High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 29 - I don't know what you're looking for

"I think it's better if you stop working here."

The voice of his boss at Gravity still rang in this ear, even after Plan had disconnected the call. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and hurried over to excuse himself from the coffee break his colleagues at the research group were taking.

He needed to go out for a breath of fresh air and time to process this turn of events.

He should have anticipated it... losing his bartender job shouldn't sting so much.

But it did.

He should have been more wary when things had suddenly been going smoothly for a while:

The home story had satisfied the immediate curiosity most people had had about him. The exclusivity deal had made sure that no other Thai media could get through and foreign media had simply recycled the home story. For everyone else, there was Plan's feed on the photo sharing app.

The production team might have talked him into making the profile, but Plan had soon gotten addicted to using it himself, posting pictures of his day into the void and hearing the void talk back. He liked that. It was a way of being in the limelight that he had some measure of control over, even if Mean's sister Joule had started to bug him about becoming an influencer and appearing on her pictures to create buzz.

So far, also thanks to her brother, she had respected it when he had politely declined each time.

The days at UdG were more agreeable now, too, since he was officially a member of White Hand and people were treating him with a kind of reverence and respect he had never had before, while he was just a grumpy loner and an unlikely genius.

But mostly, things had been fine because of Mean.

They had been able to spend their evenings together whenever they were free – thanks to the pretext of Plan explaining statistics to Mean.

They had both agreed not to rush things. There had been enough changes in both of their lives to adjust to, there was no need to add more.

Instead, they had finally gotten to know each other for real. They had found out that they both loved to watch food documentaries and old science fiction movies and TV series. They had even gotten into a heated debate on whether a warp engine could eventually be built, since there had been a few papers showing that it might be possible to achieve faster-than-light speed for spaceships without violating general relativity. The idea of such an engine had made Mean excited, almost as if he imagined himself actually building it one day, whereas Plan had argued that this was just a useful way to frame strictly theoretical discussions on the limits and the possibilities of the current theoretical framework.

Despite not really coming to an agreement, the discussion had been fun, and it had ended with one of them shutting the other up mid-argument with a kiss that had devolved into an intense make-out session – though afterwards, they also couldn't agree on who had stopped whom and who was allowed to tease the other for it.

It was still sometimes hard for Plan to merge the two versions he had gotten to know of his boyfriend together into a somewhat coherent image: the silly public persona that his parents always loved to encourage, and the brainy private person that not even the other members of White Hand really knew about.

What made it difficult was the fact that both versions were clearly real and Plan couldn't decide which facet he liked better.

Mean wasn't putting up much of an act to appear silly and frivolous – in many situations, he just was like that. For example, two days ago, he had spontaneously dragged all of White Hand to an invite-only concert of jazz pianist Herbie Hancock he had somehow gotten access to, just because Hancock was the original composer of Cantaloupe Island and that song obviously had a special meaning to him now. Win had complained how boring it was both on the way there and back, Viola had raised her eyebrows and said nothing, Rose had smiled in public and laughed in private as usual, and Plan had oscillated between feeling like he was happily floating all the time and being a nervous wreck for doing something so bold.