Chapter 387 | Stop Being Smart at Me Right Now

Chapter 387: 387 | Stop Being Smart at Me Right Now

The trait did not stop when he wanted it to stop. That was the whole architecture of the thing, and the System had described it in one line of clinical text with a footnote calling him a documented biohazard, and six weeks ago he had laughed at that footnote in a Target parking lot like an idiot who did not understand what he had just been handed.

Chloe was making noises into the duvet that did not have consonants in them.

"Nnnh . . . hnnn . . . Jordan . . . nnnnh, it’s coming out . . ."

"I know."

"It’s coming out, there’s, hah, there’s too much, it’s running down my . . ."

"I know."

"Say something other than I know."

"You asked for it inside."

Her hand came back blind and hit his hip. "Shut up. Nnnh."

He pulled out and it made a sound. An unambiguous one. Wet, thick, the kind of noise that in any other context would have made an eighteen-year-old want to sink into the floor, and Kumiko, still folded against his chest with her cheek pressed to his sternum and both legs completely nonfunctional, lifted her head and looked and made a small strangled sound like a kettle in another room.

"Oh," she whispered. "Oh no."

"Yeah."

"That’s, um. That’s a volume. That’s a documented volume."

"Stop looking."

"I’m not looking with intent, I’m looking with scientific . . . ah . . ." Her voice fell apart in the middle. "Jordan-kun, it’s still . . . you’re still . . ."

He was still. He was aware. Being aware of it was ninety percent of the problem, because the other option was to think about the fact that he had gone from crying into an energy drink can on an unwashed floor to kneeling on a four-thousand-dollar mattress with one girlfriend leaking down her own thigh and the other one nested against his ribs like a housecat, and thinking about that at any depth was going to make him do something embarrassing, like feel things.

Chloe rolled onto her side. Slowly. Her hair was a black and blue disaster stuck to her cheek, her chest was still moving too fast, and her eyes had that unfocused shine they only got twice a week, when she’d worked hard enough to stop calculating.

"Water damage," she said.

"What?"

"The bathroom. The floor. There was two inches of standing water when we left." She dragged a hand down her face. "The suite has a damage deposit built into the rate. I read the confirmation email. Four hundred dollars, refundable, at management discretion."

"You’re doing math."

"I’m always doing math."

"You’ve got my . . ." He gestured. Broadly. There was no clean way to gesture at what he was gesturing at. "And you’re thinking about a damage deposit."

Chloe’s mouth did the thing where one corner moved two millimeters and that was the entire smile. "It’s four hundred dollars, and at one point five eight I clear six hundred thirty-two on it whether they keep it or not, so technically I want them to keep it."

Kumiko made a wounded noise into his chest. "You’re monetizing the bathtub."

"I monetize everything."

"That’s so hot and I hate it."

Jordan laid Kumiko down. She weighed nothing, which was a fact he had stopped pretending he did not enjoy, and she went boneless against the pillows with her hair spilled everywhere and one pink ribbon still hanging on by a thread and the other one lost somewhere in the bedding, probably forever, probably at a cost of nine dollars from a shop on Main Street that Kumiko would insist on replacing tomorrow.

He looked at the two of them for a second longer than he meant to.

Chloe sprawled with the shameless economy of somebody who had decided her body was hers and had stopped negotiating with the room about it. Kumiko curled small with her knees together like she was still apologizing for taking up space, which she was, and probably always would be, and Jordan had made peace with the fact that he was going to spend a stupid amount of his life talking her out of that.

"You’re staring," Chloe said.

"You’re both naked."

"Observant."

"Extremely."

Kumiko pushed herself up on one elbow, which took her three tries, and her arm shook the entire time, and she looked at Jordan with an expression that had zero self-preservation in it whatsoever.

"Can I," she said.

"Can you what."

"I have a request. I’ve had it for nine days. It’s on page eleven."

"Kumi."

"I want to try . . ." She got about that far before her whole face went the color of the ribbon that was still holding. Her hands came up to cover it. "I want to try being on top. Not because I’m good at it. I’ve done it twice and both times I got tired at like ninety seconds and had to be, um, rescued. But you keep doing everything and I keep just lying here making noises like a broken toy and I want to do a thing. For you. One thing."

Chloe, flat on her back, addressed the ceiling. "Let her do the thing."

"You have class in eight hours."

"So do you, and neither of us is going," Chloe said. "It’s Sunday."

"Then why did you say she had class."

"Because it makes her hurry."

Kumiko sat up all the way. Her twin tail had entirely surrendered by that point, and with the hair down and loose past her shoulders she looked like a different person, older, and Jordan had noticed that the first time and had not yet found a good way to say it that did not come out like a line from a subscription service.

He lay back.

Kumiko crawled over him with a determination completely disproportionate to the task, one knee, then the other, small hands flat on his chest for balance, and she got herself positioned and then froze with a look of pure academic panic.

"Angle," she said.

"Yeah."

"The angle is worse from up here."

"It’s the same angle."

"It’s not the same angle. Chloe-chan, tell him it’s not the same angle."

"It’s the same angle," Chloe said. "Sit down."

Kumiko sat down.

"Hn . . . nnnhh . . . haaah . . . oh, oh no, oh no it’s, it’s deeper, why is it deeper, ah, ahh . . ."

"Gravity," Chloe said.

"Stop being smart at me right now."