Kaden’s expression flickered, but he didn’t pull away.
“I hope you want me in your life,” Joe said. “Because I desperately want to be there. To have fun with you.” He drew in a shaky breath. “But if at any time you ask me to leave, I will. Though I’d still love you. Until the day I die. And when there’s nothing left of me but atoms…” A faint, almost embarrassed smile tugged at his mouth. “I think they’d still be trying to find yours so we could end up in the same place again. In the stars. Or in those bits of dust you see floating in sunlight.”
“Oh Joe.”
“I know it must feel strange to have me around, to look at me and think I was inside you. I created myself through knowledge of your body, but I’m not a replica of you. I’m me. Joe. So…please don’t ask me to leave. I don’t think I’d survive it.”
For a second, Kaden just stared at him. Then “Oh, God, Joe!” Kaden pulled him down, arms wrapping tight around him. “How could I not want you? How could I not love you?”
The words hit Joe harder than anything else had. For the first time in his existence, his body wasn’t a weapon. Wasn’t a tool. Wasn’t something to be used or feared. It was just his, full of love for Kaden. And Kaden loved him too.
They didn’t have a permanent home. Didn’t have certainty, or definite safety, or any kind of clear future. But they had this. And somehow, that felt like everything.
Then Kaden showed him it was everything to him as well.
Later, when Kaden had settled at his laptop to write the article on Blake, Joe chose one of Malik’s books from the shelf and curled up on the couch to read it. It was a thriller about scientists stranded in the Arctic, and Joe found himself distracted by the setting more than the plot. Snow. Ice. Endlessnight and endless day. He tried to imagine what it would feel like. The cold biting at his skin. The silence. What it would be like to not see the sun for half the year, with stars and the Aurora Borealis the only lights in the sky.
There was so much Joe wanted to see. So much he wanted to experience. But only with Kaden. Then reality nudged its way back in. He had to get permission to stay in this country first. Permanently. Properly. They’d done what Alistair asked. Would he keep his word?
The thought made his chest tighten.
Maybe he should do something practical. Use some of the money he’d won. Buy a car. Kaden could teach him to drive. That felt like a normal thing. A human thing. Joe liked the idea of that.
He finished the book and picked up the remote instead. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped on Kaden’s headphones and scrolled until he found a romance.
If he was going to do this—bethis—he might as well learn.
Unlike reading, which he did at speed, he could only watch the film in the normal way. It wasn’t a bad thing to learn to be patient. Though the film was confusing. People did idiotic things that made Joe want to yell at them, they kept leaking when nothing objectively bad had happened, not everything made sense, but everyone was happy at the end.
Joe frowned at the screen. Why cry when something wasn’t sad? Though hadn’t he cried at the giraffes? But they were real. What he was watching, wasn’t. Even so, he’d felt pressure in his chest, a surge of emotion filling him up as the characters on screen kissed. His eyes had leaked.
Kaden took a break for lunch, which Joe had prepared, then continued writing and Joe searched for something to do. Malik had said his record player was broken. Maybe it could be fixed. Though he wasn’t sure what the machine did so he looked it up.
Ah, that was what all those flat black discs were for. Malik had a shelf full of them below his books. Joe found tools and took the record player apart, carefully checking each piece for damage.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” Kaden had come up behind him.
“Trying to mend this.”
“Can you?”
“Not sure yet. I might have to get a few new parts.”
“Do you know where everything goes?”
Joe looked around at the pieces spread out on the floor. “Yes.”
“Good.” Kaden laughed. “Want to go swimming?”
“Okay.” He’d enjoyed it last time.
“I have a spare pair of trunks.”
“Does this place have a wave machine?”
“No, but the pool is outdoors, which is different. Bus or walk?”
“Let’s walk.”
