Pasadena, CA
December 24
The irony that the end of the world brought more people into Artie's solitary life was not lost on her. But while the peaceful isolation to which she was accustomed had been positive in her mind, Artie still wouldn't go back to the way it was before, even if she could. Because before, she didn't have a beautiful green-eyed boy who looked at her like she alone made the world revolve around the sun.
But of course that's illogical. The earth revolved around the sun because of its gravitational pull.
Still, since she met Harry, Artie had not stopped smiling. There was something about him, something she couldn't quite define. Maybe it was the way his eyes followed her every movement, soaking her in. Maybe it was the terrible jokes he told, which made her laugh like nothing ever had. Maybe it was his tender yet eager touch, his slender fingers exploring her body at every chance. (Like, at every chance. But Artie was not complaining.) There was definitely something about Harry. She'd never felt anything quite like this before. It was beyond affection or respect, though those were encompassed in this enigmatic emotion. It was something more than the love she'd felt for her parents. It was certainly more than she had felt for the lovers of her past. He was like a drug, and she was addicted. She couldn't get enough. She was giddy. And Artemisia didn't do giddy.
Artie shook her head and made her way to the basement with Loki at her side, hoping to figure out the electrical and heating system for the building. Cal-tech wasn't actually where she'd wanted to stay the night, but this new group looked pretty bedraggled and probably needed the rest. She found the electrical panel fairly easily, and determined that there was indeed a solar source of power. It was merely supplemental, though, and she would need to reroute some connections to get enough power to the kitchen, hot water heaters, and heating system. After less than an hour of recircuiting the wires, she jogged up the stairs to see if her efforts paid off.
On her way, she ran into two of the new people her group had collected at the bookstore earlier. Louis, the one Harry had recognized as some star athlete, and Ash, the other man in their group. Ash looked as if he was dying. He had vomit down the front of his shirt, he was pale and sweating, and his eyes were rolled back in his head.
"Hey," Artie said. "Need some help?"
Louis grunted and grumbled, "yeah," hoisting the man up against his side. Artie grabbed his other arm and between them, they crutched him up to the third floor and into a room, with Loki following in tow. She grabbed a bottle of water from the supplies that the group had carried up earlier and brought it into him. "Thanks," Louis said, his eyes cast to the floor.
"Yeah, no problem. Do you need anything else?"
"No. Thanks," he said, tipping the bottle against Ash's mouth. Artie turned to leave. "Wait!" She paused at the door, glancing back at them. "Um, well, we didn't get any food, actually." Louis blushed and looked down again.
"Oh. Okay. I'll go. Take care of him," she gestured at the man laid out on the small bed.
"Ash," Louis finished for her, as if she didn't know. He handed her the keys to Liam's truck.
She flicked the light switch and smiled at the illumination. "The water should be hot in thirty minutes or so." Louis looked surprised. "You can get him cleaned up."
"Thanks, po--Um, Artie. Thanks."
"No problem."
Louis called out as she exited, "We were going to try and get into this culinary school nearby. Ash said they have cold storage and the fresh food might still be good."
Artie frowned. Most fresh food spoiled within a couple weeks anyway, and it had already been two weeks since most of the world died off, so she doubted any fresh food would still be viable. But they may have large containers of canned goods they could use. "All right. I'll check it out." She went down the hall to the common room, where Liam sat with Kyle, Alysha, and the new girls, Sam and Serenity. Sam was holding the baby, whose name Artie still didn't know. "We've got limited electric from the solar panels. I routed it to the main electric and hot water heaters on the west side of this floor." The girls looked at each other in excitement.
"You are the greatest scientist since sliced bread," Serenity clapped her hands together.
"Yeah, because bread is so famous for its scientific discoveries," Sam said wryly. "There was sourdough's theory of evolution. Oh, oh and wheat really changed the world with e=mc squared. And of course how pumpernickel realized that the sun was the center of the universe. And what about--"
Serenity shot Sam a dirty look that was enough to shut her up. But Artie appreciated both the sarcasm and the scientific witticism.
"Leave the lights off until you really need them. And prioritize the bathing. One of the new guys got sick while they were out," Artie continued.
"Wait, who?" Serenity asked.
"Ash--" Artie had barely finished the word before the girl was darting from the room, opening the dormitory doors. Artie turned back to the group. "I'm going to find food. I'll leave Loki, but I'd like to take Kyle or Alysha. I'll need the help carrying the supplies."
"No," Liam shook his head. "You stay, get cleaned up. I'll go." He looked at Kyle, who nodded.
"I can go," Louis said from the doorway. "Serenity is taking care of Ash."
Artie put her hands on her hips. So many people willing to go, and not enough vehicles to get them there. "Well, actually, maybe you can drop me and Louis back at the bookstore. I'd like to get his car running." Liam shrugged. Artie patted Loki's head. "Take care of Alysha, Loki." He barked as if he understood.
Artie grabbed the last of her spare conversion kits, a jug of oil, her tools, and her heavy coat. Louis and Kyle climbed into the backseat of Liam's pickup, and they retraced their path back to the bookstore, where the fire still glowed from the trash can.
"See you back there," Artie said as she climbed down out of the pickup's high cab.
Liam nodded and waved, and as he drove off, Artie turned her attention to the car.
"What are you doing?" Louis asked in dismay as she set aside the fuel tank of the Range Rover. She explained each step in detail as she slid the new tank into place and attached the control panel to the engine, including why it was necessary. Louis watched with his mouth agape.
"Now, it doesn't need gas. It'll run on corn oil." She pointed to the small container of oil on the sidewalk. "Grab that and pour it into the tank." Louis did as instructed, shivering in the cold.
Artie got behind the wheel and started it up.
"How do you know how to do all this?" Louis mumbled, climbing into the passenger seat and cranking up the heater.
"College." It was the easy answer. Artie put the car in gear and turned west, away from Cal-tech.
"Are we getting food too?"
"No, we have a more important mission."
Louis shook his head, rubbing his hands together. "Whatever you say, p..." he grumbled.
It had been years since Artie had last been to Pasadena. Almost 15 years. But she still knew the way. JPL, originally a branch of CalTech under the army's jurisdiction and now part of NASA, was the first organization to buy one of Artie's designs. In fact, she had won the National Nuclear Innovations award for that design, presented to her by the U.S. Department of Energy, and that ultimately led to her position at Los Alamos. It was also one of the nuclear sites she had shut down when the government collapsed.
Artie flipped on the windshield wipers to clear away some of the snow, slowing down to descend the steep hill into the Arroyo Seco basin. "I hear you're some sort of sciency genius." Artie breathed a laugh at his terminology. "If that's the case, can you explain why the fuck it's snowing in Southern California?" Louis asked derisively.
"Well," Artie kept her eyes on the road. "It's probably the massive quantity of decaying bodies producing excess gasses that would affect the climate. But I'm not a climatologist, so that's just a guess. On the plus side, the freezing temperatures should delay the decay somewhat and the climate should theoretically stabilize."
"Hmph." Louis looked out the window. "How long have you and the curly dude been together?"
"We met ten days ago." Ten days? Could it have only been ten days? It was so strange how Artie felt like she had known Harry for so long, forever. Well, if you counted the first day after the plague as the start of a new world, she had. She had known him, then, forever.
"So, since all this shit?"
"Mm-hmm."
To Artie's surprise, it didn't take long to get there. Unlike other roads, this one wasn't clogged with abandoned or entombed vehicles. Artie easily popped the front door off its hinges and lifted it away while Louis shuffled his feet in the snow. He seemed to be wearing canvas shoes, which were growing wetter the longer he stood in ankle deep snow. Artie went inside without a word, assuming he would follow. At the director's office, she pried open a large glass display case.
"Whoa. Is that Barack Obama?" Louis reached in and grabbed the photograph of her receiving the NNI award. "You were hot shit once, weren't you?"
Artie shrugged. "I guess." She put her hands on her hips and tipped her head to the side. "Ya know, I think I might be the highest ranking government official left." Louis raised his eyebrows at her. "The acting commander-in-chief, a military commander of some sort, who ordered me to shut down all the nuclear plants was pretty sick."
"President Ponytail."
Artie coughed out a laugh. "What?"
"Nothing," Louis looked down at the picture again.
"That doesn't matter, though." Artie tapped the edge of the frame. "This matters," she lifted a tray of thermal cubes out of the display case, and took one in her hand, warmth flooding through her achingly cold body. She set it in Louis' hand.
He looked up at her in surprise. She plucked it out of his hand and watched the cold hit him again. She touched his hand with hers. Again, he looked at her in shock.
"You made this?" Artie nodded as she grabbed some wide nonstick medical tape from her back pocket and peeled a strip off, strapping the cube to Louis' wrist. "Does Harry have one of these?"
Artie flicked her eyes to Louis' face. "Yeah. But he strapped his to that little girl you brought in. I had another one but we gave it to Kyle. Now we should have enough for everyone."
"Are there more of them somewhere? Like what if we find more people?"
"Well, the beauty of these cubes is that the heat is passed through touch," she rested her hand on his, "so we don't actually need one for each individual. But NASA was using them in their space suits, so I'm guessing they've got some in Houston. Maybe Florida. Maybe even Edwards Airforce base, up north here. But I don't know for certain about that. These, I knew were here, so..." Artie trailed off, as Louis' face fell. She usually wasn't very adept at reading people, but it was clear to Artie that Louis was experiencing some dark emotions. She rested her hand on his wrist gently.
"Today is my birthday," Louis said quietly.
"Well," Artie tapped the tape around Louis' wrist with her forefinger, "happy birthday."
"Thanks," he was emotional. Sad. Artie wondered if it was just the deaths caused by the plague, or if something else was the source of his angst. She set a cube on her own wrist and started to strap it down. "Here, let me," Louis smoothed the tape around her wrist, binding the thermal cube in place. She carried the tray of cubes, and Louis, she noticed carried the framed photo of her back to the car.
He drove them back to the small college and pulled up onto the sidewalk beside Artie's jeep, parked next to the doorway. Harry and Mariana had made it back. Artie was relieved to see him standing there, his hands burrowed into his coat and his nose pink from the cold.
"I'll go give these to everyone," Louis offered quietly.
"Thanks," Artie pulled her eyes from Harry's to glance at Louis.
"No, thank you," he mumbled, getting out. "For the car, and...and for the cube."
Artie shrugged as Louis rounded the front of the car. "Sure. It's no problem."
Harry walked over and rested his arms low on her hips. "Hi," he smiled. "Where'd you go?"
Artie poked her thumb over her shoulder. "Got their car."
He shook his head, running one hand over her messy hair. "It could have waited." He kissed her, cupping her face. She was smiling into the kiss.
Artie shrugged once they broke apart, "I didn't have anything else to do."
Harry laughed low in his chest, a sound that stirred feelings low in Artie's abdomen. "Come on, we got all kinds of good stuff."
Mariana went off to distract the kids, so Harry could bring in the last of the Christmas supplies. The back of the jeep was filled with decorations, a fake tree, and bags and bags of stuff. Artie grabbed her carbon polymer cube and unfolded it into a short pole. She slid the bags onto the ends, then rested the pole on her shoulder. She kind of resembled the figure of justice with her scales.
Harry came over and tried to take the burden for her.
"I've got it," Artie smiled. "Get the tree."
"But--"
"The weight is distributed through the plastic, lessening the load. Don't worry. I've got it."
He shook his head, smiling that bemused smile he reserved for when Artie spoke science.
Once they were upstairs, Artie led Harry to the west corridor and all the way down to a room at the end of the hall. She started to open the many bags, but he shooed her away, telling her to go wash the grease and dirt off. He tossed her a towel and new clothes before she got out the door. She asked for a set of clean clothes for Louis as well. She walked back down the hall, stopping to check in on Ash. Ash was sleeping, and Louis glanced up at Artie.
"Hey." Artie nodded towards the bed, "how's he doing?"
"He's fine!" A girl's voice snapped. Artie hadn't even noticed Serenity sitting there.
"Don't mind Serenity," Louis said, coming out into the hall with Artie and closing the door behind them. "She's just protective of him."
"Fair enough," Artie nodded. "Not many of us left, so we should be protective."
Louis smiled sadly. "True." They went to the common room together, where Sam sat holding the toddler. "I'm protective of this one." He picked up the baby.
"Louis!" She shouted as her stuffed lion fell.
Artie picked it up and handed it to her. "Okay. There you go." She had no idea how to talk to kids. How old the kid even was. How even to tell how old a kid was. She handed Louis the plastic bag with fresh clothes. "For you. Happy birthday, again."
"Don't tell anyone else, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. Well, I'm going to get cleaned up." She went to the large dormitory bathroom to shower. The hot water felt good, rinsing away the muck of days without a shower, compounded by crawling around in the dingy basement and disassembling the greasy car engine.
That evening, Harry cooked for the group while Mariana and Louis wrapped presents to go under the fake tree. Artie assembled several train sets that Harry had gotten, creating a twisting curving pattern that looped over the whole room, on and under tables, around the tree. While she was working, Harry would look over at her, watching her, smiling like she was a little kid playing with toys. Okay, it was a toy train set, but still, Artie was approaching it as an engineer. The physics of it all. And so what if she had fun.
So what if she and Harry had fun later, too.
As they lay there entwined on their sides on the small dormitory bed, sated and satisfied, Harry slid a small box from the side table. "I got you a present," he murmured, "a little something to go on your necklace." He grazed his fingertips over the collection of charms hanging on a single chain around Artie's neck. He opened the box for her, revealing a little silver motorcycle. It was adorable in its implications. She smiled up at him as she reached behind her neck to unclasp the chain. "Here, let me," he said, brushing her hands out of the way.
"Put it on the left side," Artie said. Harry slid the new charm onto the chain and reconnected it. Artie touched it gingerly. "It was my mother's once."
He ran his hand over her hair affectionately, kissing along the same path. "She gave it to you?"
Artie shook her head. "My father gave it to me after she died."
"How did she die?" His fingers traced swirling patterns on her skin, down her arm, over her hip, back up again.
"She had a massive stroke when I was nine. The pearl, it was her birth stone." Artie again fiddled with the charms, separating them and rolling each between her fingertips. "My grandmother gave it to her when she turned 18."
Harry kissed Artie's cheek, wet with a single tear. "My father died when I was younger, too; I was just 15." They kissed, a soft, sweet kiss of affection and companionship, not of passion and lust. "What about your dad?"
"He died in this flu, a few days before you and I met."
It may seem odd, this question-and-answer session, but it was how they'd always been, what they'd always done. This was how they had spent their nights...learning about one another: their families--Harry the little brother, Artie the only child; their careers--Harry the journalist, Artie the nuclear engineer; their favorites of food and music and sports--Harry loved sushi and classic rock and the Green Bay packers, Artie loved Pueblo-Mexican food, indie rock and rap, and the Chicago Bulls, the team her father had loved as a child growing up in the southside of Chicago.
"What did your parents do for a living?"
"My mom was a teacher before I was born, elementary school. She had me late in life, and had a couple of strokes that disabled her after I was born. My father made furniture, he was craftsman, a carpenter," Artie touched the silver hammer hanging next to the pearl and held it up for Harry to see. "He gave me this on its own chain, but I wanted them together. What about you? What did your parents do?"
"My father was in computers," Harry shrugged. But his expression saddened as he spoke of his mother, whose messages he still checked for every day. "And my mum, who is an incredible woman, owns a bakery. She's a baker." His voice cracked a little at the end.
"Ah, is that why you're so sweet?" Artie attempted to lighten his mood.
Harry laughed and pressed his open palm over Artie's face. "That was terrible." She licked his palm, and he laughed even harder, his eyes scrunched closed adorably. "Ick."
Artie looked Harry in the eye, earnest and determined. "I'll get you home, Harry. I promise."
He nuzzled down closer, kissing Artie's cheek and ear, his breath hot against her skin. "I'll get you home, too, Artemisia." He found her lips with his, delicate little kisses that made Artie's pulse accelerate.
"I don't have a home anymore," Artie said, looking down at Harry's hand on her hip.
"My home is your home," he stated plainly, as if that should be obvious to her. Artie pulled Harry down for another kiss, sliding her lips between his with fervent emotion. He caressed her cheek lightly as he broke the kiss, gazing into her eyes lovingly. No one had ever looked at Artie like that. Harry cleared his throat, blushing and smiling as he turned away to cough. "What are the other charms, um, what do they, or um what are they for?" Artie showed him the jade heart her high school boyfriend had given her. And the silver atom with blue and red gemstones that her father gave her to represent her work in nuclear engineering when she graduated from MIT. Harry again grazed his fingers across the small collection. "That's quite elite company I'm in."
"Very," Artie murmured against his lips.
"Oh god," Harry pulled away again, his eyes wide. "I didn't mean to be presumptuous! Assuming I should be on there--"
Artie laughed and shook her head. "No, it's where you belong."
This time the kiss was charged with passion. Harry slid his mouth lower, attaching to Artie's neck, sucking until she squirmed out of his grasp with a squeal and bit his neck in retaliation. He merely turned his attention to her breasts instead, kneading and teasing as Artie's hips rose in response. They'd only been engaging in intercourse for seven days, but Harry knew Artie's body so well, knew how to make her aroused and ready.
He slid into her effortlessly, with a simple tip of her hips and a thrust of his. As a reflex, Artie moaned and rolled her hips up to meet his. It was simple physics. Shifting body weight one way or another, accelerating the pace, applying well-placed pressure to cause friction. The mechanics of their sex was pure science, but when Artie looked into Harry's eyes, it was pure romance, and she felt swept away, like in the novels of her youth.
Artie had never been much for romantic love. She loved her family and cared deeply for her close friends. But she had never felt the passion and almost other-worldly sensation described by writers. Until now. But could one fall in love in less than two weeks? Could one give her heart to a stranger in the middle of the collapse of the world as we all knew it?
Yes, it turned out. One could.
Artie did.
Had it been that very first moment when he took off his motorcycle helmet, and his green eyes captivated her? Or was it when he helped her bury the isolated stranger dying of cancer as the population of the planet died around her? Or was it the way he ravenously devoured everything she said and did?
Perhaps, it was the moment when, on Christmas morning, he looked even more joyful and childlike in his excitement and wonder than the kids.
Perhaps, Artie thought as she watched their group unwrapping presents the next morning, perhaps it was all of that. An amalgamation of factors, compounding and building up to love. This was the most accurate hypothesis she had working, as each moment she spent with Harry seemed to deepen her feelings for him.
Harry beamed at the little girl in Louis' lap. Lux, Artie had finally learned was her name. Harry giggled and made silly faces at her as she pawed at her present, struggling to get the paper unwrapped. Eventually, he assisted her, plucking the tape away with his long fingers. Lux pulled the paper apart and found another stuffed lion, almost larger than she was.
"Loooouiiiiis!" She squealed, hugging the plush toy against her.
"Here, we got you a little harness," Harry said, and Artie loved the way harness had a twinge of a British accent to it, "for little Louis." He strapped Lux's small Lion to the back of the big one, and she stared at him with big, wondrous eyes. When he handed it back to her, she took it and waddled away with its fluffy ear in her mouth.
"Little Louis is jet-packing," Louis said, and Harry laughed, nodding along.
Louis reached behind him and handed a package to Harry, whose fingers made quick work of the wrapping paper. Harry glanced down at the present in his hands, then up at Artie, grinning. She furrowed her brows at him. He held up the framed photo of her with Barack Obama. Artie tipped her head forward laughing. Harry walked on his knees over to her.
"Look at you in a dress," Harry smirked at her.
Artie shook her head, trying so hard to hold back her smile. "That was a long time ago."
"How long? How old are you there?" Harry gazed down at the picture, looking at Artie's former self the same way he looked at her now.
"Nineteen," she touched the photo, then glanced up at Louis who was watching them from across the room. She nodded at him, and he smiled, tight-lipped, and turned away to talk to Lux.
"Wow. You were getting presidential awards at nineteen. I was getting drunk."
Artie burst out laughing. "I did most of my drinking in high school."
"Really?" Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Artie nodded. "I'm surprised. Sciency genius like you, I would think you'd stay away from that scene." Aha. So that's where Louis got that phrase.
Artie chuckled again, touching Harry's cheek with the tips of her fingers. "I was a typical teenager. I went to parties, drank beer, built elaborate mazes for the drunks to get through, hypothesized about the probable uses of nuclear fission in every day life. Ya know, typical teenage stuff."
He flicked his eyes up to hers, looking up at her through his long lashes. "Typical," he smiled, his dimples creasing his cheeks. "What disturbs me is that I can't tell what, if any of that, was a joke, and what was real."
"It was all real. I really got drunk and talked to my friends about how I was going to invent something that would change the world."
Harry held up his wrist, where his new thermal cube was strapped with medical tape. "You did."
Sam and Liam started dishing out Christmas breakfast. Eggs and cheese. Apparently the cold storage at the culinary school had eggs that were farm fresh and large blocks of unopened cheese that would be viable for several more weeks. Months, maybe. They'd put together pretty tasty omelettes for everyone.
As they ate, Harry checked his phone. Even though Artie had told him the servers would be down, he still checked it several times a day, looking for a message from his mum. Artie touched his arm, just a moment of contact to get his attention. "We'll go soon. Tomorrow even, if you want," she murmured into his ear. "Hell, tonight if you want."
He smiled sideways at her, nodding.
"Anyone else need anything?" Alysha asked from behind them. "A coffee or juice?"
Harry stuck his fingers up in the air, "I'll take one of those lattes with the caramel creamer."
"You mean, these bottled Starbucks frappuccinos?"
"Erm, yeah, I suppose." As Alysha went to the fridge, Harry leaned against Artie. "We can go tomorrow, if that's okay." She nodded. "Thank you," he ran his hand down her arm. His hands were soft but his fingertips were cracked and dry from the cold.
"We're going to head north tomorrow," Artie said to the group. "Harry has family there, still alive. You can come with us if you want."
This sparked a raucous discussion among the group. Serenity seemed to be saying Ash wasn't well enough. Mariana and Louis and Liam seemed to want to go. But everyone was talking at once.
"We shouldn't decide this now," Alysha said from the door to the kitchen, holding a couple of bottles of Starbucks in her hands. "It's Christmas. Let's just forget everything for a day or two and relax. We've all been on the road, struggling. We have shelter, food. We shouldn't go." She sighed. "Not yet." And so subject was dropped for the moment.
Harry seemed to appreciate Artie's concern, pulling her to straddle his lap when they were alone in their room later that night. "Thank you, baby. I hope the others come along."
"I do too, but we will go whether or not they do." Artie shrugged, kissing his forehead. "I hate seeing you worry. I want to get you home, take away that stress for you." Harry kissed her neck in response, mumbling thank yous against her skin. "Can I do anything to take your mind off those worries?" Artie's voice was low and sultry.
With a twinkle in his eye, Harry moved his mouth to her ear, whispering things one shouldn't repeat.
Artie bit her lip and pushed him back on the bed, sliding his shirt up his muscled torso. He was so lean and long, and even though Harry was clumsy at times, falling over his own feet or knocking stuff off counters and tables, he seemed to know exactly how to use his body when it came to sex. Artie wouldn't necessarily say the same about herself. But after seven straight days of exploring one another, she knew what he liked. Artie kissed the ridges of his muscles, standing out on his abdomen as he tensed under her touch, then slid her tongue down the thin thatch of hair leading from his belly button to the waistband of his pants. His hips bucked up in response, and she took the opportunity to pull his jeans down to his knees.
He was hard, ready and waiting for her. She took his erection in her hand and in her mouth, using her tongue to tease the underside, eliciting a deep moan from him. He leaned up on his elbows to watch as she slid him further into her mouth, increasing the suction and motion of her tongue. Artie couldn't shut off her scientific mind, even in the midst of such raw passion, which was helpful, actually, as he hit the back of her throat and she nearly gagged. She reminded herself that she wasn't really choking, exhaled through her nose and pushed further, rippling the hair on his pelvis with her breath.
"Oh, fuck," he moaned. Artie quickened her tongue's pace until he came in hot spurts down her throat. She didn't stop though, teasing out the last drops from his slit with her lips. Harry collapsed back against the bed, covering his face with one arm. "Oh my fuck, Artemisia. That was incredible." Artie crawled along his body leaving wet kisses on his bare skin. He pulled her up urgently, clawing his fingers into her wild curly hair as he kissed her. His right hand trailed down to the band of her panties and slipped in. He smirked at her, sliding his fingers up and down her very wet labia. "Turns you on to suck my cock, Art?"
"Mm-hmm," Artie murmured, pushing her hips down against his hand.
"I want to taste you, too," he whispered into their kiss. He rolled her onto her back and tugged her shirt and panties off, leaving her bare on the small bed. His fingertips skimmed along her skin, raising goosebumps. He dipped his head down and kissed a delicate path from her belly button to the patch of hair at the junction of her thighs. Artie moaned as his tongue made contact with her clitoris, applying perfect pressure to send a jolt of pleasure from her hips to her toes, which curled with tightening intensity. Harry slid two fingers in and added friction to the mix, and between that and the force of his tongue, she was done.
But when he went to kiss her mouth after, Artie turned away, grimacing. "Ew. No."
"What? I can't kiss you?"
Artie shook her head. "I don't want to taste vagina." Harry laughed and leaned in for a kiss again, assuming it was a joke. Artie pressed her lips shut. "Go brush. And wash your face, too."
He laughed again but obliged, snuggling back into bed with minty fresh breath. "You're so weird sometimes. Everything is all sciency and straightforward, but this you can't handle." Artie laughed too, shrugging. "It's just sex."
Those words stung. It was irrational, Artie knew, but they pained her nonetheless. Was this just sex to him? That wasn't really what he meant, she knew. He meant that her fluids on his face shouldn't bother her because it's natural and blah blah blah, but she couldn't help wondering if Artie was in this deeper than he was. She tried to push those thoughts away, to fight the insecurities that told her she was too old, and not pretty enough, and too weird for someone as young and beautiful and effortlessly cool as Harry.
It was a sleepless, fretful night.
The next day, it was decided that they would all leave together after the new year, which Artie argued was a rather arbitrary date, but she conceded the issue, not wanting to deal with conflict. The New Years celebrations were marred though, when Liam opened the door to venture out for food and the snow reached to the ceiling. They had to stand on chairs to see through the gap of maybe four inches at the top of the door. Their cars were completely buried, hell, the whole city was completely buried, under a vast plateau of shimmering white.
"I guess we're not going anywhere anytime soon," Sam said, her voice squeaking with pained sarcasm.
Artie looked at Harry in dismay. They were trapped in Southern California. Shit, they were trapped in the fucking building. She shook her head in frustration. If they had left days ago, as she suggested, they'd be well on their way. Or they'd be buried under six feet of snow.
Either way, they weren't going to make it home.
~~~~~
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Kit's pov will be next, hopefully within the next few weeks.