Chapter 12
Twelve
That was why sex was such a big deal.
It had mystified Milo, why people ruined their careers and personal lives for a basic, biological imperative that wasn’t physically necessary to their survival.
Even the simplest organisms accomplished sex and reproduction.
Nothing about procreation was unique to humans but they often behaved like animals and lost their senses over it.
Now, Milo understood and understood that he had changed.
He had heard that losing one’s virginity was a right of passage and that by modern, misogynistic standards, the longer a man remained a virgin, the less he was respected.
For women, it was often seen as nobler to remain untouched until she was “too old” and then she was labeled as undesirable and possibly a “cat lady.”
None of that mattered to Milo and he didn’t feel more like “a man” because he’d crossed the invisible intimacy threshold.
He felt like a star that had pulled in too much matter and exploded into a supernova.
There had been a core collapse, resulting in a dense object on the sofa.
Milo could feel the neutrons in his body rearranging as the sitting room began to take shape around him.
He recognized the handwriting on the dry erase board and knew it almost as well as his own now, but Elio was missing.
Milo pulled on his pajama pants and followed the sound of a bouncing tennis ball to one of the bedrooms. The one Elio had been occupying, judging from all the rumpled clothes and tennis balls on the floor and the bed.
But the bed and his ill-treated wardrobe were merely afterthoughts, the dry erase board in front of the window commanded all of Elio’s attention as Milo tiptoed into the room.
Elio was naked and chewing on the end of a red marker as he bounced a ball, fixated on the equation in front of him.
The string of numbers and symbols at the top of the board echoed the tattoo that had captivated Milo just an hour earlier, but he became spellbound as he followed the rest of Elio’s work.
What had seemed like a wildly beautiful tattoo, yet an impossible paradox—time splitting around a particle interfering with itself—began to resolve into a functioning theory.
“Eli! What are you doing?” Milo stepped over a boot and a tennis ball, pointing at the board. “This is time! You’re taking apart quantum entanglement…and trying to prove the possibility of parallel dimensions?” He turned back to Elio, stunned and slightly alarmed.
Elio was watching Milo. Closely. “You see it, don’t you?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse.
“I’m beginning to…” Milo turned back to the board and his head tilted as he followed Elio’s calculations, then pointed when he spotted a possible complication.
“What about Lloyd’s theory? This part might work if you apply closed timeline curves here,” he said as he wiped away a section with the pad of his finger, making Elio gasp and laugh.
“Lloyd’s theory! That’s—!” Elio snatched a sock off the floor and erased the whole corner of the board before turning and grabbing Milo’s face. “This is why I needed you, Milo!” he pressed a loud kiss to Milo’s lips, then released him and went back to the board.
Milo touched his lips, momentarily stunned by the kiss—his first. “But I…” He squeezed his eyes shut and blinked rapidly as he refocused. “I just disproved part of your theory. That had to be…months of work,” he guessed but Elio looked thrilled when he glanced over his shoulder at Milo.
“I had boxed myself into a corner!” he said and laughed ecstatically. “You found a way out in just a few minutes. You’re remarkable, Milo!”
“Well…” Milo waved it off, then paused when he realized the possible consequences of what Elio was doing. “Wait. What about the temporal paradox—the grandfather paradox? If you alter time, you alter the present.”
Elio sneered, shaking his head. “You’re talking about ethics. I don’t give a damn about that.”
“No, you probably don’t,” Milo agreed and winced. “But I do. Besides, the Novikov self-consistency principle suggests—”
“I don’t care!” Elio shouted, his laughter getting louder and more unhinged as he wrote faster. “If I can figure out how to reverse time, I can figure out how to resolve the temporal paradox.”
“We hope,” Milo added carefully. “Eli, this is incredible but it’s madness. Even if you could figure out how, you wouldn’t want to. No one would back this.”
“It’s not madness!” Elio spun around and grabbed Milo’s shoulders.
”Give me a chance to explain. See the rest of my work and you’ll agree!
” Elio insisted, his tone becoming desperate.
“I wasn’t ready to show you, we needed more time to trust each other, but I know that I can do this with your help. ”
“Mine?” Milo’s head pulled back. “I don’t know… I’ve obviously fiddled with quantum time mechanics but I’m not at that level. No one is.”
“Don’t you get it? We are!” Elio squeezed Milo’s shoulders and gave him a shake. “Together, we can solve this. That’s why I came here, that’s why I need you.”
“Oh.” The numbers and symbols began to blur and Milo’s face tingled.
“That’s…a lot of pressure,” he noted with a confused frown.
“I’m beyond flattered that you think I’m capable but why, Eli?
You’d sink any credibility you have as a scientist and I’d be an even bigger joke.
You came all this way to find me just so we could implode together? ”
“We wouldn’t! Not if we were right. They’ll take us seriously if we solve P versus NP first but it doesn’t matter, Milo!” Elio’s hands moved from Milo’s shoulders to his face. “Who cares what anyone says if we solve time?”
“Some things shouldn’t be solved. Think about the consequences of altering timelines,” Milo countered but Elio’s eyes flooded and his lower lip trembled.
“I don’t care! I have to do this, Milo. You have to help me!” he rasped as the hands around Milo’s face shook.
“Why? What could be worth the consequences to our careers and…humanity?” Milo asked, his heart burning as Elio’s tears spilled over and dripped down his cheeks and from the tip of his nose.
“My parents!” he mouthed as he smeared the tears away from his face. “I want my parents back!” Elio pulled in a shuddering breath before he let out a strangled sob. “Please! There could be a version of them out there that I’m meant to find if I can just solve this!”
“Oh God, Eli…” Milo threw his arms around Elio and held on as tight as he could, crying as he imagined how lost he’d be without his parents. “I’m so sorry!”
“I never had any time with them,” Elio whispered, his tears soaking Milo’s hair next to his ear. “I was a baby when they died so all I’ve ever known is my brothers. I love them with all of my heart, but I want my parents, Milo. I know they’re out there somewhere, waiting for me to find them.”
For the first time in Milo’s life, he felt real pain. It wasn’t just a sharp twisting in his stomach or the throbbing in his head or the tearing of his heart as it broke, Milo’s soul ached as he held Elio and witnessed his grief.
“I’m so sorry.” Milo cradled the back of Elio’s head and pulled him as close as possible, attempting to absorb some of his loss and loneliness.
“Will you help me?”
Milo nodded. How could he say no? “I’ll do my best.”
The hands around Milo’s back spread and he was squeezed and rocked. “Thank you.”
They held each other for a while, their soft sniffles and sighs filling the silence.
For Milo, it was stunning, just how wrong everyone was about Elio.
Including himself. Elio wasn’t impulsive and driven by ego, he was driven by loss and grief.
Even his brothers didn’t understand how lost Elio was or how far he was willing to go to find the missing pieces of his life, not even his beloved Matteo.
He was far too complex for any one person to comprehend but Milo understood this facet of Elio so well and was one of the few people alive who could.
That, in itself, was extraordinary to Milo and he felt extraordinarily lucky because there were so few people in the world who understood him until Elio von Hessen stormed into Starlight.
Milo had expected chaos and calamity, but they had shared an instant connection and had bonded effortlessly.
It was both exhilarating and frightening, now that Milo understood Elio’s purpose, but he knew he was blessed and on the precipice of something huge.
He was standing on the edge of adulthood, professional upheaval, discovery, science fiction, social ruin, possibly the end of the world if they weren’t careful…
This decision would carry him over the threshold of childish innocence and wonder and into a realm of responsibility and consequences Milo had yet to experience as a scientist and a human being.
He was stepping into a brave and profane new world with Elio, but Milo wondered if he was also experiencing something else, something that was almost as risky as altering the fabric of time: love.
It had to be love overriding Milo’s common sense and intellect because he was committing to the impossible and could be risking his entire future—his career, his reputation, and his personal happiness.
He would be risking it all for Elio von Hessen but Milo couldn’t think of a reason not to, aside from his own fear of failure.
Milo was used to being laughed at and pushed aside and would find a way to live with the jokes.
Maybe they would call him “Wild Ashby” instead of “Mild Ashby.” But letting Elio down and losing him now seemed worse than the torching of their careers and credibility or the end of the world.
Milo suddenly understood why people were willing to do irrational and occasionally illegal things for love and was humbled.
He had thought that he was too cerebral and pragmatic to fall in romantic love but Milo was just as susceptible as anyone else.
And now Milo had a new problem: did Elio see more in him?
Or was he only in love with Milo’s brain and what they could achieve together?
Elio had said they were friends and it was Milo who had come onto him in the sitting room.
Milo might not know much about sex but he understood enough about men to know that most wouldn’t say no to a sexual favor if the conditions were right.
The conditions had been right and the more Milo thought about their first kiss, the less romantic and “real” it seemed.
He didn’t want to push and ask what had happened and what it meant after such a huge revelation. Elio was feeling vulnerable and Milo didn’t want to be insensitive. And Milo didn’t want to make things awkward between them by asking if Elio felt the same and wanted to be his boyfriend.
Who thought about things like that at a time like this?
Elio wanted to solve the problem of time and bring his dead parents back while Milo wondered if that counted as his first kiss and if he had a boyfriend.
Once again, Elio was in an entirely different league and Milo was a clueless kid with a crush.
There was only one thing Milo could do as far as he could tell: he would wait and follow Elio’s lead.