Almost Real

by Charlotte Stein

She was just too hot. Her whole body was burning up and so oddly swollen, like some overripe fruit that had been left too long in the sun. And though she was perspiring like crazy, the perspiration didn’t help. It just made things all nice and slippery, in a way she sort of appreciated. The material slithered over various sensitive places, until she wasn’t just harshly breathing.

  She was kind of breathless.

  And then to top it off—

  “Can you get my zip?”

  Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious. He expected her to touch him, and get close to him, and do the very thing she’d been trying so hard to avoid? She’d have to look in order to meet his request, and she just couldn’t do that.

  Her eyes were still set to pervert.

  “Hey, you still there?”

  She couldn’t exactly tell him no, after the second insistence. But once she’d turned, she kind of wished she had. It would have been far, far better to be a useless churl than the slightly speechless and sort of fumbling creature she then became. Her tongue turned to cotton wool in her mouth. Her fingers froze.

  And all over so little. He wasn’t even undressed. He wasn’t even partially dressed. The material covered every inch of him like a second skin—though if she was being honest, that was probably part of the problem.

  He wasn’t nude, so it was perfectly acceptable for him to be this way in front of her and for her to look. Yet she could still see almost everything. She could see his surprisingly narrow hips and the great rising weight of his back above them, the curve of his spine leading down and down to something she would never, ever look at.

  She kept her eyes up.

  Up.

  Not that it helped. Keeping them up meant seeing the split of his suit, where the zipper was supposed to go. It meant seeing a strip of his bare skin revealed in such a way that it somehow seemed ruder than if he’d been completely naked. She thought of odd things as she sealed him in—women in catsuits, slowly easing their zips down in a sultry striptease. Him choking over the sudden restriction, her coming to his rescue with a completely insane mouth to mouth.

  And then it was done, and the matter was passed. It was passed.

  Oh God, it would never be passed.

  She understood clearly, the moment he turned and held her gaze for just a fraction too long. It was an assessing look, she knew, and it told her all the things she didn’t want to hear. I know you’re thinking about me, that heavy gaze said.

  But obviously, he wasn’t thinking about her in the same way. His handling of her zipper was brisk and perfunctory, almost like a shove to the back. And no matter how frequently she checked, his eyes stayed away from her body. Hell, sometimes they stayed away from her face too. She was fairly sure his stare hovered somewhere just over her head as she handed him his mask. Then when she keyed in the door code, it actually settled on some nonexistent thing to her right.

  Air was more important than her, apparently.

  And this theme continued throughout their foray into the labs. He stared at everything but her—which was partly understandable. The place was a warren of glazed and faintly glowing sights, everything so smooth and clean you could have ice-skated on some of the surfaces. She watched him take in all the things that always held her attention, like the slow dance of a thousand mechanical arms, each one in perfect synch. The great black vats beyond these bright lights, just waiting in the darkness like sleeping giants.

  Then finally the clones themselves—row upon row of them, each encased in a glass casket, each as pale and peaceful as a marble statue. She couldn’t possibly blame him for being transfixed by them, because she so often found herself in a similar state. In fact, she often found herself in a far worse state, if she was really being honest. She searched too often for B-426’s black hair now, and thought too often about the desert and those eyes and the words that would haunt her forever.

  I will not go with them, Margot, she’d said, as though her freedom didn’t matter.

  Something else did, instead. Something that made her fight the ones who’d come to liberate her, instead of going with them when Margot had told her to. She’d jumped on the back of the one of them and pushed Margot into the dirt when shots rang out, and after it was all over she’d still seemed so heartbreakingly surprised when Margot had said the only thing she could, the only thing that—

  “You almost done?”

  She jerked the moment he spoke, but this time it had nothing to do with his voice or his uncanny ability to speak when she least expected it. This time she was just so busy being in that world, it was kind of a jolt to return to this one. She had to take a moment to reestablish her equilibrium…though once she had she didn’t feel any better.

  He was still looking at everything but her. And it was worse here too, because now he had good reason to glance in her direction. He’d just asked her if she was ready, but couldn’t even bring himself to check. Apparently she was so hideous in her suit he had to feign interest in a light fitting, rather than find out what he needed to know.

  And she had to admit, that sort of stung. It stung even though it had never done so before. She’d seen the same attitude in a million men and never thought a thing about it, and more than anything wanted to return to that state now. She wasn’t really bothered by his behavior. She wasn’t, she wasn’t—it was just a silly faddish feeling that faded as quickly as it came. Once they started back to the elevator, her mind just went to another place. She wasn’t happy, or sad.

  She was in the middle of emotions, like always. Nothing weird, no highs, no lows—just a flat, endless ocean that never encountered a storm. In truth, she didn’t even know what a storm was. The closest she’d come was her hand on the curve he’d left behind in the bed, and that panic at the thought of touching and seeing him.

  Or at least, that was the closest until they were inside that steel tube again. Until he breathed in again to give her room, then cursed when his body briefly touched hers. He cursed at the feel of me, she thought, and everything suddenly shifted sideways. It refocused through the lens of that one action—an action she’d barely thought of the first time, but now seemed so full of meaning.

  And the meaning was a goddamn tidal wave. It crashed right down on her before she could stop it, probably stupidly insane but so compelling she was surprised he couldn’t feel her reaction. Heat swelled through her the second it occurred, heavy and thick and full of a single ringing thought.

  He wasn’t avoiding her because he found her repellent.

  He was avoiding her because he didn’t.

  Chapter Four

  She tried not to think about that one idea too much. When she thought about it too much her mind started to unpick the concept in complicated, uncomfortable ways. It pointed out all the words that meant the opposite of repellant, until she started to go a little insane. After all, she didn’t know for sure. She only had his agitated cursing and his strident lack of looking. Neither of those things really meant anything on their own.

  They were just ordinary occurrences.

  But if that were true, then why was she still working at two in the morning? She should have retired hours ago, yet here she was at her desk doing a million tasks that didn’t matter. She was always at her desk doing a million things that didn’t matter, now. It had become a sort of necessity in her battle against the feelings he kept prompting and provoking.

  She couldn’t go near him, in case they exploded out of her.

  So she stayed in the room until her eyes were filled with ground glass and her body became a limp noodle, completely sure that there was no risk now. There couldn’t possibly be any risk of saying inappropriate things or doing inappropriate things or asking him to do inappropriate things to her when she was so tired she could barely climb into bed.

  Though really, she should have remembered where surety usually got her. How many times had it lain in wait before springing the absolute opposite on her? Too many times to count, and yet she let it coax her into a
false sense of security anyway. She got under the covers and even managed to drift off completely, so safe in the knowledge that her real self would return in the morning.

  Only to wake and find she’d pressed her body against his.

  Dear God, her body was pressed against his.

  And that wasn’t even the most nightmarish part either. If she’d just maybe leaned in the night a little, she could have probably accepted it. She could have rolled away and never thought about it again. But she hadn’t done anything so accidental.

  She’d actually sprawled all the way across him. Her face had somehow found its way into that little nook between his side and his shoulder, in a manner she recognized for all the wrong reasons. She’d last seen it in a dozen movies about affectionate, happily married couples, and apparently decided to do just that with a near stranger.

  An unconscious near stranger who had no idea she was currently molesting him. He was just sleeping away peacefully while she hooked a leg around his upper thigh—because oh fuck, she’d done that too. She could feel it before she even tried to squirm away, so intrusive and incongruous it didn’t even seem like it belonged to her. It had to be someone else’s leg, lying over his.

  Her own appendage would never do a thing like this.

  And it certainly wouldn’t get all hot about it, either.

  The place where their thighs touched felt like a struck match, bursting and burning at the same time. She could make out every single curve and contour of his thigh muscle, too solid to be comfortable but oh so interesting because of that fact. When she pressed, his flesh barely gave an inch.

  Though that wasn’t really the point, was it?

  No, no, the point was why the fuck had she just tested him like a goddamn ThighMaster?

  She couldn’t explain it. Or more to the point—she didn’t want to explain it. Fascination had just taken a leap into illicit fondling, and she couldn’t think about that. She just had to get away, fast, before he woke up and found her like this. Oh, she couldn’t bear to have someone like him find her like this. He’d probably never been cuddled in his entire life. He likely didn’t even know what the nook was.

  God knew what his reaction would be like. She imagined something akin to an allergic spasm, followed by an avalanche of incredulity. Maybe she’d even have to draw him diagrams later on, to explain what this “embracing” thing was all about. Humans like to touch each other, she imagined herself saying, but even her head-self couldn’t quite sell it. Yeah, humans liked to touch each other.

  But probably not without any prior warning, while asleep. That was just weird and creepy, no matter which way she painted it. She tried to imagine it as an accidental cuddle, which sounded completely plausible until she factored in a few other elements. Like how hot she was all over, in a kind of fevered and slightly frantic way. And how tense her body felt, in the strangest of areas.

  She could understand her neck and her jawline. They were pretty standard pressure points, where tension was concerned. But she could not for the life in her explain or describe the tightness in her lower belly. She seemed to have a fist there, and the fist kept clenching and clenching.

  Only the clenching felt weirdly good. And the longer she stayed, the more intense it got, until finally she had to admit what was happening. There was no fist, at all. There was just the steady pulse of arousal, so heavy it seemed to be keeping her in place. What other explanation was there for her lack of movement?

  She should have been up and gone five minutes before this even happened, but instead she was just lying here, getting turned-on by ridiculous things. She could hear the long, slow thud of his heartbeat all the way down to the tips of her toes. It just started in her ear and worked on through, leaving her boneless in its wake.

  And then there was the smell of him.

  She’d thought he’d have a kind of musky scent, half-coated in engine oil with an after-note of testosterone. But he didn’t. He didn’t smell anything like that. He was all sharp and fresh and sweet, like a freshly laundered sweater. His whole body seemed to have been dipped in fabric softener, and for some reason that was really making things worse. She kept thinking of stuff she usually did when clothes came out of the dryer—namely burying her face right in it, all the way up to the neck.

  But that just didn’t help at all. She couldn’t bury her face in him. She didn’t even want to think about burying her face in him. It was bad enough that her cheek was resting against his left pectoral muscle—anything further and he could probably have her arrested.

  No, the best thing to do was move away as quickly and quietly as possible. But the thing was…moving was easier said than done. Even after she’d pulled herself together and forced her arousal into a box the size of a safety pin, getting out of this wasn’t simple. She tried sliding backward just a little, but the moment she did she felt him stir. She definitely felt him stir. Then when she attempted to lift her arm, he let out a breath that seemed so much louder than the one before it.

  Of course it wasn’t, really. When she managed to glance up in tiny, barely moving increments, she saw that his eyes were still closed—but that didn’t matter at all to her nerves. Her nerves wanted her to jump at the slightest thing, and move in these strange fits and starts. She lifted one arm then had to hold it there in midair, body frozen and breath held, waiting and waiting to see if she’d disturbed him.

  It was sort of like being in a spider’s web, treading so carefully in case she plucked the wrong thread. Always ready for the vibrations to work their way through to the hungry creature at the center—only he wasn’t the hungry creature at all, in this scenario. She was the one who’d gotten all hot and tingly and weird.

  In fact, she still felt kind of hot and tingly and weird. It made her roll her eyes and blush like a motherfucker, but she couldn’t deny it. Her body wouldn’t let her deny it. The moment she tried to pretend otherwise, something on her brushed against something on him andohthe surge that went through her…

  She didn’t know what to make of it. Of course, she’d had similar feelings before. But those feelings usually came when someone touched a nipple, or even an earlobe. They never occurred because of a knee sliding over someone’s thigh. Knees weren’t erogenous zones, as far as she knew.

  So what was happening?

  She was still tingling over it a whole minute later. It felt as if she’d filled the insides of her jaw with popping candy, and that hot, heavy pulse was now a pounding. By the time she managed to lever her leg up and off she was actually wrung out, as though she’d just run a marathon.

  Through a field of sex.

  However, there was one upside—he hadn’t woken during the whole ordeal. He was still sleeping as peacefully as he’d been when she’d first started her four-hour journey over his body, and he carried on that way until her feet hit the carpet. Then and only then did his eyes open, which should have been a comfort.

  But any possible comfort died the second she saw him rise from the bed. He moved as though he had invisible blocks on either side of his head—blocks that kept him facing away from her. At one point his torso actually pointed in her direction, while his face remained resolutely turned away.

  And though she tried to make this mean one thing, it could only ever mean another. You didn’t avoid someone because you’d slept through their embarrassing moment.

  You avoided someone because you’d been pretending the whole time.

  * * * * *

  The problem with the idea of pretending was how easily it seemed like something else. Sometimes when she remembered that feeling she’d had—like he was putting on a show for her, and under the surface there lived a maze of the real him—it just seemed ridiculous. Fanciful. He didn’t have these other layers that made him force feelings into different shapes and pretend to be asleep when he wasn’t.

  He was as deep as a paddling pool and solid as a rock face. She couldn’t penetrate through to the other side because there wasn’t another side to f
ind. He just had more rock beneath the first imposing crust. Anything else had to be the product of her imagination. It had to be.

  Even when it really seemed like something else altogether.

  She’d just about managed to tell herself that everything was exactly as it seemed, and then she’d realized with a little start that she hadn’t seen him all day. He wasn’t in the kitchen for breakfast, busy creating something delicious. He didn’t return for lunch and eat a silent sandwich by her side. And though she tried to see it all as nothing, she couldn’t really make that wash once she realized she was actively searching for him.

  Somehow, they’d started playing the world’s most fraught game of hide and seek. She caught herself peeking through the gaps made by slightly ajar doors, and searching corners with the CCTV—as if he were really going to be crouched down behind a dresser in a room he never went into.

  He’s not a child, she told herself.

  And yet the fact remained that he wasn’t around. He’d disappeared, and after a while she began to panic over the idea, just a little. What if the morning’s weirdness had driven him away? She’d have to call headquarters and explain, despite having no real explanation for any of this at all.

  She’d climbed over him, he’d pretended not to notice, and now he couldn’t stand to see her face. But none of that was an explanation. It was practically a police report filed by a victim of stalking—or so her mind tried to tell her as she sat in her workspace, biting her nails. She’d never bitten her nails, yet somehow they were already ragged and sore. She must have bitten them at other times too, but didn’t really want to think of when.

  She just wanted to find him.

  Though once she’d succeeded, she sort of wished she hadn’t. The image of his whereabouts had been so much easier in her head. Her head had let her off the hook and mainly imagined him fixing a camera close to the perimeter, or similar. But back in this bizarre, tortured reality, he was busy running a thousand punishing miles.

  With his shirt off.