Raze (Riven 3)

He looked down at the white tile floor, and I shoved my fists into my pockets and stood perfectly still.

When he looked up at me, his gaze was steadier.

“So, why are you?” he asked me.

“Me?”

He nodded and stepped closer.

“I’m not.”

He raised dark eyebrows skeptically but then shrugged.

“You look a little nervous,” he said lightly. “You’re standing like a robot.”

“You look soft,” I said, then ground my molars. I hadn’t meant to say that.

“Soft?”

“Your hair,” I said. “Your clothes.” I clenched my back teeth.

Felix smiled.

“You look hard.” Then his eyes flew open and he tugged at a lock of hair. “I meant, you know, you’re all…jacked. God, make me shut up.”

With his hand in his hair and his wide eyes on me, I didn’t feel hard. I felt raw and abraded, as if with a few sentences some crucial distance between us had been blasted away.

“Do you like soft?” he asked. It wasn’t flirtatious, but curious.

“I like it.”

Felix took a step closer and I saw him gather his courage. “?’Kay, good. That’s good. Maybe we could, um. Sometimes touching makes things a little less awkward. We could…hug hello? If you want? Or not,” he added quickly. “Not’s fine too.”

He bit his lip and I blinked at him, every muscle locked tight. I imagined holding him, bruising him, damaging his soft sweetness with all my hard edges.

“We really don’t have to,” he said softly into the silence.

I rounded the counter and stood before Felix, holding very still and letting him come to me. He closed the distance between us and slowly slid his arms around me. Our height difference meant his cheek came to my chest and my chin rested on the top of his head.

It was awkward and stiff at first. Then he flattened his palms against my back and pressed us closer. I remained motionless. When he gave a little squeeze and let out a deep breath, I let my arms come slowly around him.

He was soft. The fabric of his shirt felt like it had been washed a hundred times. I ran a hand over his hair and that was soft too. Gradually, I forced myself to relax. Made my arms gentle around him, even as he held on tight. I held him to me and breathed in his smell—light and clean and grassy, like fresh laundry dried outside.

My heart rate slowed and I could feel Felix taking deep breaths, feel his stomach and chest expand against me. I slid my fingers into his hair and he nuzzled his cheek against my chest, just over my heart. I was sure he could feel it pounding. It was a dream moment, lasting forever and over too quickly.

Felix gave me one more tight squeeze, then he loosened his hold on me and looked up.

“Thanks,” he said. “I feel better.”

I nodded. “Good.”

When he didn’t move away, I brushed his hair back and let my thumb skim his cheekbone for just a second.

“You wearing makeup?”

He bit his lip, then jutted his chin out. “Yeah.”

It was a challenge, like he thought I might disapprove.

“Makes your eyes look like storms,” I said. They were beautiful.

The air between us thrummed, electric with possibility.

“Wanna eat?” I asked when I couldn’t stand it any longer.

Felix sat at the table, and I pulled the chicken out of the oven to rest while we had the salad.

“Wow, you really cook,” Felix said, eyes running hungrily over the food.

“I like to know what I’m eating,” I said by way of explanation.

Felix nodded but kept watching me, waiting for more.

“I used to make the same few things all the time,” I went on. “A few years ago, one of my, um, friends gave me a subscription to one of those delivery meal kits as a gift. I didn’t continue the subscription after the month was up. They’re great for some people, but since I don’t need things premeasured the amount of packaging was an unacceptable tradeoff.”

The cold packs in the boxes were full of chemicals, hundreds of thousands of them ending up in landfills all over the country. The convenience wasn’t justifiable for me.

“I liked following the recipes they sent, though. Kept them. Once the month was over I kept making them. Looked up other recipes. Theo and Whitman got me some cookbooks. So. Now I cook.”

Felix smiled and dug into his salad.

“I cook too, but just for practical reasons,” he said. “Sofia and I did the cooking when we were kids, ’cuz our mom worked until six or seven most nights. We’d make dinner for us and my other brothers and sister and then save some for our mom. When I was like eleven or twelve and I started cooking, I made the same three things every day. Mac and cheese from the box, spaghetti with hot dogs in it, or rice and beans.”