18. Garrett
Garrett
Nate continued sharing scientific facts. “The water outside is just below minus one degree Celsius. It can remain liquid below zero because of the salt. Seawater here does not freeze until approximately minus one point nine.”
I hadn’t been thinking about freezing water, just drowning, but now I was thinking of both.
A pale shimmer appeared at the edge of the lights.
At first, I thought it was another trick of the moving water.
Then the shimmer spread. Hundreds of tiny bodies poured into view, followed by thousands more, until the beams were crowded with them.
My mouth opened in awe as they streamed around the submersible in a vast living cloud.
Small translucent bodies caught the light and glowed amber, pink, and silver before turning dark again.
They filled the water above us and below us, flowing around the metal frame and across the clear sphere in numbers too large to count.
“Look at them.” Wonder had changed his voice. “Krill.”
I craned my neck, looking up. The swarm thickened until it seemed the entire ocean was moving. It was like being inside a krill tornado.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“They are so small but so important,” Nate murmured. “Krill support almost everything here. Fish, penguins, seals, whales. An animal only a few centimeters long holds up most of the Antarctic food web.”
The krill continued falling around us, thousands upon thousands slipping into the black. But I was no longer watching them. Nate’s whole face was transformed by love as he looked up like a small child standing under bright stars.
I wondered what he was like as a boy. Never had I felt the desire to meet someone in their childhood.
But him, I did. Would we have become friends?
Fought but then dressed as knights and run around chasing each other with our homemade capes flowing behind us?
I felt such sadness that I would never know that version of him.
Was this why people cautioned against falling in love?
Because this shit hurt, man. And it was stupid as all hell.
It was back to dark water and the soft, regular pings of Nate’s instruments. The krill had passed. We sat pressed close together, our thighs touching along the narrow seat.
Nate switched on the microphone for the next scheduled check-in.
“Passing one hundred meters. Life support holding. Internal pressure stable. Audio and visual systems clear. Descent rate remains steady.”
The communications officer acknowledged him through a brief crackle of static. Nate checked the glowing readouts surrounding us, confirmed another figure, then switched the microphone off again. He also flicked off some other buttons, and several panels stopped glowing.
Silence returned. The sphere itself was so dark now that I couldn’t see his body.
I could feel him more than I could see him.
Somehow the darkness made me more desperate for him.
I had the overwhelming urge to reach around his waist, lift him, and settle him across my lap, where I could hold him properly instead of trying to fit everything I felt into the small point of contact between our hands.
I did not push my luck. At least he was still letting me hold his hand.
Suddenly a long, low moan rolled through the cabin. Every muscle in my body locked.
The sound seemed to rise from somewhere far beneath us, deep and drawn out, carrying through the darkness like something enormous calling from the bottom of the world.
It faded.
Then it came again.
A mournful note stretched through the water, so deep I could almost feel it moving through my chest. Another answered from somewhere beyond the lights.
“What the ever-loving fuck is that, Nate?”
He started laughing. I heard it more than I saw it.
I whipped my head around. “No, I’m serious. I’m damn near losing my mind here.”
That only made him laugh harder.
“Tell me that ain’t some kind of kraken coming up out of the dark.”
He bent forward trying to catch his breath, his whole body shaking with laughter. I was torn between terror and joy at seeing him laugh again. Meanwhile, something prehistoric was apparently mourning our imminent deaths outside.
Nate finally managed to speak between laughing gasps. “Humpbacks! Ah… those are the sounds of the underwater world.”
“Oh.”
He wiped beneath one eye. “You’ve probably heard recordings before, but it’s entirely different when you’re beneath the surface with them.”
“Jesus.”
He giggled. Another low note passed through the cabin, followed by a distant answer.
“The males sing,” Nate continued. “Their songs can travel for miles through the ocean.”
The sound came again, rising and falling through the darkness. I listened with morbid fascination.
“Not the females?” I asked quietly.
“Females don’t sing but they do vocalize. That could be Lady and Junior calling back and forth while they play. He’s too young to sing yet, but calves have plenty to say,” Nate whispered back.
We fell silent. The sphere continued sinking through the black water while the voices of humpbacks moved around us. The darkness no longer felt empty to me. It was filled with lives speaking across distances I could not comprehend, calling to one another through a world humans had barely entered.
I’d felt the same way I had felt when Lady first breached. A more beautiful moment could not possibly be had by a man.
“Garrett?” His voice was soft.
I turned toward Nate. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry too. We need to talk, but I think I overreacted. I… I was braced for the worst.”
I leaned in, caught his face gently between my hands, and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth.
For one suspended moment, Nate did not move, and I started panicking.
His lips were warm and soft, while the low, haunting voices of the whales passed through the darkness around us.
I could feel his breath against my face.
Then his mouth softened and he kissed me back.
His lips moved against mine and a low moan from his throat joined the sounds coming from outside.
My thumbs moved along his cheekbones as he deepened the kiss.
I felt myself getting hard. It was impossible not to, but I needed my head screwed straight.
We needed to talk. Gently, I broke the kiss and gave him a peck on his cheek before withdrawing.
“Let’s talk.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out where to start.”
“The duel?” he said. “You never explained why you thought I cheated.”
“You winked at me.”
Nate sat up straight. “I beg your pardon?”
“You did that thing with one eye—”
“I know what a wink is, Garrett.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about.”
“Ah, no. I… I remember vaguely that I winked at you. I fail to understand what that has to do with cheating.”
A thin thread of unease entered my certainty.
“Well, you did it right at the last touch and you knew what it would do.”
In the near darkness, I saw him cock his head to one side. “What exactly do you imagine I knew?”
“That I wanted you.”
Nate’s lips parted.
“I wanted you the whole damn week,” I continued. “Before we ever spoke. Every room I walked into, I found you. Didn’t matter how many people were there.”
Nate said nothing.
“I’d catch you looking. Then you’d turn away. Then I’d look again, and there you were.”
“That I remember.”
I looked down at our joined knees. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.”
“But then we met.”
“When that woman came over and said somebody else had written down The Three Musketeers, and you were standing there looking at me like that… I wanted to, hell, I wanted you.”
“I did too.”
“Yeah? You didn’t say much.”
He snorted. “Neither did you. You just kept looking at me without blinking.”
Despite the coldness inside the sphere, warmth moved through me.
“She started blushing because of your stare.”
I chuckled. “I wanted to touch you real bad. But you were a scientist and I was from a different group. I had no hope, but when you said you had fencing gear and asked whether I wanted to duel, fuck yes, I remember thinking: I get to duel him? Hell, yes, I want that.”
“I couldn’t believe my luck either. I’ve not found anyone else here in Antarctica who can fence.”
“Who cared about fencing? I can’t fence either. I just wanted to get close to you.”
Nate’s breath caught.
“I wanted an excuse to put my hands on you without making a fool of myself. Figured a fencing duel would do.”
His eyes grew big and I could see the whites in the instrument light. For several seconds, Nate did not speak.
“You accepted a fencing challenge because you wanted sanctioned physical contact, but you didn’t know how to fence?”
“I’m pretty familiar with swords. Been mock fighting all my childhood.”
“Garrett…”
I drew in a breath. “What?”
“What did you think happened at that last touch?”
“Our blades landed together. If you hadn’t distracted me, mine would’ve landed first. Instead, we hit at the same time, and the referee handed you the match without even stopping to think about it.”
Nate stared at me. “And you think I distracted you… how?”
I fidgeted in the seat. “A man like you winks at me. My mind went blank for a moment. I lost the edge, and by the time I could get my damn self focused on the duel, it was over.”
“And you thought that was unfair because our blades landed at the same instant.”
“Exactly. It wasn’t as fucking clear-cut as the referee made it out to be.”
“Garrett,” Nate said carefully, “the referee did not need to consider which blade landed first.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had right of way.”
I frowned. “You had what?”
“Right of way.”
“That some British expression?”
“No.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“You don’t know the right of way and yet… you believed you were good to enter a formal fencing bout?”
“I believed my experience in sword fighting was enough. And it was not that formal. We are two men in Antarctica.”
“A sword is not the same as a fencing blade.”
“It’s not that fucking different either!”
“Yes, it is. There are rules!” His voice climbed with every word.