“I watched the readings very carefully. They were normal,” Lange said. “Rogue waves are often preceded by a period of order—but not every period of order precedes a rogue wave. They are unpredictable.”
“Shit,” Jake said. “And is that why the breach is unstable?”
“Part of it,” Lange said. “I intended to make a door, you know. Not something that would remain permanently open. I thought it would close itself as soon as the machine turned off. A door can open and close. A breach, on the other hand… I hope the changes Dax and I made to the machine are slowly sealing it.”
“So far, so good, last we heard,” Jake said, but it worried him anyway. Maybe it was just the guilt of being down here, safe and cozy, enjoying Lange’s company a little too much.
Their conversation had forced him to think of the Nowhere for what it was: an enormous, pulsing cloud that touched all of reality and moved in incomprehensible, deadly ways. It had spilled into Lange’s lab, stretching and pinching and twisting the space. Like the ocean, it was both the medium through which dangerous things traveled and a danger itself. Something could pass through. Another wave could come. No matter how cheerful Emil had sounded on their call, other than reporting that greenhouse leak, Jake couldn’t shut out Miriam’s voice saying “closing isn’t the same as closed.”
9
Completely Unrelated to Space
The chill of talking about the breach passed, and their rapport remained easy through the rest of the evening. Jake’s night on the floor was uncomfortable but worth it, because they made it through all of the next day without incident. Lange even had a remote appointment with his therapist.
On Tuesday evening, Jake lay down to sleep on the floor in an unexpectedly good mood. He could do this, he thought. He could be friends with Lange and ignore any other feelings he was having. He was okay. Lange was going to be okay.
A crash woke him up in the middle of the night. It sounded like a fucking stampede. He bolted for Lange’s door. It was ajar, but Jake held the doorknob with one hand and knocked with the other, not wanting it to swing open and surprise Lange.
“Lange?”
“I apologize for waking you,” Lange said from inside the room. “It was the bookshelf.”
That explained what Jake had heard: thud after thud of dozens of books falling, followed by the shelves themselves. The room must be a mess. It didn’t explain why, but Jake repressed that question.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Can I come in?”
“I suppose,” Lange said.
Jake was in the clothes he’d had on under his spacesuit, an undershirt and form-fitting shorts, and it didn’t occur to him that Lange wouldn’t be dressed similarly until he had to avert his eyes from the proof. Lange was sitting up in bed with the blankets pulled to his waist, his slender brown torso exposed to the cool air. Jake didn’t want to speculate about whether the lower half of his body was as bare as the upper half.
It probably was, though. Damn it, stop that.
Two large bookshelves leaned precariously atop haphazard mounds of books. Jake bent to pick up a stray paperback from the floor, and then paused with the book in his hands, wondering where to put it. A Field Guide to Arctic Alaska, it said. There were some pine trees and a bird on the cover.
Jake ran his fingers down the cracks in the spine. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“I don’t even want to tell myself what happened.”
Jake set the paperback down on the edge of the bed, carefully not looking at Lange on the other side. He crouched and took hold of one of the shelves. “I’ll just… pick these up, then.”
The shelf was half as heavy as it should have been. Lange was helping him. They righted both shelves and then Jake began clearing the books from the floor. He was almost tired enough to accept it when books jumped into the air around him, or maybe he’d just spent so much time with Lange that he was getting used to it.
A book missed its mark, too tall for the shelf it was aimed at, and dropped to the floor. Jake noticed a second book trembling, and risked a glance back at Lange.
He was still very probably naked, but if Jake forced himself not to think about that, he could notice other things: how rigid and miserable and grim Lange looked, the way he was holding himself motionless, the sweat at his temples. The blankets were wrinkled in a way that suggested the clenching of clammy palms.
A nightmare. Jake would bet on it. It was bad fucking news for both of them if Lange was tipping over bookshelves in his sleep, and Jake had no idea what to do about it.
He reached for the nearest floating book, one that was wobbling alarmingly, and took hold of its glossy paperback cover like he was scooping up a wounded bird. Principles of Topology was printed in white on the red spine. Jake guided the volume toward the shelf. Maybe Lange shouldn’t be doing telekinetic shit right now. “This can wait until tomorrow.”
“And what do you suggest we do instead?”
The question was petulant, not suggestive, which was a relief. Jake wished, briefly, that he could be a person who didn’t find relief in that.
He was also a little bit disappointed, but he slammed the door on that thought.
“What do you want to do?” he asked Lange cautiously. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”
Lange moved then, a single turn of his face away from Jake.
Jake knew a no when he saw one. “How about watching something? Doesn’t look like you have a wall display, but I have a tablet.”
“Is that what you would do?”
Jake inferred the end of that question as if you’d had a nightmare and were afraid to go back to sleep. “Yeah. Or read, maybe.”
Lange eyed the half-cleared wreckage of his personal library.
“I’ll get the tablet,” Jake said and left.
When he came back into the room, Lange had put some clothes on, thank fuck. Jake reached across the huge expanse of bed between them and handed him the tablet.
“Uh,” he said, unsure how to make his exit. “I hope it helps.”
“You’re not staying?”
Lange didn’t often sound like that. Uncertain. Scared.
Shit. Lange had gotten dressed for him. He’d considered Jake’s comfort. And he’d done it while he was a giant mess. He wanted Jake to stay pretty goddamn badly.
Jake only felt a little foolish, crawling onto the bed. He kept a healthy distance—and the bed covers—between himself and Lange, but the tablet screen was small, so seeing required him to get a little closer.
Something about Lange scrolling through all the stuff Jake had watched recently embarrassed him, even though it was just a bunch of sci-fi and a couple of comedies. Okay, one movie was less comedy and more romance. The bright colors of that one’s little icon stood out. It shouldn’t have felt so revealing. It wasn’t like Jake had been watching porn.
Given what Lange had said about his sexual history, he probably watched—nope. Not thinking about that.
Thankfully, Lange’s only comment on Jake’s entertainment habits was, “You like science fiction.”
“Don’t you? What else would make you want to move to space?”
“A well-funded research opportunity.”
Probably not the best topic of conversation. Jake steered them back toward movies instead of reality. “You don’t like sci-fi at all?”
“They get everything wrong,” Lange said.
“Well, sure, but it’s cool,” Jake said, which slid right off Lange. Jake had a lot more to say in defense of science fiction, but it occurred to him that it was still too close to home. Nothing set in space would soothe Lange’s fears. “What do you like to watch?”
“I don’t engage with much fiction of any kind, and I prefer my non-fiction in written form.”
Right. Jake should have expected that. If Lange had said that when they’d been in Facility 17, he might have interpreted it as fuck off, but now he was pretty sure Lange was
asking for help. Well, not so much asking as telling, but still. All that aloof haughtiness was masking an I don’t know what to do.
“There’s this cooking show that Lenny and Chávez love,” Jake said, having cast around for something completely unrelated to space—or sex.
“Cooking,” Lange repeated skeptically.
“Or baking, I guess? I think they make cakes. I’ve never watched it.” Jake was already reaching over to select the first episode. “Hey, even if you hate it, it’ll be a good distraction, right?”
Their arms brushed as Jake finished—he’d overestimated the distance between them—and Jake stiffened and scooted over. “Sorry.”
The dispassionate glance Lange directed at him was more embarrassing than any accidental touch. “Your virtue is safe.”
“Fuck off.”
“I like sex, McCreery. Not assaulting the unwilling. You’ve made your unwillingness clear.”
“Not so long ago, you would really have hated that contact,” Jake pointed out, because it was easier to make this about Lange’s comfort than his own. He hoped Lange wouldn’t bring up their earlier touching as a counterpoint. They hadn’t been in bed then. Or they had, sort of, but—it was different. “The show is starting.”
It was good to have something else to focus on—or it would have been, if Jake had been capable of focusing on anything other than Lange right next to him. Not touching, but close enough that Jake could feel how much warmer he was than the rest of the room. It had been a mistake not to get under the blankets.
Lange had characterized him as unwilling, and the whole problem was that he wasn’t. He’d never been willing before. It scared the shit out of him.
Did Lange’s comment about his “virtue” mean Lange knew—
The big orange cat jumped onto the bed and curled up next to Jake’s hip. Jake shifted to make space for him, bumping into Lange again.
“You’re cold,” Lange observed, and damn him, he was right. This far from the wood stove, Jake didn’t have nearly enough clothes on. “It’s unpleasant to be cold. One of many disagreeable aspects of being embodied.”
Lange made space so Jake could get under the blankets, and Jake shoved his legs under without thinking too hard about what he was doing. They rearranged themselves so Jake could see the display in Lange’s lap if he craned his neck a little, and resumed watching the episode.
During the second episode, the tuxedo cat joined them, making himself at home on Lange’s other side. Lange shifted to accommodate the animal, and then he and Jake were shoulder to shoulder, and it felt… good. Too good.
He wanted to lean his thigh against Lange’s, or drape his arm around Lange and pull him in. To feel the weight of his body. To smell him.
How did people do this? Jake had barely managed to put his hand on Lange’s shoulder earlier, and now they were in bed, and not fully clothed, and the idea of verbalizing his desire was mortifying. And desire was the right word for it, even if all he wanted now was to cuddle. It didn’t feel chaste; it felt overpowering.
If Lange had asked him to summarize the plot of what they were watching, Jake couldn’t have come up with two words to string together, even though every single episode could be described as the contestants bake something. His whole brain was dedicated to assessing the space between them, pinpointing every place they were in contact, calculating the likelihood that Lange would comment or react negatively if Jake got closer. If he could have moved Lange with his mind, it would already have happened. There was a deeply embarrassing thought. Fuck.
“McCreery.”
“Jake,” he blurted. “My name is Jake.”
“I know your name,” Lange said. “Are you not enjoying this show? You seem ill at ease.”
Well, he’d fucked this up. “Sorry. You’re the one who had the nightmare. You shouldn’t have to comfort me.”
There was a long moment of only the TV contestants chatting, and then Lange paused the episode. “Is that what you want? Comfort?”
Jake reached over and pressed play. “I’m good. Don’t worry about it.”
Lange looked right at him, which was a lot like being punched, except good, and Jake couldn’t explain that. How had he been looking at Lange all this time and not seeing him? The lustre of his dark brown skin in the blue light of the screen. The sharpness of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. That beard. Those brows. The symmetry. It was like somebody had designed his face with exactly the right distribution of straight lines and curves, like he was the expression of some perfect mathematical formula.
The rest of him wasn’t too bad, either.
Watch the show, he told himself, and tore his gaze away. With what little attention he possessed, he bore witness to the meticulous creation of a tiered cake. He petted the cat at his side and almost stopped yearning.
And then Lange began to nod off.
His head dipped. He swayed. Jake froze. If he let Lange fall fully asleep, he could slip out afterward. It would be cruel to wake Lange just as he was finally relaxing.
When Lange leaned against him at last, he slid down until his head lolled against Jake’s chest. It required no thought to wrap an arm around his shoulders to steady him. He weighed less than Jake expected—not crushingly heavy, not enough for how big the moment felt—and more. It was the heat, he thought, or maybe the solidity and the texture of him, the knob of bone at the end of his shoulder, the way Jake’s fingers sank into the firm flesh of his upper arm. His ribs expanded and contracted with breath.
Jake had never been this close to anyone. Not like this.
And God, a few days ago Lange would have murdered anyone who touched him. He definitely hadn’t smelled like soap or fresh laundry then. Yet here he was, nestled against Jake, sighing contentedly in his sleep.
Oh. Shit. Jake had been planning to disentangle himself.
The thought made him tighten his arm ever so slightly. It would be impossible to get out without waking Lange. He’d already had a bad night. Lange needed this.
And if it was exactly what Jake wanted, well, that was a stroke of luck. And it had never happened before, so he had to memorize how it felt. Enjoying it didn’t mean he was taking advantage. The only harm done was that now, every other night for the rest of his life, he’d know what he was missing.
10
False Premise
For a second after waking, Sol was happy.
It lasted only a second, and then he knew, with a dread that hardened into certainty, that something was wrong. He should not have allowed himself to fall asleep in such a way—he wished he could return to ignorance of how much he liked the heavy embrace of McCreery’s body, a sensation he could not remember ever having experienced, one he was now condemned to long for—but that was negligible.
There was someone in the cabin.
McCreery was still remarkably deep in sleep, so it was trivial to extricate himself. It was not yet light outside the windows and the house was silent. Solomon couldn’t say what had alerted him to the intruder. A disturbance in space, perhaps. A shift in the accounting of presences and absences, something his body now tracked even as he slept.
He crept to the bedroom door, suspended open by a gap the width of a house cat, and paused. The unseen person on the other side was small, he felt. Solomon mentally located one of the kitchen chairs and lifted it into the air, letting it hover. Just in case.
The knock, when it came, was tentative.
Solomon stepped aside and swung the door open in one movement.
The person’s eyes glinted in the darkness like a cat’s. Solomon’s heart seized, and a blink later, the puzzle pieces aligned: standard humans from this world did not have a reflective surface to their eyes, therefore the person across from him wasn’t one, therefore it was a stranger or… Kit. A runner.
Solomon had been the first to hypothesize that runners could travel through the Nowhere because they had one parent from this reality and one parent from elsewhere. This wasn’t to say runners
weren’t human, exactly. Many, many strands of the multiverse were populated with humans, even some who were identical to the ones here. But the multiverse was infinite, and it contained infinite variations on what it meant to be human.
Some could move things with their mind, for example. Others could teleport.
The knowledge calmed Solomon’s fears, but he didn’t relax. Kit had good reason to hate him.
Kit had come via the Nowhere.
Solomon did not shudder at the thought of the void. The tapetum lucidum suggested that Kit had good night vision; he would have seen.
Discreetly, Solomon set the kitchen chair back in place next to the table. He gestured at the living room, and Kit let him pass. Solomon closed the door quietly behind him. He didn’t turn on the lights, testing his hypothesis that Kit could see him.
“I’m actually looking for Jake,” Kit said. He followed Solomon a few steps into the living room with no trouble. “We need him.”
“He’s asleep,” Solomon said, defensive of McCreery’s rest. The man had suffered through two-and-a-half nights on the floor. He deserved to stay in Solomon’s bed.
“Yeah, as you can probably tell from the fact that I jumped into your living room in the pre-dawn hours, it’s kind of an emergency.”
“Kind of,” Solomon repeated. “It’s not the breach, then.”
“Yesterday we had a leak in the greenhouse. Now we have a burst pipe or something. It’s a mess in there.”
“That sounds like a flaw in the greenhouse design, not an emergency.”
“Are you blaming Emil—” Kit interrupted himself, forcing an inhalation and then a slow, exaggerated exhalation. “Jesus fucking Christ, Lange, can you stop being a dick and use that huge brain you supposedly have for one second?”
Solomon had, unfortunately, ruled out his own suggestion even as he’d spoken the words. There was nothing wrong with the greenhouse design; he wasn’t sure why he’d said it, except to make Kit angry enough to leave. That hadn’t worked, and now he had to confront the obvious. The expensive, newly constructed facility was unlikely to experience sudden and massive plumbing problems without interference.
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