“Flesh-eating face crabs,” she corrects through fresh peals of laughter, practically wheezing now.
We laugh until my sides ache and tears stream down my face, and I've decided we're both going straight to hell.
When we’ve both calmed down, she gestures at the microscope. “What are you looking at in here?”
Some of my levity vanishes as I pull the slides out and hold them up to the light. Out here without the magnification, they’re lifeless and still.
“Not much,” I say with a shrug. “Just doing some research.”
She reaches her hand out and wiggles her fingers, so I pass the slides to her to inspect.
“These better not be anything gross,” she warns.
“Grosser than face crabs?” I ask with a snort.
She chuckles, extremely pleased with herself as she squints at them.
“Don’t worry,” I say, watching her tilt them back and forth. “They’re only boring skin cells.”
She nods towards my hand on my hip, where I’m rubbing at the phantom sensations under my skin.
“Is it bothering you?” she asks.
I pull my hand away and cross my arms over my chest, wanting to deny it, but the damage is done. Ego doesn’t miss a thing, and lying to her feels wrong.
“It’s been bothering me lately,” I admit. “The past couple of days have gotten worse.”
She hums, taking a step forward as she hands the slides back to me. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it just…” I bite my lip as I hold them up, staring at the pale white skin cells trapped between the thin glass. “When I first got here, it did this a lot. Back then, yeah, it hurt, but it got better over time and happened less frequently. The sensation changed, too. Sometimes it was a tingle, sometimes more like a tug or a twinge. It hasn’t happened in months, but now it’s going haywire again.”
She grabs the hem of my t-shirt but pauses, glancing up with a silent question in her eyes. I nod with a resigned sigh, and she lifts the fabric just enough to reveal the ivory mark on my hip.
“You know,” she starts, voice softer than usual, “I used to think you had really shitty game.”
My brows flick up in surprise.
“You have a pattern,” she says with a quiet huff of a laugh. “Get some drinks at the bar, find some hot number to hang onto your every word. Flirt, tease, charm the hell out of them. You could’ve had any of them, but you always went home alone.”
My pulse kicks up as her fingers drift lightly over the mark, tracing its edges with a gentleness that feels almost reverent.
When she glances up at me again, the teasing has melted into something tender. “I assumed you scared them off with the nerdy talk,” she says.
“Some people are into my nerdy talk,” I mutter, the words coming out more defensive than I’d like.
She chuffs at my tone. “Does it get worse when you think about him?” she asks, and sympathy burns in her eyes as she waits.
I blow out a long, shaky exhale, and admit the hard truth. “That would imply there’s a time I’mnotthinking about him.”
Xeni consumes my thoughts far too often. Sometimes they’re angry, sometimes sad, but most of the time?
They make me realize how empty I am without him.
“What was he like?” Ego asks.
A faint smile flutters on my lips as I glance out the window. “Stubborn. Gods, he’s so damn stubborn, and gorgeous… so fucking pretty. Charismatic as hell. He could convince anyone to do anything for him just by smiling.” Quieter, I add, “It was exhausting.”
“For you?”
