Page 124 of Stop and Seek
Not real ones. Some reached from the walls, stuttering in and out with the strobes, stretching like shadows. Some filled the cavity inside his chest and stomach. Theo couldn’t tell if they belonged to anyone. Couldn’t tell ifhebelonged to anyone. The guy grinding against him might’ve had a face. Maybe. Something like teeth flashed, and Theo’s own laughter caught in his throat like a hiccup.
The music was in his ribcage now, in the bones of his knees. Every beat crawled up the back of his neck and sat buzzing behind his eyes. God, it was too much. Tooloud.He was melting. He was definitely melting. Maybe dying. Hard to tell.
Hands on his waist again. The stranger’s fingers. Ornotfingers—something wormlike, pulsing. Theo tipped his head back, blinking up at the lights that felt like starbursts painted on the inside of his skull. The air tasted purple.
No, ultraviolet.
How do you taste colors—
Then someone grabbed his arm.
Real, this time. Hot. Grounded. Sharp enough to snap a tendon. Theo turned and the whole club tilted with him.
Noah.
The strobe caught the side of his nose and fuck—hiseyes.Theo’s heart punched the inside of his chest, hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Noah was saying something. Teeth bared, jaw clenched, voice swallowed up by the music. Theo squinted, vision framed in warping halos. There was so much anger in Noah’s face, and all Theo could think was howattractiveNoah was. And howunfairit was.
“Holy shit,” Theo breathed. He was grinning, couldn’t stop. His lips felt numb. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He meant it. Meant it more than he’d ever meant anything. Noah’s presence felt like a reset button slamming down in the middle of a hallucinated apocalypse. Something fuckingtangible.
But Noah’s grip was too tight.
“You seem fine dry humping someone out in the open,” Noah said, or maybe shouted, but the the walls chewed up the words and spit them back out behind Theo’s ears.
Theo laughed. He couldn’t help it. It came out wrong—too jagged, too bright. “God, why are you hot when you’repissed?”He shook his head and everything blurred, his glasses slipping down his nose.
He wanted to kiss him. Or cry. Or crawl into his skin andstay there.That sounded like the best option.
One trip inside Noah’s flesh box, please.
“You invited me here,” Noah said, and there was something hurt in it.
Theo hiccuped. Swallowed down the broken laughter, even though it still buzzed at the edges of his teeth. “I did,” he said slowly, blinking through the colored smear of light. “I did and you came.”
He reached for Noah’s face, didn’t make contact.
“I just—” His voice cracked. The words were slippery, hard to hold. “I wanted something to feelnormal. And I don’t thinkanythingfeels normal now.”
The lights strobed white, and for a second, Noah’s face was all he could see.
“So your normal is going out, getting high, and fucking strangers?” Noah’s voice turned even sharper. "Obviously. That's how you metme."
Not anymore. Theo hadn’t done that in a while. He really,reallyhadn’t.
Except the words didn’t come out like they should have. His mouth wouldn’t work. His body didn’t know what to do. Sweat trickled down his temple, catching rainbow colors in the flashing lights.
And then Noah moved.
Fingers tangled in Theo’s hair—forceful, painful as hell. Theo gasped, spine arching. His whole body turned liquid, pliant. He leaned in, trembling with want.
“You are mine.Mine, Theo.”
The words barely registered at first—a mish-mash of noise. Noah’s voice didn’t sound like Noah anymore. It sounded like thunder, ringing through Theo’s skull, low and violent, vibrating his teeth. He blinked up at him, heart jackhammering in his chest like it was trying to shatter his ribs from the inside out. He couldn’t tell if he was trembling from the acid or from Noah’s hand still fisted in his hair.
Mine.
