Chapter 7: Unplugged
The woodsmoke scent was the first thing to seep into Luna’s consciousness. Then the sharp, clean aroma of pine needles through the open window. Then the deep, familiar ache in her thighs, a pleasant soreness that spoke of the previous night’s abandon. Sunlight, filtered through dusty cabin windows, fell in warm stripes across the rumpled quilt and Elliot’s sleeping face.
She was already awake, propped on an elbow, watching him. His breathing was slow and even, one arm flung above his head, the other curled around her waist even in sleep. The week of enforced distance had been a specific kind of torture. Text threads filled with memes and code snippets and terrible puns, all while sitting on opposite sides of her couch, a cruel, self-imposed canyon between them. The drive up here had been charged with a static so thick she thought she might combust.
Last night, they hadn’t even made it to the bedroom.
The memory played in her head, vivid and fragmented: stumbling through the cabin door, dropping bags, his mouth on hers before the key had even hit the table. The rough scrape of the wool rug against her back, the violent, desperate coupling by the fireplace, all whispered apologies and gasped promises against sweat-slicked skin. No performance. Just need.
Now, in the honeyed quiet of morning, a different need surfaced. Quieter. Deeper.
She shifted, the old mattress springs groaning softly beneath them. Sliding her leg over his hips, she settled astride him, the quilt pooling around her waist. The morning chill puckered her skin. He stirred, a soft groan escaping his lips as his eyes fluttered open. They focused on her, blurry with sleep, then cleared, warming with a silent recognition.
“Hey,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Hey.” She leaned down, her pink hair falling around their faces like a curtain. She traced the line of his bottom lip with her fingertip. The purple polish was chipped from clutching at his shoulders, from digging into the rug. A testament. “No phones. No viewers.” Her thumb brushed his cheekbone. “Just us.”
He swallowed, his hands coming up to rest on her bare hips, his touch feather-light. “Just us,” he echoed.
She lowered her mouth to his, not for a kiss, but to speak the words against his lips, her breath a warm caress. “Finally saying all the things we’ve been too scared to admit.” She kissed him then, soft and slow, a languid exploration that tasted of sleep and him. When she pulled back, her eyes held a glint of the old, familiar mischief, but it was softer now, more intimate. “Starting with how thoroughly I intend to break that no-touching rule now that our week is up.”
A slow smile spread across his face, the one that transformed him, that made him look young and certain. His hands tightened on her hips. “I’ve been compiling a list,” he said, his voice dropping. “Of grievances. It’s extensive. Requires… redress.”
“Redress me, then.”
And he did. Not with the frantic hunger of the night before, but with a slow, devastating thoroughness that left her breathless and shaking. He mapped her with his mouth, his hands, as if memorizing a new and vital piece of code. The weak sunlight tracked across the floorboards as they moved together, the world narrowed to the sound of their breathing, the creak of the bed, the distant cry of a hawk outside.
Afterwards, they lay tangled in a silence that was neither heavy nor empty, but full. The fire had died to embers. The cabin was cold.
“I should rebuild the fire,” Elliot said, but made no move to get up, his nose buried in her hair.
“In a minute.” Luna traced invisible patterns on his chest. The words she’d promised to say bubbled up, a nervous swarm in her throat. She took a breath. “That stream I did… after the diner. It wasn’t just about claiming you.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, though.” She pushed herself up to look at him. “It was a trap. For me. I said it to the camera so I couldn’t take it back. So I’d be accountable to all those strangers watching. Because I don’t trust myself not to… eject. When things get real.”
He listened, his hand stroking her back.
“The others,” she continued, the words coming faster now, “they were easy. Props. I’d get bored or they’d get clingy and I’d just… fade to black. End stream. Block. Next.” She met his gaze. “I can’t fade to black on you. And it scares the absolute shit out of me.”
Elliot was quiet for a long moment. He stared up at the rough-hewn beams of the ceiling. “When I proposed the week,” he said finally, “it wasn’t just a test for us. It was a test for me. To see if I could be the guy who… deserved that. The ‘always’ guy. Not just the one you sneak into frame for hype.”
He shifted, rolling onto his side to face her fully. “I’ve spent my life feeling like I was buffering. Waiting to load. With you, it’s like I’m finally running in real time. And I don’t want to go back to the lag.”
Luna’s throat tightened. She’d expected declarations, maybe. Not this raw, technical metaphor that described her own fear so perfectly. She blinked against a sudden burn in her eyes. “No lag,” she whispered.
He kissed her forehead. “We should probably eat something. I think I saw pancake mix.”
They dressed in the cold, pulling on sweaters and socks, moving around each other in the small space with a new, unspoken coordination. He got the fire going again; she rummaged in the groceries. The cabin filled with the smell of woodsmoke and frying batter. They ate at a small wooden table by the window, looking out over a valley frosted with evergreens.
“What now?” Luna asked, stabbing a piece of pancake with her fork.
“Now,” Elliot said, pouring more syrup, “we do nothing. We walk. We read the terrible paperback romance novels I found on the shelf. We see how many times we can… redress our grievances.” He smirked. “We talk. Without a timer running.”
The simplicity of it was terrifying. And perfect.
Later, bundled in coats, they walked along a ridge behind the cabin. The air was knife-cold and pure. They didn’t speak much, just walked hand in hand, their breaths pluming in the air. The world was immense and silent, a stark contrast to the buzzing, pixelated universe she usually inhabited.
Back inside, as the afternoon light faded to a deep blue, Luna found herself restless. The quiet was starting to press in. Elliot was deep in one of the terrible paperbacks, amused. She watched him from the sofa, her legs thrown over his lap. His calm was an anchor, but a part of her, the part that needed constant stimulation, was starting to vibrate.
“Can I tell you something awful?” she said into the quiet.
He put the book down. “Always.”
“I’m… itchy. Not physically. Mentally. It’s too quiet. My brain doesn’t know what to do with itself when it’s not… generating content.” She hated admitting it. It felt like a flaw, a sickness.
Elliot considered this, his thumb rubbing circles on her ankle. “What does it want to generate? Right now?”
She thought about it. The fear. The dizzying happiness. The profound, unsettling peace of his hand on her skin. “This,” she said quietly. “But that’s not content. That’s just… a feeling.”
“So feel it.” He said it like it was the simplest algorithm in the world. Input: feeling. Process: experience. Output: memory. “You don’t have to broadcast it to live it, Luna.”
The truth of it clicked into place, a lock she hadn’t even known was there. She wasn’t LunarNova here. She was just a girl in a too-big sweater, cold feet in the lap of a boy who read trashy novels, in a creaky cabin at the edge of the world. And for the first time, that was more than enough.
She slid off the sofa and padded to her bag, pulling out her laptop. Elliot’s eyes tracked her, a question in them.
She opened it, fired it up, and opened her streaming software. She saw the flicker of worry—or was it hurt?—cross his face.
She turned the screen to face him. With a few decisive clicks, she changed her status. From “Online” to “Offline.” Then she went into the settings, deep into the menus, and set her account to “Private.” A step she’d never taken, not once.
“There,” she said, closing the laptop with a soft click. “Now it’s really just us.”
The fire cracked and popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Elliot didn’t say anything. He just held out his hand. She went to him, curling into the space he made for her against his side. He reopened his terrible book and began to read aloud, his voice a soft, steady rumble in the darkening room. The words were cheesy, the plot ridiculous.
The words were cheesy, the plot ridiculous. His voice was a low, soothing drone, a sound that felt like safety woven into nonsense. Luna listened, her head on his shoulder, watching the firelight dance across the page. His finger traced a line as he read, a simple, concentrated gesture that unraveled something tight in her chest.
That peaceful unraveling lasted perhaps three more sentences. Then a new tension, thick and specific, began to coil in its place. His voice became the only sound in the universe, the focal point of all her swirling, unspent energy. The quiet wasn’t itchy anymore; it was a vacuum begging to be filled.
“Elliot.” Her interruption was soft, but it severed the narrative thread.
He stopped reading. “Yeah?”
She lifted her head from his shoulder. Her eyes found his in the fire-lit dim. “I don’t care what happens to the duchess,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Or the stable boy.”
A slow understanding warmed his gaze. He let the paperback fall shut. It slid off his knee and landed on the floor with a soft thump, forgotten. “No?”
“No.” She shifted, turning her body fully toward him on the sofa. “I care about this. Right now. Here.”
He pulled her close, and they kissed, the book dropping to the floor. It wasn’t like the desperate reunion at the door, or the slow morning exploration. This was a deep, hungry convergence, all the talking and the feeling channeled into physical truth. His hands were in her hair, tilting her head back; her fingers clutched at the worn fabric of his sweater.
They fucked right there on the sofa, full of rough desire and need and want. Clothes were pushed aside, not removed, a frantic compromise against the cold. The old cushions groaned in protest beneath them. Dirty talk flowed between them, breathless and fractured, a language they’d built over a week of deprivation.
“You have no idea,” he gasped against her throat, his hips driving into hers. “What that week did to me.”
“Show me,” she demanded, her nails scraping down his back. “Show me now.”
Luna, on top, her body arched, her head thrown back, begged Elliot to fuck her harder, harder than ever before. Each word was a gasp, torn from her lungs. “Don’t you dare hold back. Not here. Not now.”
He obeyed. The force of it stole her voice, replacing words with a shattered cry that echoed off the wooden walls. The cabin itself seemed to hold its breath. Then, in a sudden surge of motion, he sat up and stood, lifting her with him. Her legs locked around his waist, her arms around his neck.
He carried her the few stumbling steps to the bed, laying her down on her back. The quilt was cold against her skin, a sharp contrast to the heat coming off him. He loomed over her, his eyes dark and unwavering, before sinking down again.
He started with his fingers and mouth, and she was moaning with every movement. This was different. It was purposeful, intense, a deliberate unveiling. Each touch was a question he already knew the answer to, each sound she made a piece of data he cherished. Her back arched off the mattress, a silent plea for more.
Then he pushed her hands to the slats of the headboard, and told her to hold on. His voice was a ragged command, stripped of all its softness. “There. Don’t let go.”
She gripped the weathered wood, the grain rough under her palms. It grounded her as the world spun away. This was the surrender she’d secretly craved—not to him, but to the feeling, to the terrifying, wonderful loss of control. She was completely exposed, utterly at the mercy of the rhythm he set, and in that vulnerability, she found a shocking, brutal freedom.
Her eyes stayed open, locked on his. The firelight from the main room cast his face in shifting planes of light and shadow. She watched the concentration there, the raw feeling, and felt her own reality narrow to this point of exquisite friction. A sob built in her chest, part overwhelm, part gratitude.
“Look at me,” he gritted out, his pace relentless. “Stay with me.”
“I am,” she gasped. “I’m here.” And she was, more present in her own body, in this stark room, than she had ever been in front of any camera. The climax, when it broke over her, was silent at first—a vast, emptying rush of pure sensation that stole the air from her lungs before it tore a raw, unfiltered shout from her throat.
The sound echoed off the wood, a foreign noise in the quiet cabin. Her grip on the headboard slats went slack, her arms falling boneless to the quilt as the waves subsided. Her vision swam, pulsing with the aftershocks. Elliot slowed, his own control fraying, his forehead damp against her shoulder.
“Don’t,” she gasped, the word thick and mangled. Her hands came up, clumsy, and fisted in his hair. “Don’t you dare stop. Not yet.” She was hollowed out and hypersensitive, every nerve screaming. “I feel everything. Keep going.”
He shuddered above her, a full-body tremor. “Luna—”
“I want to feel you come apart.” Her voice was a raw, desperate scrape. “Inside me. Right now. Do it.”
That undid him. His rhythm fractured into something urgent and punishing. She met it, her hips lifting from the mattress, her body a bowstring pulled taut. The dirty talk dissolved into primal, single-word pleas. “More. Please. Harder. Elliot, fuck—”
He came with a broken groan that was almost a sob, his body locking. But he didn’t stop. Even as he pulsed within her, he kept moving, his thrusts shallower now but relentless, driven by her choked commands. The overstimulation was a bright, white fire. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the sight of his agonized, ecstatic face.
“Again,” she wept, the tears spilling hot down her temples into her hairline. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.”
He rolled her onto her front without breaking their connection, his body covering hers. The rough quilt scraped her cheek. Her pink hair was a tangled mess across her face and the pillow. He kept thrusting, the angle deeper, more consuming. She cried out, a sound of pure surrender, her fists clenching in the bedding.
Tears tracked freely now, born of overwhelm and a catharsis too big for her body to hold. She pushed back against him, meeting each drive. Her socked feet kicked against his calves with every impact, a helpless, rhythmic punctuation. She was spent, unspooled, but the wanting was a bottomless pit. “Don’t stop,” she chanted into the fabric, a wet, muffpled mantra. “Don’t stop. Don’t.”
He finally stilled, collapsing over her, his breath roaring in her ear. They were a heap of trembling limbs and damp skin. The fire popped. A log collapsed in the hearth. The silence rushed back in, but it was different now—sated, charged with a new kind of quiet.
He shifted off her gently, pulling her against him. She curled into his chest, her silent tears soaking into his skin. He didn’t ask why she was crying. He just held her, his hands slowly smoothing her wrecked hair.
After a long time, her breathing evened. She sniffed. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?” His voice was wrecked.
“Yeah.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Just… okay.” She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and clear. “I think you redressed the grievances.”
A laugh huffed out of him, surprised and tired. “Thoroughly.”
“Structurally sound.” She traced a finger over the faint red lines her nails had left on his arm. The silence settled again, comfortable. “I meant it, you know. What I said before. About not fading to black.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared I will, though. It’s my default setting. My brain… it looks for the exit.” She took a shaky breath. “Just… if I get weird. Or distant. Don’t let me.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll send a system alert. ‘Error 404: Escape Route Not Found.’”
She smiled against his chest. “Good.”
They dozed, tangled in the cooling sweat and the quilt. The afternoon bled away. When Luna awoke, the fire was low again and Elliot was watching her, his expression soft.
“I’m starving,” she announced.
“We ate pancakes five hours ago.”
“That was a different emotional epoch. I need carbs. The kind that comes in a crinkly bag.” She sat up, wincing slightly. Every muscle felt deliciously used. She spotted his sweater on the floor and pulled it on. It smelled like him and the piney cabin air.
She padded to the kitchen, her socks silent on the floorboards. She returned with a bag of potato chips and two beers, the glass bottles cool in her hands. She tossed one to him. He caught it against his chest.
“Classy,” he said, nodding at the chips.
“We’re in a cabin, not a Michelin-star joint.” She climbed back onto the bed, cross-legged, and opened the bag. The crunch was obscenely loud. “So. What’s the verdict on the terrible book?”
“The stable boy was secretly the duke’s illegitimate son. They eloped to France.”
She grinned. “See? I told you it wasn’t important.” She took a long swig of beer. “This is better.”
They ate in companionable quiet. The chips were too salty. The beer was cheap and crisp. It was the best meal she could remember.
“When we go back,” Elliot said slowly, picking at the label on his bottle. “What does… this… look like? I’m not asking for a broadcast schedule. I just… need parameters.”
Luna considered it. The old panic, the urge to deflect with a joke, stirred. She let it rise, then settle. “You have a key. You leave a toothbrush. You complain when I leave mugs everywhere. We order terrible takeout and you explain your code to me and I pretend to understand.” She looked at him. “We go to the diner. We see if Dolores remembers us.”
“And the stream?”
She took another chip. “I don’t know. I’m not shutting it down. It’s my job. But…” She shrugged. “You’ll be there. In the background, sometimes. Not as a bit. Just as… my guy who’s coding on the couch. The chat will lose their minds.”
“They’ll ship us,” he said, deadpan.
“They already do. The fan art is… creative.” She smirked. “You’re probably ready for your close-up, Finch.”
He groaned, but he was smiling. “I preferred being a mysterious structural engineer.”
“Too late.” She finished her beer. “You’re real now. There’s documentation.”
The light outside was fading to a deep, velvet blue. The fire needed tending. The world beyond the windows was a vast, dark unknown. Luna felt the quiet not as an absence, but as a presence. It was a space they were filling, word by word, touch by touch. She balled up the empty chip bag and threw it toward the trash can. It missed.
“You’re buying more tomorrow,” Elliot said.
“Only if you carry them.” She slid down under the quilt, turning to face him. Her foot found his ankle, hooking around it. A simple anchor. “So. What’s the plan for tonight?”
He looked at her, the firelight catching the gold in his brown eyes. “I was thinking we could try the shower. Check its structural integrity.”
She laughed, low and warm. “The shower rail did look a little flimsy.”
“It’s a valid concern.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper against her lips. “We should probably stress-test it. Thoroughly.”