Setting Fire to the Stars (a MM Sci-Fi Romance)

Chapter 6: Help

Not a new chapter, just editing and adding some scenes to help better the plot.

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Peter
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If I thought that being in same class with Lauren was agonizing, I'd severely underestimated how much worse it would be to share a space with him.

For starters, he was always up before me. I'd roll out of the bed in the guest suite at seven AM to do my morning push ups and there he'd be. In the kitchen making home brewed coffee on the gas stove, in the living room tinkering with the walkies, organizing food or rationing out the remaining water bottles at the dining room table.

Lauren was always just . . . there. Like he couldn't physically let me wake up before him or something. It annoyed me, though I didn't know exactly why but figured I didn't actually need a reason. His very presence was like a painful itch that wouldn't go away.

What bugged me most was whenever he attempted to strike up a conversation.

The first morning, I woke up with the worst headache. Stumbling downstairs, I did a double-take. Lauren sitting at the island counter with a plate topped with toast, two steaming mugs resting in front of him.

"Morning," he said, as if this were just another Saturday morning and not the end of the world. The calmness in his voice greeted my nerves and my head as he gestured to a red ceramic mug. "I made some toast and coffee off the stove. How's the arm?"

Even with my head throbbing like the beating of a snare drum, I recognized his action for what they were. A metaphorical olive branch.

Let's light that shit on fire.

Picking up the cup, I tilted it, sloshing the thick black liquid from side to side. "Coffee? From you? Might as well be poison."

His body immediately tensed, face doing that thing where his brows pinched together and his lips thinned just enough to let me know that I'd gotten under his skin. The thought made me smirk in triumph.

"If you don't want it, don't drink it," Lauren gritted out.

"Did I ever say I didn't want it?" Snagging the cup, I purposely didn't offer so much as a whisper of thanks. "Even drinking poison is preferable to listening to you whine." My tongue was sharp, just as I'd meant for it to be, a way of protesting his ridiculous gesture of making breakfast. I sipped the foul, bitter liquid that tasted like burnt ash.

Instead of more of that fire that I was looking to stoke, Lauren rose from his seat, the hope in his eyes dimming into hard stone. "You really are a fucking asshole," he muttered, shaking his head.

Turning on his heel, he left without another word, abandoning his own coffee and the warm toast on the counter.

Something twinged deep in my ribs, pulling my mouth down in a grimace when I ran a hand over my heart. Naturally, I understood that we had no one else to rely on but each other, but I detested the idea.

We didn't speak for the entire rest of the day.

The next morning, there was a steaming cup of coffee waiting for me when I came downstairs.

The following days were much the same. We only came together to eat from our carefully organized stockpile of canned food, voyaging to the other nearby houses to locate more supplies, and tried not picking fights during the designated times we'd set to change my bandages. Probably not a good time to point out what a nutcase he was for insisting on making me coffee each morning while he held a pair of razor-sharp scissors so close to my arm.