TIME (CLOCK OF THE HEART)
Micah - Snagged Thread
Micah stared at the dark ceiling. The water heater hummed, and the faucet in the bathroom kept a rhythmicpat-patthat he’d tried counting to help him fall asleep. It hadn’t worked.
His pillow was too warm, and he kept flipping it over hoping for a cool side but he’d done it too many times and now the whole thing was wrinkled and hot and none of the thoughts tumbling around in his head were any that he wanted to entertain. Phantom the cat had suddenly appeared and curled into a white loaf near his feet, and if Other Micah materialized beside him in bed, he was going to unload all his problems whether his other self wanted to hear them or not.
Trying to keep Cosmo out of harm’s way hadn’t succeeded. Déjà had texted Micah with words he never wanted to see in that arrangement again:his creepy boss was trying to stick his tongue down Cosmo’s throat.
That pervert of a director violated Cosmo, and the thought made Micah sick to his stomach.
The only thing Micah had managed to do was piss Cosmo off enough to reveal what Micah already knew but didn’t want to face – that he and Cosmo were too different to be compatible. Anytime his mind gave him a reprieve from that topic, it shifted to the fact that he had somehow suddenly known abouta milkshake place he’d never been to and Cosmo had never mentioned.
He drew the covers up to his chin. The only logical explanation – and he used that term very loosely – was that Other Micah knew about the milkshake place, so now Micah did too.
Déjà had insisted they all go there to sort things out, which seemed like a terrible idea because it was only going to risk Micah getting heartbroken again. He had finally agreed so he could get off the phone and go take out his frustration on a harmless inanimate object, but he was too confused by the milkshake thing to hold any of the fire inside him. And if he’d been hard-pressed to dig out the core of his worries, it wasn’t that some new weird thing had happened. He’d already met his future self; how much weirder could it get? It wasn’t even that Cosmo’s words had jabbed him in a vulnerable spot or that he’d slapped him hard enough to see stars.
The biggest thing on his mind was Cosmo’s safety, and his failure to secure it. Trying to remind himself that Cosmo was in charge of his own choices wasn’t helpful, because the visual of seeing his own face for the first time after the assault kept appearing every time he closed his eyes. He’d been near unrecognizable, his skin an eggplant purple and dark stitches winding around his eye socket and through his eyebrow.
He hadn’t helped himself then, and he’d failed to help Cosmo last night.
By the time late morning rolled around and he slid into a booth in the soda shop in question, he felt like he’d swallowed an anchor. An oldies song he couldn’t place floated from the jukebox in the corner. A huge glass of outrageous dairy was the last thing his stomach wanted right now, but greasy corn dogs and fries sounded worse.
“God, it’s been ages since I’ve been here.” The light cadence of Cosmo’s voice made Micah slide out of the diner booth so quickly that he nearly tripped a roller-skating waitress.
Cosmo stood beside Déjà in skin-tight light-wash jeans, a rainbow block print shirt, sculpted clay earrings, and geometric bangle bracelets.
Micah kept his fists pressed to his sides. “Hey.” He suddenly wasn’t sure which side of the table to sit on. He sat next to Cosmo, then decided that was the wrong choice, but it was too late to switch because Déjà dropped into the seat across from them and set her backpack beside her. Her outfit wasn’t quite as flamboyant as Cosmo’s, but it still made Micah look like the odd one out. “I don’t fit in here. Maybe I should go sit in the tax prep place next door.”
Both Déjà and Cosmo glanced at Micah’s sweatshirt. It had been a joke, but nobody laughed, and now he was self-conscious.Smooth, Micah.
Cosmo leaned against the table and tugged on his curls. “You do not fit in better in a tax prep place. Your unique look is just less surface-level than ours.”
Right. Because he couldn’t take off his scars like Déjà kicking off her platform goldfish pumps on his rug.
Cosmo pulled a greasy, laminated menu from a rack beside the salt and pepper shakers. He tugged at his bottom lip as he looked it over, exposing charmingly crooked teeth. How perfectly imperfect. Cosmo’s unique look was more than surface-level too, although the glittery lime eye shadow at the corners of his eyes was doing something to Micah’s insides.
“I’m fine, Micah,” Cosmo said. “Stop staring at me.”
Cheeks burning, Micah looked away. “It’s okay if you’re not fine after what happened. Assault isn’t something to just be brushed off.”
Cosmo kept looking at the menu, but he flinched slightly. “It doesn’t deserve to be called that.”
“I’m not sure what else to call it if it wasn’t consensual.”
“It feels wrong to put it in the same category as…”
The same category as Micah and his fucked-up face. “We don’t need to break out a measuring stick to see whose trauma is bigger. I hate that it happened to you. The only good thing, I guess, is now you know Royce is a threat. If I’d gotten you to come with me, the non-consensual bar incident wouldn’t have happened, but he could have put his hands on you at some other point in time when no one was there to stop it. Which might have been worse.”
Cosmo seemed to shrink into the booth more with each of Micah’s words. “I’d really rather not talk about it.”
Déjà looked ready to unload a prepared speech, but she sighed and said, “Then let’s talk about Micah’s mind-reading ability.”
“That’s not what it was,” Micah said.
“Future prediction then.”
“Not sure that’s it either. And if it is, why now?”
