Chapter 13
Luna’s crater clubs are what the name implies: clubs built into man-made craters, scale replicas of the moon’s famous geographical features.
Each is sunk several stories deep and topped with a dome that can display anything from a live replica of the sky outside to messages paid for by clubgoers to flickering lights that match the pulsing music.
Clarke loves crater clubs. Give her a bass line she can feel in her chest and lighting unsteady enough that even if people recognize her, they won’t get clear pictures, and she can lose herself in movement.
It gets hot fast in the middle of the floor.
She takes off her top after a moment of deliberation, leaving her in high-waisted shorts and a longline bralette.
She’s still more covered than half the people here, and besides, most of the system’s seen her stripped down to nearly nothing for training footage.
A hand snakes between her arm and her ribs. She sighs, ready to politely but firmly dissuade a clubgoer for the tenth time, but bumps into what the hand is holding: a water pouch, sealed and cool.
She turns. It’s Julian, looking unfairly good.
He’s lost his shirt, too, now wearing only a thin undershirt that might as well be a second skin.
Many of his individual tattoos are still hidden, but the gorgeous sleeve covering his right arm is on display.
It’s a complex series of interwoven line work, in the shapes of the tracks where he’s won major races.
A map of his victories, inked on his skin.
He presses the water to her stomach. She accepts it and goes right on dancing, pausing every now and then for a sip.
Julian passes waters to Thierry and Graham when they whirl past, too, and she can’t help laughing.
All those people who think Julian’s not personable, that he’s stiff and uncaring—they’re idiots.
They dance near each other for a while. Clarke keeps catching glimpses of his body, all contained strength and fluid motion.
Several people approach him, invite themselves into his orbit; he turns them all away.
Clarke, on the receiving end of multiple inquisitive touches and alluring smiles of her own, does the same, and wonders if she’s imagining feeling Julian’s eyes on her the whole time.
Someone trips into her not long after she’s drained her water and tossed the empty pouch into the sky, where a gravity tunnel catches it and sucks it into the wall to be sanitized and reused.
Clarke almost hits the floor, but Julian’s hand closes around her upper arm and pulls her to her feet.
She overbalances, falling into his chest. He catches her by the waist, holds her protectively against the frame of his body until she’s steady again.
And then he doesn’t let go. He slides one hand around to the small of Clarke’s back, thumb skimming over the exposed strip of skin above her shorts, and tucks her close.
They’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh, and Clarke’s whole body sings with the contact.
The smell of him—clean sweat, the botanical product he uses to tame his hair, the faint tang of ozone from their ships—crowds into Clarke’s nose.
He drops his hips on the next beat and rocks out to the side. Clarke, legs locked with his as they are, goes with him.
It’s just dancing, she tries to tell herself as he repeats the motion, guiding Clarke into rhythm, shredding her restraint with every touch. No different from what everyone else here is doing. It doesn’t mean anything.
His free hand, the one not molding their bodies together, comes up to Clarke’s jaw. He applies pressure, tilting her face up and to the side. He brings his head down, and for a second she thinks he’s going to kiss her neck—she thinks she’s going to let him—
He murmurs something in her ear. He’s close, close as close can be, but it’s too loud in here for her to make out the words. All she gets is the uplift at the end of his sentence. A question. An invitation?
Clarke should say no. She’s sobered up by now, is fully in control of herself, but is she ever really in control of herself when Julian’s around?
And it’s the same for him. Every time they get too close, something like this happens.
Something where a moment is somehow both weightless and heavy, where they teeter on the brink.
The best choice here, the rational choice, is to put distance between them.
Step out of his arms. Try to forget what it feels like when his thighs flex against her.
Screw it. What’s the harm, if they go hook up in a dark corner somewhere? They’ll get it out of their systems, like Thierry said, and finally be able to move on.
She nods into Julian’s hand. He takes a breath and threads their fingers together, pulling her through the crowd.
Anticipation buzzes in her capillaries until she realizes he’s leading her not to an exit or a bathroom or anywhere else semisecluded, but to the elevator that goes to the small platform perched on top of the dome.
It’s a haven for club patrons wanting some fresh air.
Oh. This isn’t—Julian doesn’t—he wants to talk, not—
Oh.
Julian weaves between the couple dozen other people up on the platform to an unoccupied spot near the railing.
Clarke follows, trying to center herself.
She feels rejected, which is dumb, because that’s not what happened, and the sudden flatlining of her arousal has left her disappointed and mildly nauseous.
She breathes deeply in the cool night air, skin prickling at the temperature change, and takes in the view.
It’s late, but the city is still vibrating with life. Earth hangs in the sky where it always does, a swirl of blue, green, and white perched seven degrees above the horizon. A few of the largest space stations are visible, held in orbital lock above fixed points on Earth’s surface.
“I don’t know how to be friends with you. Not for the cameras, not for real,” Julian says.
It feels like blowing through the barrier during an on-planet race, when gravity reminds you that you’re bound by the laws of physics and you plummet toward the ground. Clarke swallows. “I know. Me, either.”
Julian huffs out a raw-sounding laugh and braces his hands on the railing. “So, how do we do this? How do we act like we’re seventeen again?”
Clarke gives her own raw laugh and leans against the railing backward. “I was in love with you when we were seventeen. I don’t think that’s a great target to aim for.”
“I was in love with you then, too.”
It twists Clarke into knots, like it has every time he’s said it. Thank the saints he wanted to talk, not hook up, because her head’s clearing more with every second and she’s remembering why they decided, time and time again, not to cross that line. “We agreed not to do this.”
“I remember.” Julian’s voice is fraught, tense. “And I have tried. But don’t you feel, just a little, like the universe keeps pushing us toward each other?”
Clarke takes the easy way out. “No one made you come here tonight.”
“No, we just have friends in common who scheme to get us in the same room. We just have to see and hear about each other all the damn time at work. My parents just ask me about you every time we talk, and our teams are just scheduling literal playdates for us. You’re next to me in half the memories from my life, Clarke, how am I—” He cuts himself off and takes a hard breath.
“How am I supposed to put that in front of a camera and act like losing you wasn’t one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me? ”
Clarke’s chest tears open as Julian talks, everything he’s saying ringing true for her, too. He doesn’t get like this often, but it’s brutal when he does. The intensity that’s so core to who he is turns inward, sometimes, and flays Julian bloody. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? I signed on for this stupid plan before you even knew about it just for an excuse to be around you more, and it’s becoming really painfully clear that you don’t have a say in anything that happens at Elemental, so—”
Clarke whiplashes from shattered to annoyed and shoves away from the railing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He gets a hand around her biceps, just like when he stopped her from falling on the dance floor, and runs his thumb over her inner forearm. “Yeah? So you misspoke, earlier, when you told me that Elemental has you chipped like you’re Yves’s fucking pet?”
Sirens go off in Clarke’s head, even as she yanks free. “It’s the standard biometrics chip. Why are you so worked up about it?”
“No one uses chips, Clarke! No one, not even Val, and she’d definitely like to have that degree of control if she thought she could get away with it. We have patches, temporary adhesive ones, the same as we used in Juniors.”
Clarke is…deeply unsettled by this, but immediately starts trying to rationalize it. “A chip is more practical. And it’s probably more reliable. And—”
“And it means Yves can control you even when you’re not working,” Julian says, spitting the words like he doesn’t like the taste of them. “What else do they monitor? Your location?”
“No, of course not,” Clarke says, although she doesn’t actually know that for a fact. “Just my heart rate, so my trainer can make sure I’m doing my workouts. And my blood sugar, for the nutritionist. And my sleep patterns, I think, for the performance coach.”
Julian looks like he’s about to jump over the railing, slide down the outside of the dome, and run across the moon to Yves’s house for a violent confrontation. “And you agreed to all of that?”
“It’s in my—”
Clarke snaps her mouth shut. It’s in her contract. Also in her contract: a clause that permits her immediate termination if she discloses the terms of her contract.
“It’s in your contract,” Julian finishes, then drags a hand down his face. “Gods, Clarke.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Julian now looks like he might throw Clarke over the railing. “You don’t actually believe that?”
Clarke does, sort of. She has to. She needs to be able to convince herself it’s okay, because otherwise the indignity makes her want to rip her skin open and pry the chip out with her fingernails. It’s all information she’d be providing to the team anyway. This is just how things work in F0.
Except Julian’s saying this is not how things work in F0. And if Elemental’s lied to Clarke about this, what else have they lied about?
“We should get back to Thierry,” Clarke says. She knows Julian isn’t fooled, knows he can tell she’s not okay, but she also knows she can’t keep standing here dealing with this in public. With him watching.
“Clarke,” Julian tries.
“No, I—thank you, for telling me. I’m glad I know.” She is not. “But we’re here for Thierry’s birthday. Please, Julian.”
She walks away. Julian, of course, lets her, but she can see that it costs him. He’s considering breaking his own rule, stopping her when she wants to leave, taking the choice out of her hands.
He doesn’t, in the end. He follows her back to the dance floor, leaves her to her own devices. But seeing the conflict in his eyes makes Clarke wonder, for perhaps the first time, how much longer he’ll be able to hold himself back.