Doesn’t observe me like he usually does.
He stands a foot away from me, his thumb running over his mouth, as though wiping away the residue of our kiss. His gaze is fixed on the torch, the lights flickering over a bug that goes skittering over the rocks.
His eyes are hollow.
Faint greens again, lettuce and almost unfeeling, a frown creases his brow—and he looks lost in thought.
Absentmindedly, distantly, he fastens his trousers, but he isn’t here.
“Do you have a tissue?” I ask, prodding him back to the now. I don’t do up the zip and button, not yet. “Or a cloth?”
Still, he watches the bug.
I trace his stare to it.
The light glares over lifted wings, blues and purples and dark swirls.
A butterfly.
But none I’ve ever seen before.
Another adaptation to the blackout.
And it makes no fucking sense, because there’s no sun, so there should be no photosynthesis, no plants, no bugs for the plants, no pollinators.
And I wonder, now, staring at the wrongness of the butterfly, one I would pin in a heartbeat if I had the materials, how the earth is working with the darkness.
I look at Samick.
He stares at the butterfly, watching it walk slowly over the boulder. But he isn’t thinking about it. That frown is for something else—me, I guess.
Or what he did with me,tome.
That frown might be for the kiss.
His own shame, his own disappointment.
Good for him. I’m still waiting on my own to come and punish me for it.
“Samick,” I press, careful, “I can’t go back to the camp like this. I need something to wipe with.”
Also, side-note for when he’s actually paying attention to me, will this become a problem? Do I need to stop and get some pills?
He has finished in me twice now.
Would be great if he didn’t do that again, but to start with that chat, I need him to actually look at me, to remember that I exist.
I snap my fingers in his face.
And that does it.
His eyes flash, blizzards, and he turns a silent glare on me. But then he blinks, and his stare is softer.
“Did you hear me?”
His mouth twitches. “Incessantly.”
I don’t know if he almost smiles or snarls.
