Page 104 of Looking for Group
When Drew next checked his phone, five hours had passed. “Shit, it’s nearly two. I’d better be getting back.”
Kit pushed his laptop out of the way. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
“It’s that game, man. It sucks you in and it makes no sense, and the journal system is borked. And where the heck are we supposed to find someone to grow this black barbed seed for us? I mean we took it to the people in the market who specialise in growing weird plants, and they were like, no, sorry, not our bag.”
“Yeah, I’m beginning to think the humble quest marker gets a really bad rap.”
“I’m never complaining about having to kill fifty harpies again.”
Kit laughed, and crawled off the bed. “It’s really late. Do you want me to walk you home?”
“Kit, if you do that, I’ll have to walk you back again, and we’ll get stuck in an infinite loop.”
“And then we’ll have to hard reset the evening.”
Drew felt a bit goofy, but he went with it anyway. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Neither would I.”
They smiled and stared at each other.
“Look, I could…” Drew began, at the same time Kit said, “Do you want to…” and just in casethatturned into an infinite loop as well, Drew jumped straight to, “Yes.”
He’d shared beds with people before for various reasons, but this was different. They dithered for a while about what exactly was appropriate to keep on and what wasn’t, and finally settled on boxers and T-shirts as a safe middle ground. And then Drew hopped into bed, pulled Kit’s duvet right up to his chin, and tried not to look like a complete dork.
Kit was equipping a slightly worn blue T-shirt, which meant Drew—who wasn’t watching, honestly—got to see the curve of his spine, the shift and drag of muscles under his skin, the freckles on his shoulders. Then Kit flicked off the light and slipped into bed.
It was a single, so there wasn’t much room to be coy. Too many limbs to sort out. Soon, they were pressed right up against each other, wriggling and kissing, and trying to find places to put their hands.
“This is nice,” said Drew sleepily.
Kit answered with a murmur, drowsy and content. He rolled onto his other side, and Drew very naturally curled up round him. Only slightly self-conscious because kissing and closeness and stuff had sort of… Well...if Kit had ever been worried Drew wasn’t into him, he now had, um, concrete evidence he was.
Drew was just dropping off when Kit suddenly twitched in his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I just realised something.”
“Huh?” This was kind of worrying.
“We met a guy in the hive called Mourns-For-Trees.”17
Now Drew twitched. “We should totally check that out. Can you remember where he is?”
“I remember he was wearing green.”
“I think I saw someone like that near the Flophouse but that might have been the weird guy who gave us the box we weren’t supposed to open.”
“It might have been down by the Burning Corpse, or maybe I’m thinking of Amarysse. We can look tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Drew was smiling as he tucked his head against Kit’s neck. “We can look tomorrow.”
Chapter Ten
BetweenHoL, Frisbee, and coursework, Drew wasn’t able to visit Kit in person until Thursday. They’d raided together and hung out in the game a lot, but since Drew had got used to seeing Kit and, well, touching Kit, it wasn’t quite the same.
He was just stuffing his toothbrush and a spare pair of boxers into his laptop bag when someone banged on his door, and before he could respond, Sanee barrelled in and settled into the chair like he was camping a spawn point.
“NewMortal Kombat.1 Tournament. My place. Right now.”
