Chapter Twenty #2
Then, giddy with a relief I could feel too, like the conversation had replaced the oxygen in the room with nitrous, Ollie half-leaped across the bed at me, wrapping his arms around my body and tackling me to the mattress. I yelped, pushing weakly at his shoulders, but he just wrapped his hands around my wrists, pinning them over my head, leaving me panting beneath him, exertion and desire combining to make my heart beat hard and fast in my throat. Ollie crouched over me, gaze flicking between my eyes.
“We’re good?”
I nodded. It was a lie—we were teetering on the edge of oblivion, for god’s sake—but that wasn’t Ollie’s fault. And there was nothing I could do to stop it, apparently, since my stupid heart wouldn’t let me lie and break his.
“Better than good.”
He smiled softly, leaning down to press his lips to mine. My breath caught as I returned the kiss, feeling it in a way that I had only started to fully appreciate again so, so recently. His hair tickled my cheek, and his tongue traced the inside of my lip, that tiny touch rippling through me, bringing every inch of my skin alive as sensation flowed slowly but insistently downward, pooling hot between my legs. My body arched up to him, the pressure of his hands on my wrists gentle but insistent, telling me he wanted to take charge while promising that if I didn’t want that, I just had to show him.
“Mmm…” I couldn’t stop the moan that escaped as he pressed himself against me, a long slow movement over my center, every delicious inch of him teasing me, the thin cotton of his pajamas doing nothing to hide the intensity of his arousal. I loosed one wrist to reach for his waistband, but he swatted my hand away, grabbing it again and putting it back on the pillow.
“Someone’s eager,” he growled against my throat, his lips burning a trail over its tissue-paper skin. He ground his hips over me again and I wriggled against him, craving the friction, wanting more, wanting all of him, now .
“You’re not?”
“Good things come to those who wait, Lo.”
“You should know quoting aphorisms in the middle of sex only makes me hotter, Ollie.”
“And you should know that working you up to the point where you’re practically begging me for it is the goal for the morning.”
“I’d never give you the satisfaction.”
“Oh?” he said, moving my wrists into one hand and dropping the other between our bodies, rubbing me roughly over the silky fabric of my underwear. I bucked against his hand unconsciously, body taking over as the insistent pulse of blood crested in a growing ache between my legs, started to cloud my thoughts. “See, I thought I was the one giving you the satisfaction.” He moved his fingers over me in a slow circle, years of practice with each other’s bodies—the kind of intimacy you can only create with time, and love—perfecting the movement and the pressure, his muscle memory of me almost as flawless as my own. I let out a strange, breathy little sound and I felt Ollie grin against the top of my breast. “If I was wrong, though…”
Then he pulled back, hand slipping out from between us, the absence of his touch leaving a vacuum of need that was almost painful. I whimpered.
“What was that, Lo?” He blew lightly across my nipple. I could feel it harden, straining to reach his lips.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, voice heavy with my desire.
“Oh?” His tongue flicked over me and my back arched toward him against my will.
“No clue,” I ground out, loosing a hand again to reach between us, cupping him lightly, then squeezing, my first finger flicking back farther, whispering over the skin behind. I could feel his body tighten. He groaned.
“See, I have no problem with begging,” he said, moving his hand over mine, guiding me along his length and back to the base. “Pride is overrated. Please keep doing this”—he squeezed his hand over mine. “And this”—he moved me over him again, circling my hand over the head with his own. “And anything else you can possibly think of.”
“You know what?” I gripped his wrist, moving him back onto me, pressing his fingertips into the exact right spot, moving them over me once, twice, the pleasurable ache rolling outward from my center all the way to the roots of my hair. I shivered slightly and guided his hand over me again. “When you’re right, you’re right.”
“Not sure I heard you.” He arched his fingers away and I grinned at him through my half-closed eyes, the dark fringe of lashes blurring him to an impressionist version, dark twists of hair, the strong line of his stubble-darkened jaw, the curve of his body as he held himself above me.
“ Please, Ollie.”
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me,” I said, drawing out each word, opening my eyes fully to take in their effect. “Now. Hard.”
“Jesus,” he growled, freeing himself from his pants with one hand and tugging aside my panties, the words turning his need too urgent to linger over niceties like removing them.
He thrust into me hard, hand moving over me roughly with each movement of his hips, his own desire too overwhelming for soft or slow. But I was right there with him, my entire body pulsing with hunger for him, for more . I rocked my hips up to meet Ollie’s, forcing him deeper, the guttural groan when I felt him thrust home escaping one or both of us. I couldn’t tell anymore where he ended and I began, whose pleasure I was feeling build within me with each movement, floodwaters rising higher and higher, threatening to breach their flimsy barriers.
For just a second Ollie paused, body tense with the effort to hold himself back, his peak approaching too quickly.
“It’s okay, Ollie,” I whispered, voice breathy. “Just go.”
He caught my eye. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
“You go first.”
“It’s fine, I can—”
“Please, Lo,” he ground out. His stomach muscles tensed as I started moving again, more slowly this time, intensifying the sensation with my fingers, feeling the heat of Ollie’s watchful eyes bank the fire starting to flicker over my skin. I could almost feel the effort of his restraint.
“I’m close,” I whispered, eyes closing, the intensity of the pleasure starting to overtake me making me a little dizzy. I arched up against Ollie, and with a groan his body responded, hips flexing against me hard, again.
“Hey. With me,” he murmured, voice so soft it startled me more than a yell.
I felt the gentle pressure of Ollie’s hand on my cheek and my eyes flicked open, locked on his. And the tenderness I saw there—all of him open to me, his trust in me, and love for me, so complete that it didn’t matter how vulnerable it made him—was so vivid, so intense, that it simultaneously pushed me over the edge and drove a stake through my heart, pleasure and pain mixing and swirling through me in wave after wave, the current so strong I had to dig my nails into his back to keep from losing myself in the whirlpool. Distantly, I felt him pulse into me, felt his pleasure like an echo of my own, and as I wrapped my arms tighter around him, pulling him against my body, I couldn’t push down the voice sounding in my head.
I can’t bear to lose you.
I might lose you forever.
I love you I love you I love you.
I hadn’t done the thing I’d crossed worlds to do. Hadn’t had the strength, the will, to sever our bonds to each other, was trying to comfort myself with the fact that there had never been a guarantee it would work, anyway. Every other idea I’d had so far for how to fix this had been wrong, after all, or at least insufficient…why assume this would be the exception?
Ollie was here with me now, so present I could almost feel the satisfying ache of his muscles relaxing as his climax finally released him, but if this time—the time I hadn’t been able to make myself follow through with the plan—was the one guess I’d gotten right, that very closeness might be the thing that split us apart forever.
“You should probably get moving,” Ollie said, voice even, unbothered, the hint of sorrow at the back of it only apparent to me, and only because I was staring straight at him, caught it casting the tiniest shadow over his already dark eyes. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been lying there, side by side, legs tangled, arms slung lazily across each other’s bodies, just watching each other. Usually I’d have rolled over and grabbed my phone to check whether work things were coming through, or Ollie would have turned on a playlist, tapping out the rhythms against his thighs with his fingertips, body present but mind totally absorbed in the music. But today, right now, we were both just gazing at each other, eyes occasionally following a fingertip as it grazed along a curve of the other’s body, neither of us saying anything, the silence not just comfortable but precious somehow, a tiny bubble formed just around the two of us, the flickering rainbows across its iridescent surface visible only if we didn’t move too fast, didn’t do anything to break its impossible fragility.
“Are you trying to get rid of me, Oliver Hughes?” My lips curled in a smile as I ran a finger along his neck and over his jaw, relishing the tiny shiver that flicked through him.
“I’m trying to respect my very important girlfriend’s very important job,” he said, grinning back. “You’re probably already way late. Unless today’s a holiday I didn’t know about?”
“It is.” I nodded gravely.
“Really? What’s that?”
“International Fuck Off from Your Day Job Day,” I said.
“Laurel, language .”
“That’s what I told the committee, but they were insistent. Said it really emphasized how much you weren’t supposed to go into your boring day job.”
“And the committee isn’t going to get you in trouble with your bosses?”
“Didn’t you hear? I’m a VP now. My bosses are all too important to care what I do. Besides, I’ve banked more PTO than even Pixel would ever be able to pay out on. If I left tomorrow I might bankrupt them.”
“I thought you had unlimited PTO.”
“Well, morally they’d owe me for not taking it.”
“Valid point.” Ollie smiled, but there was a hint of something in his eyes still, a hardness that I’d grown so used to I hadn’t recognized it for what it was, a wall going up to protect himself. I wouldn’t have recognized it now if I hadn’t just seen what he looked like with every defense down. “Seriously, though, you don’t have to play hooky just for me.”
“Good thing that I’m playing it for both of us, then. Unless you’ve got too much going on today?”
“I’m wide open,” he said, the smile fully reaching his eyes now. “So? Where to first?”
My first impulse was to make some big plan—hike a mountain or hop on a plane to Paris, or splash out on a seafood tower and ridiculously overpriced champagne at some fancy restaurant downtown, but then it came to me, and it felt so right I didn’t even question it:
“Cambridge Antiques Market. Ten-dollar limit. Goal is…creepy?” The rules of the game we used to play on weekends were simple, but it had been so long since we’d done it that I felt almost unsure of myself.
“Oh, get ready to lose, Lo. You know I have a gift for finding the worst dolls to ever curse humanity.”
“It is on .”
The rest of the day was similarly uneventful and just as totally perfect. Brunch at the diner we used to go to when we first started dating, and “bottomless dollar coffee” was far more important than particularly good coffee. A stroll along the Charles (with much better coffees in hand) with no particular destination in mind, talking about anything and nothing. A visit to the farmers market, where we stocked up on a mix of staples and exotic produce we had vague, grand plans of turning gourmet. Moving around each other in the kitchen as we prepped a ratatouille, the record player on in the other room, in the unplanned-but-perfectly-executed choreography I’d always thought of as a sign of a happy couple. Every so often the voice would come back, the shock of it stopping my heart midbeat.
I could lose you.
But I couldn’t think of any plan that might prevent it, other than the one I’d already flubbed. And with every moment that passed, perfect in its sheer ordinariness, I felt less capable of trying again. If I had to lose Ollie, I wanted this first. A last perfect day together. I didn’t want to wind up in the wrong life, or worse, cease to exist altogether—and if that happened, would Ollie remember me? Would I be someone he lost, or someone who never existed for him at all? Or would I still be here as far as he was concerned, the hardware staying behind but the software fritzing out, a simulacrum of the person he loved?
Really, no great options.
But if I couldn’t control it, I didn’t want to spend what might be my last moments on earth— this earth, at least—focusing on something I couldn’t change.
Ugh. No . That was the kind of lazy thinking that got me into this mess in the first place. Not a direct analog, obviously—taking your partner for granted and giving in to inevitable existential dissolution were…not all that similar, really. But sitting back and letting my life move past me, letting fear prevent me from doing something just because it might be hard or I might fail at it—that was the Laurel who was weak enough to create this whole mess in the first place.
I couldn’t just give up on this, on us, without one last-ditch attempt. While Ollie strummed his guitar, I pulled open my messaging app and clicked on Drew’s name.
Laurel:
do you have a min?
wanted to check on how the debug was going
Drew:
short answer: it’s not
Laurel:
I know you said you logged everyone out, did you try manually stopping every sequence?
in case the program is still running one without that user logged in?
Drew:
be honest are you secretly filming me rn?
coz that’s what we’ve been working on all day
Laurel:
lol nope
just thought it might help
Drew:
how’d you think to try that?
Laurel:
I think you mentioned something about it when you told me about the jaeho/luke problem?
Would he buy that? Did I really care?
Drew:
unfortunately it does NOT make the program stop running whatever sequence is eating up all the processing power
pretty sure I never mentioned that tho…
Laurel:
is there an unrecognized user?
Drew:
okay this is getting creepy
Laurel:
so there is?
Drew:
what’s going on?
I considered not telling him—there was no guarantee he’d believe me, for one thing, and it was more than a little embarrassing to own up to the fact that I’d used my chance to experience his possibly-world-changing new technology to ask about a work crush.
But Drew was the only person who could possibly find a way to set things right. Besides, I’d already realized it in my other life: He wasn’t my person, but I did care about him. There were a lot of ways to love someone. And refusing to ever be vulnerable with them clearly wasn’t one that had worked out for me so far.
Laurel:
quick call?
Drew:
“A work thing came up. Do you mind if I take a quick call in the studio?”
“Go for it. Frankly, I’m shocked you’ve made it this long without fires to put out.” Ollie’s grin was jovial, but the words pressed hard on a tender spot. He was right, I didn’t even particularly love my job, I just liked how good I was at it. Why, precisely, was my job the part of my life that everything else was forced to work around?
But that was an existential crisis to solve after I dealt with the more literal existential crisis.
Moments later, Drew’s familiar—though very, very tired—face stared back at me from my computer screen.
“Jesus. Do I really look this haggard?” He pulled at an eye bag, vague curiosity briefly animating his features.
“Video calls don’t do anyone any favors,” I said, smiling slightly. “If you’re worried about it, a ring light can do wonders.”
“Honestly? It’ll probably help my case if I look this bad when I talk to senior management. At least they’ll know I gave it my best shot.” He smiled weakly, but his eyes stayed flat. “Anyway, what did you want to talk about? I don’t want to be rude, but I really can’t chat long. Not that it’s not nice to see a friendly face.”
“I’ll cut to the chase. I think your unrecognized user is…probably me?” I grimaced. Tried to bolster myself with the knowledge that World D Drew had handled it all remarkably well, considering, and that version thought we were together. “I know I told you I never completed my profile, but it wasn’t like the calibration sequence fritzed out the second I started. I tried maybe…three inflection points? The first couple seemed to confuse it, but the third seemed like it was working.”
“Really? And then…it spat you back to the Start screen anyway?”
“More or less.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I was thinking about it, and maybe like…the program glitched as far as completing my profile, but maybe it’s still running one of those inflection points in the background? For the unrecognized user, I mean?”
“It’s not a bad theory, honestly.” Drew cocked his head to one side, considering. “But I’m sorry to break it to you, it’s definitely wrong.”