What can I possibly say in response to that? If Marlowe’s willing to endure the pain, then it’s not my place to argue otherwise. It’s awful, but she’s right to say she isn’t my responsibility, even if I don’t agree with her. Now, if I can just keep repeating that like a mantra, it might sink in. The problem is I don’t know how to separate myself from that role. I’m nobody’s white knight, but something in me can’t stop trying to be.
Images flood my consciousness, different to the ones I suffered through earlier; memories I’ve had locked down for decades, a sign I’m walking the cliff’s edge. The iron-clad control I usually have over myself continues to crumble, fissures rippling away from the epicentre. The culmination, over time, of all those chunks being taken out of me, I suppose. I’m holding the pieces of myself together as best I can, but the memories taste blood—they want out.
Suddenly, I’m yanked back into echoes. Light refracting off a glass bottle, a prism of colours dancing across a sticky Jack, a bent Queen. The slow creak of wood against rough hands. Waves and waves of body odour. Tears through the gap in a bathroom door, the tap running in the background. Not loud enough, never loud enough. Banging at the front door.Ching. Ching. Ch—
Something collides with my helmet and then shoots off in the opposite direction, catching my attention. Marlowe waves an arm.
“Come on. Last few dents, and then we can get dinner. I’m starving. Wait, we will have enough time to eat before we reach that ship, right?”
It takes me a few moments to collect myself, to tug those pieces a little tighter. She looks at me expectantly, hand on her hip, as ridiculous as that looks in an EVA suit. It helps. Ican breathe again, a terrifying realisation when the only thing between me and the mercy of space is two boots and a rope. I take the lead and speak when my voice is steady enough.
“Yes, but it’s not a ship, per se. If we’re lucky, it’s one person in an escape pod.”
Dinner is loud. With the crew excited about the rescue mission, everyone has their own theory. Vee, most of all, is on the edge of his seat with enthusiasm. I take the noise, and sink into it, using it as a shield. Whilst my crew chatters, I withdraw within myself to do damage control.
When I’m in the thick of it, when people are relying on me and I have to keep it together, I need my vault. And people havealwaysrelied on me. It’s a source of comfort. I can’t afford for it to crack open right now. Sometimes I contemplate therapy, but the idea of letting someone scrape all the horrors from my head terrifies me. What if I can’t get them all back in again afterwards?
“I reiterate: if it’s a beautiful woman, I call dibs on introducing her to the crew,” Beau says, voice rising above the clamour. “And we respect the rule of dibs on this ship, isn’t that right?”
Khrys throws something at their head, and they dodge, shoulders shaking with mirth.
“Beau Bouchard, everyone. First and foremost, always a pig.”
“Does anyone ever actually sleep with you?” Marlowe asks.
Beau gasps, clutches at their chest, and then grins lasciviously. “Wanna find out?”
Another item goes flying, but Marlowe is laughing, Devyaan shaking his head in light-hearted disbelief. I’m just searching out Vee, who must have left the table whilst I was deep in my own head, when Beau continues teasing. More of that flirting—which I’m apparently so bad at, I note dryly.
Beau winks. “That is, if you get bored of the captain, I mean.”
My gaze snaps to Marlowe. Her mouth drops slightly, but then she narrows her eyes. I’m not surprised; I suspected earlier that Kit might have let something slip in the process of locating me. It doesn’t bother me, but I’m curious about Marlowe. Tellurians are more prudish about sex, more awkward about intimacy. Then again, Marlowe proved otherwise on the observation deck.
Devyaan, the biggest gossip of the crew, doesn’t look surprised at all. Khrys does, and she flicks her wide eyes between the two of us again and again.
Marlowe doesn’t miss a beat. She smirks. “Oh, honey, you wish.”
I end up snorting in amusement, both at her perfect delivery and at the faux, wounded look on Beau’s face. They’re only ever joking, but it’s still nice to see someone retaliate with such ease. The table falls back into good-natured speculation, and it’s like nothing happened. In contrast to the vultures circling in my head, relief buds in my chest. It was so easy. With this crew, I’m learning, things can be... easy.
Kit updates us as the dishes are cleared away. We’ll reach the craft a little before midnight, T-time, which makes retiring to bed pointless. Everyone wants to be present during the recovery and the fervour that grips the team is almost childish in how hopeful it is. Only Vee is to go to bed as usual, and Marlowe means it. He pleads with eyes like marshmallows, and her only concession is that he can get up later to watch. He goesback to his game, practically lit up from within, and she meets my eyes across the room.
She quirks an eyebrow, a minuscule shift that has me sitting up straighter. Is she—
“Well, I know what will be keeping you occupied until tonight,” a voice sings in my ear. My head snaps around to where Devyaan smiles at me knowingly. I like the man, but we haven’t spent much time getting to know each other. Or rather, I can admit, I haven’t spent the time. Devyaan’s made attempts on several occasions. What surprises me is he keeps extending the opportunity.
He talks to me in our language, and I can’t stop the pleasure that suffuses my whole being. A balm for the soul, nothing compares to speakingSurya-Vaniwith natives. The others understand it a little but it’s not the same; it’s the difference between using a hammer versus a chisel. There’s a delicate dance and weave to it, and I miss it more the longer I go without hearing it. It’s why I was so unnerved when Marlowe first spoke thoseSurya-Vaniwords to me. It felt like kindness in a fraught situation.
I smile back at Devyaan. “Is that so?”
He gives me a knowing look. “I’m happy for you,kulâri.”
Devyaan calls mekulâriwith easy affection:a term with no clean translation but one that’s usually between family members or sometimes partners. In a way, he’s calling me his sister.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” I temper his grin, but there’s no bite to my tone. “It’s sex.”
It’s strange, but the Tellurians tend to differentiate between ‘sex’ and ‘just sex’. It was one of the slight distinctions that took me some time to learn, and one that still makes no sense at all. They wield the term ‘just sex’ like a weapon, a shield or a blanket, depending on the context. Back home, whereintimacy is never taught as something to fear, we don’t add the modifier in any context. Sex can be a myriad of things, but it’s never removed from emotions. It’s incomprehensible that anyone thinks it can be. Rather, what Tellurians believe they’re conveying is that sleeping with someone is casual: ‘just sex’. They don’t seem to realise that even a casual dalliance involves some form of emotion, and that there exist more than lust and love.
Running from our emotions doesn’t come naturally to my people. When I tell Devyaan it’s sex, he knows what I mean without diminishing what Marlowe and I shared—it doesn’t take from the moment. But we’ve both spent a long time around Tellurians and Devyaan follows up smoothly.
