. My hands were steady. Hers were not quite. I noticed and said nothing. She saw me notice and kissed me for the mercy of it.
When I entered her, we both went still. There had been hunger before. There had been heat, friction, the urgent inventory of bodies wanting. This was quieter for three breaths, almost severe. Then she moved, and the quiet broke.
She rode me with her hands braced on my chest, eyes open more often than closed. I held her hips and let her set the pace until she bent down and kissed me, losing the rhythm, finding another. I turned us carefully because the bed was narrow and the room had no patience for elegance. She laughed once, breathless, then wrapped her legs around me and pulled me closer.
Autumn was still coming. Home was still waiting. The ticket was still in my wallet. For those minutes, they stayed outside the skin.
She came again with her face turned into my shoulder, biting down on the sound. I followed soon after, close against her and unable to make myself distant enough to be tidy.
Afterward, we lay tangled and too warm under the sheet. Her hand moved slowly over my side, without purpose. I listened to the radiator click. A car passed outside. Someone laughed in the street and then the sound faded. Marieke’s breathing lengthened.
“You are falling asleep,” I said.
“No.”
“You are lying.”
“Quietly.”
I smiled into her hair.
She shifted closer. “If I sleep, do not leave before morning.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
A minute passed.
“James?”
“Yes.”
“Send me something ugly tomorrow if the house makes you stupid.”
I opened my eyes.
“Ugly?”
“Yes. Do not send a polished summary or a weather report. One ugly sentence.”
“I can do that.”
“I hope so.”
She fell asleep before I could make a promise the night had not asked for.
I stayed awake a while longer. Her body was warm against mine. The lab smell had not quite left her hair. I could feel tomorrow waiting, but it had to wait outside the bed.
This time, I did not get up to prepare for it.
Morning came grey and practical.
Marieke woke before the alarm and pretended she had not slept heavily. I let her have the lie. She made coffee. I dressed. The room looked worse in daylight and more human for it. My sweater had ended up on the floor near her boots. Her article on reperfusion injury had a crease down one page from where one of us had knocked it off the desk. She noticed and picked it up.
“Scientific literature has survived worse men than you,” she said.
“I am relieved.”
“You should be.”
I packed slowly because leaving quickly would have looked like fear, and I didn’t want to give fear the satisfaction. Marieke watched for a while, then went to the small kitchen area and wrapped two pieces of bread with cheese in paper.
“I can buy food at the station,” I said.
“Yes.”
She put them in my bag. I did not argue. That seemed to please her more than gratitude would have.
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