Chapter 16 #2
Cosmo was still watching him expectantly, and if he kept up this train of thought, he was going to miss the opportunity for something he did want.
When this had happened originally, he wouldn’t have been preoccupied with the “presque vu” ability.
They’d been watching Psycho and drinking wine, the connection and moment perfect enough to draw them together.
He slid his arm across Cosmo’s shoulders and tugged him close. Cosmo’s strong scent of berries, bergamot, and clove surrounded Micah, and he nuzzled closer. Cosmo’s hair teased his cheek, his throat so close to Micah’s lips that he could feel the heat.
On screen, trees rustled in the breeze before a sunset-painted sky to an accompaniment of ominous music.
It didn’t matter if this moment wasn’t exactly the same.
And there was something comforting in knowing that no matter what universe they were in, every Micah and every Cosmo would fall for each other.
He ran his fingers across the tendons in Cosmo’s hand.
He stroked the valleys of his knuckles. These were hands he’d drawn in detail but never caressed.
Glittery bangles clacked together on Cosmo’s wrist as he brought Cosmo’s hand to his lips.
He softly kissed the channels of veins winding under his skin, then the creases of each finger.
Cosmo pulled in a sharp breath and turned toward him.
The lime eyeshadow at the edges of his agate eyes shimmered in the light, and a faint trail of mascara had dried on his cheeks.
Micah kissed it away. Cosmo’s fingers drifted across his jaw and into his hair.
He arched his neck and guided Micah there.
When Micah’s lips pressed against his throat, Cosmo let out a small groan and twisted closer.
Micah peppered kisses across his skin, and the longer he lingered in one spot, the harder Cosmo clutched him, his breath whistling through his nose.
He looked up, then pressed his lips to Cosmo’s.
Pleasure snapped through him, all his joints reduced to gelatin.
Cosmo’s teeth grazed the corner of his mouth as he kissed back, hungry and urgent.
His tongue darted between Micah’s lips, trailing the taste of spiked fruit.
Oh, fuck. This absolutely felt more than just wet.
“I’ve wanted this so bad.” Cosmo’s hands slid over Micah’s stomach and across his chest. He pulled Micah’s sweatshirt over his head, then pushed the bracelets off his wrists and dumped it all on the floor.
Spirals of hair mutinied from his thick curls, his pupils wide and lips parted.
His voice was breathless and expectant, the same as it had been on the phone when Micah asked him to describe himself.
“What are you waiting for? Kiss me again.”
Micah did. He called back the memory of that striped sweater with the oversized neckline, and how warm Cosmo’s flesh had been when he first touched him, believing he was a ghost. He’d watched that recording so many times, advancing it frame by frame.
His lips brushed Cosmo’s ear as he said, “You’re vibrant and strange and you smell like frost-kissed berries in a dark, leaf-littered forest. One misstep, one turn the wrong way, and I’m hopelessly lost.”
“Oh god.” Cosmo pushed up the back of Micah’s shirt, then dragged his fingers down, his nails sending an electric tingle through Micah’s skin.
“You taste like overripe fruit that’s fallen from the tree. Your flesh is sweet, warm, and soft, and you intoxicate me.” Micah nipped at Cosmo’s throat. “You make me delirious. I want to sink my teeth into you. I want to consume you.”
Cosmo moaned. He slid his hands down the back of Micah’s jeans and squeezed his ass. “More. Tell me more.”
He wanted to tell Cosmo how much he wished they could do this in Micah’s apartment. The couch still smelled factory-new, but the only one to make a depression there was Micah. His kitchen was clean, filled with more than enough dishes for him alone. The bed was made, and big enough for two.
The threshold of his door looked exactly like Cosmo’s, a dented strip of dust-caked metal. But it was an impenetrable barrier, trapping Micah inside and keeping everyone else out. He needed Cosmo to sit on the couch, to use his dishes, to lie on his bed.
Blinking through the sudden blear, he said, “The door of my heart is wide open for you. Please come inside. You don’t even need to wipe your feet first. Leave tracks all over me. Come inside and stay.”
Cosmo pulled off his shirt so vigorously he might have popped a button. Above his nipple was a tattoo of a dagger piercing a paint palette, framed by a banner that said KILL YOUR IMPOSTOR SYNDROME.
“Oh. Uh.” Micah pressed his teeth into his bottom lip and pulled back.
“What?”
Damn it. How he hated this conversation. “It’s a little soon for me to want to… I’d rather just kiss and snuggle with you until the sun explodes.”
Cosmo stared for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, then picked up his shirt from the floor and pulled it back on. “I got caught up in the moment and wasn’t thinking.”
“I’m sorry. It frustrates me too.”
“I’m not frustrated, and don’t you dare apologize. I just don’t want to misstep. I don’t know enough about the nuances of asexuality, so I need you to tell me when we aren’t on the same page about things. If we spent more time together, would that make you more interested?”
“Like am I demisexual? Maybe? I think gray-ace might be more accurate. But yes, more time would help. This is just a little fast for me.” He took Cosmo’s hand and rubbed the pads of his fingers.
“I don’t ever experience sexual attraction the way allosexual people seem to, but I still think about certain things with people I’m interested in: kissing them, touching their hands…
I might feel some kind of diluted sexual attraction under certain circumstances.
I’m still not sure about that. And sometimes kissing and touching and sex feels good, sometimes it feels like nothing. Might as well be a handshake.”
A dramatic blast of music came from the TV, and a woman screamed. Cosmo jumped and clung to Micah. On screen, an undead man with extra-juicy skin scuttled across the floor toward the woman. Cosmo put a hand over his eyes but peeked through his fingers.
Micah chuckled. “Are you scared?”
“This part is gross. He’s so… gooshy. And the way he crawls across the floor…” Cosmo shuddered.
“Should we change it to something else?”
“Heavens no.” Cosmo drew up his knees and huddled beside Micah. “But you can put your arm around me again.”
“I can do that.” He nuzzled Cosmo’s cheek. “I’m sorry if it isn’t enough.”
“Shush. You’re enough. Besides, that corpse on screen has definitely killed my boner.”
“He doesn’t turn you on? I mean, he’s very wet.”
“Ugh.” Cosmo feigned a gag.
Micah’s thoughts drifted away from the movie, pulled back every so often by Cosmo’s suppressed shrieks and his fingers digging into Micah’s arms. It was hard to pay attention with the taste of Cosmo on his lips, with tangled timelines, and how much he yearned for Cosmo to be able to sit on his bed, in his apartment.
“Want to do something really weird with me?” Micah asked.
“Are you trying to turn me on again?”
“I need you to haunt me. Be my ghost.”
“How?”
“Show up at my apartment unannounced, and come inside without asking.”
Cosmo stiffened. “I won’t do that.”
“Please? You said you didn’t want my mental health to push you away. Help me? I need to practice letting someone inside if I’m ever going to beat this phobia.”
“But that isn’t what you’re asking for. I believe in consent.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I never come inside without permission.”
Oh lord. “I’m giving you consent. Welcoming someone across my threshold is too much for me, but I think this will work.”
“I couldn’t bear to give you a panic attack.”
“I don’t know who else to ask. And if it’s going to work with anyone, it will be you.” Cosmo was going to tell him to get a therapist, just like everyone else did. He was going to say consensual non-consent was disgusting and he didn’t want any part. “Just think of it as creepy role-playing.”
Cosmo drew his nails along Micah’s inner forearm and let out a deep sigh. “What shall I do?”
“Come over. But don’t tell me when. Tomorrow, four days from now, a week. I’ll leave a key under the flower pot. I’m in number twenty-six.”
“Alright, but I wish I had a sense of whether or not this would work. This would be a good time for presque vu to show up.”
It would. Micah left soft kisses on Cosmo’s temple, fishing for that sense of “almost seen.” If it could help him predict future events on this timeline, that would be something.
Though he came up empty, Cosmo entering his apartment had to work, because Micah was determined not to spend all of his futures alone.