Micah attempted to take the spoon, but Cosmo lightly touched his jaw and pushed the bite into his mouth. Nutmeg and pumpkin melted on his tongue. Cosmo brushed whipped cream from Micah’s bottom lip with his thumb; it sent electric pleasure tingling through him, and he threatened to melt just as quickly.
Abort! Abort!
Sitting back, Cosmo slowly licked the remainder off of the spoon. “Did you like that?”
He could have fed Micah a heaping spoonful of mustard from the condiment rack and he would have said yes. “Uh, yeah.”
Reaching over, he dug into Micah’s milkshake, then sucked the spoon clean. “The sprinkles are turning the whipped cream gray, but it’s delicious.” He pulled the shake to himself and slid the pumpkin one in front of Micah, then plucked a piece of candy corn from the shake and pushed it between his lips.
Micah jabbed the straw into the pumpkin shake and swirled the cream around. It was a struggle not to think about Cosmo’s mouth. And his eyeshadow. And that he’d tried on fifteen different outfits before settling on one he thought Micah would like.
His mind mercifully switched topics when they left and he followed Cosmo’s ancient sedan to Identical Dog. No matter what his feelings for Cosmo or his sudden new ability to peek into a window of a future that wasn’t his, he couldn’t allow himself to screw up Cosmo’s safety again. He’d said he was fine, but Micah didn’t believe it, and he was determined to be support in the gallery.
They walked inside, enveloped in a soft citrus scent. He squinted his left eye against the harsh fluorescents. A wall of fused glass sculptures greeted them, but he didn’t have time to register anything beyond that, because Cosmo strode for the back of the building, his heels clicking on the linoleum. Colorful exhibits passed by in Micah’s peripheral vision. He scanned each partition and room they walked by, but there was no sign of Royce.
Cosmo weaved through an installation featuring life-like nude people positioned at various points in the room. They stood upright, but their hair and features pulled toward the ceiling as though gravity had been reversed.
“Wait here.” Cosmo opened a back door and disappeared inside.
Though Micah had submitted his portfolio to most of the reputable galleries in the city, he couldn’t remember if he’d sent it to Night Gallery specifically. If he had, they hadn’t rejected him yet. Thank god he didn’t have anything in Identical Dog. Prestigious or not, he didn’t want anything to do with this place anymore.
Something clattered from within the back room. Cosmo pushed out a cart, and supplies rattled in the boxes on the bottom. He headed down the hall, and they stopped at a corner partition with resin cubes mounted on pedestals.
Sliced and accordioned animal skulls floated within the resin. In the gaps between the slices were other mediums – dried flowers, fungi, leaves. In the largest cube was a human skull, divided in half. Objects spilled from the brain cavity: loose change, a condom, pills, a house key, a ring with a solitaire stone. How bizarre. The clashing materials unsettled him, and he couldn’t stop staring.
Cosmo hefted the cube with the human skull. “It’s not real. A museum replica. You can buy real ones on the internet for less than seven hundred dollars, but I find it unsavory. And I don’t have that kind of money to be throwing at my art.”
“These are yours?” Micah inspected a small skull – possibly a rabbit – and realized the dried flowers and leaves bursting from within the slices were actually candy wrappers. The mushrooms sprouting from a canine were really halved rubber balls, scraps of lace, and tumbled stones.
He bent to another. “This is incredible. I forget what this sort of optical illusion is called, using one medium to represent another.”
Cosmo picked up the cube and set it on the cart. “Trompe-l’œil. These are older pieces, when I was still fairly new to working with resin. I didn’t pre-seal some of the porous materials properly, and ended up with off-gassing.” He pointed to the lace in the faux mushrooms. “You can see the air bubbles.”
“Hardly. I wouldn’t have noticed had you not pointed it out.”
“You’re just being nice.”
“No, I’m not. I have trouble focusing on fine details with my left eye, especially when the lights are bright.”
The cube sagged in Cosmo’s arms. “Oh, how sad. I’m sorry for being dismissive.” His gaze darted away and he let out an unsteady chuckle. “I wanted my pieces to impress you, but now I’m only thinking about all the flaws you can see.”
Micah stopped before Cosmo and resisted the urge to brush the curls from his eyes. “I only see, like, three flaws. Maybe four. Which isn’t an automatic deal-breaker, but if you poke me in my good eye your odds with me will be better.”
“Lies.” Cosmo chuckled. “You don’t need vision to know that I’m the hottest creature in existence.”
“Got me there.” Micah took the cube and set it on the cart. “I am impressed with these, even more so after realizing the trompe-l’œil aspect. They’re part science diagram, part pop art. The combination of fragile bone carefully divided, with the almost violent addition of random assemblage is jarring and makes me uncomfortable. I love them.”
Cosmo flushed. “Thank you.”
“This is a shame.” A voice cut between them like rough-grit sandpaper. Cosmo flinched, then snatched one of the remaining skull cubes from its pedestal and put it on the cart.
A tall white man with a cruel line of a mouth stared at Cosmo as though Micah wasn’t there at all, his blue gaze icy. He started to walk around the cart, and Micah moved into his path. Royce attempted to side-step, and Micah mirrored him.
Royce’s thin lips pressed together until they disappeared, and he let out an exasperated sigh. “There’s no need for these theatrics. We both had too much to drink last night, and going behind my back – behind Hina’s back – to work for a rival gallery simply because you feel awkward now is childish. You don’t need this” – Royce finally glanced at Micah – “personto play bodyguard. I know how badly you want to be registrar, and how lonely you are. I’m sure that in the moment, coming on to me felt like it would solve both of those problems. I won’t hold it against you.”
Angry heat flooded Micah’s face, his chest clenching in a tight knot. “You absolute bastard. How dare you twist this into Cosmo’s fault?”
Cosmo slammed a resin cube into the cart. He reached for the final sculpture, but it slipped from his hands and struck the floor. The corner exploded, and chunks of resin skittered away. He abandoned it, gripping the cart handle and pushing it forward so quickly that Royce had to leap out of the way.
