One (One Universe)

gently nudges me back down.
    “No, you were right,” he says. “No flying.”
    There’s a small eating area inside the arena, with picnic-like tables, a long top with benches attached. He hoists me up to sit on the table part of one of them, my feet resting on the bench. He straddles them, sitting down to face me. Now his face is only a little lower than mine. This is how I love to look at him, and he knows it. He’s humoring me. He cups his hands over my knees and looks into my eyes, and warmth floods me.
    Like he can tell what I’m thinking, he murmurs, “I need you just as much as you need me. Probably more.” He grins. “At least floaters can spy on people.”
    “Then why have you been coming here? And why didn’t you tell me?” I can hear the whine in my voice, and I hate it, but my heart twists so much that it grabs my throat and makes the words come out all funny. Needy. I don’t know why that bothers me, especially with Elias sitting here and looking into my eyes and telling me how much he needs me.
    He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. Hoping I’d see my sisters. Still haven’t. Hoping I’d make my dad happy. But the truth is, they’ve been doing testing on me on and off for years. They’re, uh…stubborn.” He laughs a little and smiles at me, but I can’t smile back. I must be staring at him like I don’t understand because he starts talking again.
    “Let me start again. I’ve been going for…tests, I guess. I’ve known the theories about how they could make us better. Make us Supers, I mean. Real ones. I wasn’t going to show you the arena until they found something conclusive. You know, about me. Us.”
    “So it wasn’t really basketball,” I say, staring at the floor. There are a lot of more important things to say, things I want to find out more about. But thinking of him with needles stuck in his arm or hooked up to medical machinery makes my stomach drop. My Elias, a test subject.
    “But, Mer,” he says, his hands running up the outsides of my legs and reaching up to grab my waist, “Mer. They can’t make me fly. I’ve never flown any way but with you. You make me better. You make me fly. I need you. Not some stupid tests, not the stupid Hub.” His voice sounds kind of angry, and I can’t tell if it’s because of me or something else.
    “How are you okay with that?” And now I can feel it, my real question coming out, because I always assumed Elias was okay with needing me, but of course, it doesn’t make sense, not at all, with how gorgeous and sweet and popular and, apparently, powerful he is. How well-connected. How involved in what they’re doing at the Hub.
    “Okay with what? Needing you?” he asks.
    I nod, looking at the floor next to him.
    “I’m better with you than I was without. I mean, in a couple ways. I guess…even if we weren’t Ones. I’d still tell you any day of the week that I need you. That I…I need you, Mer.”
    I sit opposite him, silent, gazing out at the arena over his shoulder, imagining what it would be like to be a part of it, for real, not just tagged onto a limited guest pass at the Symposium or sneaking into a hallway with Elias. Testing or participating or developing enhancements — I could rock it. I could be here, fit right in here. And if I could work on the research, really get my hands dirty — I know it, know it in my gut — I could fly.
    “Is that why you’re doing this, Merrin? Is that why you want to do the intern thing? Because you’re…you’re not okay with it?”
    I hear the part he didn’t ask. Because you’re not okay with needing me? My words catch in my throat, but I have to say them. “Don’t you ever dream of flying on your own?”
    “No. Not really. Not until you brought it up. That’s always been my dad’s thing.”
    His eyes look sad, so sad they make my heart sink into my stomach. So sad they make his feelings more important, for the moment, than my frustration that he kept something from me. More important than my frustration with myself, that having Elias in my life somehow still doesn’t make me quite happy enough.
    I don’t feel the same way about my Oneness as Elias does about his, but I’m pretty sure I feel the same way about him as he does about me. I don’t want him to hurt. I definitely don’t want to be the one who makes him hurt.
    I reach down, lace my fingers through his hair, and kiss him on the forehead, then the lips, a gentle kiss becoming deeper.
    “I