Parasite║LGBT+ Romance 🏳️‍🌈

5: Touch

"Everything?" Shiro breaks into a laugh, a melodic rumble deep within his chest. "I think we're going to freeze before we can do everything."

He takes my trembling hand. My skin tingles. Sparks eddy through my knuckles, my wrist, my arm. I breathe in a steeling lungful of cold cab air.

Shiro's fingers retreat. His eyebrows bunch with concern. "It's OK if you don't want to. We can just keep warm together."

"I want to," I whisper. My breaths putter out of me, shallow and erratic. I suck in another deep breath. "Just nervous."

"You only ever been with sims before?"

"Yeah."

"Sim men or women or..?"

"Whoever."

For a parasite like me, the safest option is to design a metaverse simulation, an attractive and artificial lover who will never ask me difficult questions, and who will conveniently disappear the moment I disconnect from the metaverse. Sims are so alluring that I'm not surprised that most Edgers avoid real relationships, instead spending every evening in the metaverse, on fantastic adventures in sim houses on a sim Earth, with sim partners and sim children. When real life on the Edge is so bleak, I don't blame them for seeking solace in fantasy.

As beautiful as sims are, artificial perfection seems totally inadequate when compared to Shiro's rough-hewn attention on me: he's shabby and weathered, yet so very real.

No longer the picture of a frail criminal, Shiro sits alert and attentive, his previously shade-glazed eyes suddenly alight with brilliance. "What do you like?"

"I don't know."

An exploratory fingertip slides from clavicle, to neck, to cheek, tracing a burning path along my beard. "Are you a man too?"

I smile. "No. I'm just me. Just Heems."

"Can I kiss you, Heems?"

This can't be real. This must all be a terrible coincidence. Shiro's meatware must have a momentary glitch, and any minute now it will reset and my kiss will drain him, like it drained Ying.

Long moments of holding my breath with Shiro's fingertips gentle against my cheek, yet the bliss of feeding doesn't come. Shiro doesn't slip into a coma in my arms. He's not my host, and for once, I'm not a parasite.

"Yes." I look up into bright, hopeful eyes. "Kiss me."

Slender fingers splay over my jaw, dragging a whimper out of me. The softest of kisses pop onto my cheeks, my eyelids, my lips, like warm raindrops. Not the acidic drizzle of Eris-1's dome, but a rhythmic pattering, like the first day of a monsoon on Earth. I'd never have imagined that there could be any better feeling than the heady rush of energy through my veins when feeding, but feeding is nothing compared to Shiro's warmth. He feels so good that I want to scream into the storm.

Somewhere beneath the ecstasy my dormant courage awakens. Hesitant fingers somehow find their way into Shiro's hair and down his long pale neck, sliding over each vertebra with a wondrous bump. I ease off clothes and cling tight to Shiro as he works on us. He's brought my myriad metaverse fantasies to life — his touch doesn't feed me, and my touch doesn't drain him. Every moment that he remains immune to my vampirism makes the joy sweeter. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I can't stop smiling or I'll cry.

Blissfully sleepy, I sit up to inspect the intricacies of Shiro's decorated skin. A tattoo of a shining black koi swims across his back, weaving between two blood-red lily pads. His arms and legs are scattered with cherry blossom, chains of mountains and white cranes in flight. I press my lips to his forehead, his nose, his chin. So close to death, how has he made my universe so shining, new and brilliant?