Skyglass: Chapter 12

Sliver and Sing

MOSS

“Did you want to go back to your room?” I asked Marko, when we’d escaped the restaurant. Being in there had felt like suffocating in the intestinal coils of a giant boa constrictor. We were still holding hands, which was a little weird, but I made no move to stop. Mark probably didn’t know it, but his grip was helping me as much as it was helping him.

“No,” he said. “Can we go outside? Out there.” He jerked his head toward one of the windows lining the passage, gesturing to the vacuum beyond.

I halted so I could glare at him. “No way. Look at you, Marko.” He was pressed as close to me as possible without actually clinging. If he hadn’t been so distraught, it would have been funny–he was so much bigger than me, over a head taller and a billion times broader in the chest and shoulders.

“Yeah.” He laughed; it sounded hollow and disparaging. “Look at me–I’m fucking pathetic. I have to get over this.” He edged away from me, toward the exit. “It’s like you and the blood. That goat. Right?”

“Right…” Problem was, I did understand. But that didn’t make it a good idea. “You’re drunk, Marko.”

“Not very.”

I sighed. He had a point. He could still walk, after all, which was a feat for Marko–his sobriety tended to vanish alongside his ability to stand. And yet, he was putting up a fight, which wasn’t exactly normal for him.

“I didn’t mean to ask you to come with,” he went on, fumbling with the door to the air lock. “I’ve already given you enough shit to deal with.” The door slid open and he backed inside.

I groaned. This was probably a terrible, terrible plan, but I said, “Wait.”

I slid into the air lock beside him. “Okay.” I gripped his bicep and propelled him toward the outer door to the lift. “Let’s go.”

“Outside” on a fancy ExTOP like Midmoon wasn’t actually outside. It was a box that floated above the outpost, with walls, floors, and a roof made of the same horribly thin bioplast as the restaurant’s ceiling. No suits were necessary–just guts of iron, because it looked like you were floating in the middle of space. They even kept the temperature low to make the experience feel more authentic.

Marko kept his eyes squeezed shut on the ride up to the box, our hands tightly clasped. We were alone in the shuttle, and no one else was outside. The farther we rose, the more my anxiety lessened–it was the constant crush of people that got to me, not the anti-g. In fact, the anti-g helped. I felt strangely balanced with all the senseless dark surrounding us.

“Planning to open your eyes?” I asked, as I kept him from stumbling on our way out of the lift. We stepped into the outer box.

“Y-yeah. When we’re at the farthest edge.”

“Okay,” I said, and led him there.

“Earth doesn’t look so messed up from here,” I said quietly, once we’d reached the box’s far end. Our home planet was a just a fuzzy, cobalt ball from here. Closer–but still distant–was Midmoon, all hard edges and sheen.

Marko said nothing, his eyes still fused shut. He breathed unevenly through his nose and looked like he might throw up.

“Marko,” I said. And then, when he didn’t respond, “Mark.”

He laughed, but it sounded more like the whine of a nervous dog. “I like when you call me that.”

“Great. Mark. Come here.” I pulled him so we were close, chest-to-chest. “When you’re ready, open your eyes. I’m right here.”

“Okay.” He shifted a little closer. “Can I kiss you first?”

I stifled a sigh. I felt at peace up here, almost too in sync with myself to need or want that kind of contact–but Marko needed it and he’d given me so much already. A little mouth-to-mouth wasn’t going to hurt and to be honest, I didn’t really care one way or the other. I breathed out slowly.

“Sure.”

To his credit, it was soft and brief, but he didn’t open his eyes. He swallowed, hands twisting the fabric of my jacket. “I can’t do it.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Don’t be stupid.”

“I love you.”

“Point taken,” I sighed. And then, because it was nice to hear those words, I added, “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he said, but he still refused to open his eyes. I felt the breath in him stall.

“I think we’d better go,” he croaked. “Before I vomit all over your face.”

“Good point.”

“You ready for tomorrow night?” he whispered, eyes closed as we rode back to Midmoon.

The laugh I let out was strangled, my nerves returning with our descent. “No,” I said. “It feels like I’m going into battle.”

“I think you know more about love than you let on,” Marko said, managing to sound nauseous and playful all at once.

“I don’t know what I know.”

Proceed to Chapter 12, page 4–>