#nw x mmr

[hauntedjpegcollection]

a mother's love

wc: 5281 au: dishonored au ch: nomi, matilda, jack

Nomi is eight years old when she decides her name is Nomi. It, coincidentally, is when everything in her life changes as well. Not just her name, but her home and her family. Or, rather, the lack of family. It’s Nomi and her mother now, when it was Nomi and her parents before. Nomi and her father are no longer, just like her old name is no longer. She doesn’t think her name has anything to do with it, but that the changes all line up at the same time nonetheless.

Her mother reassures her anyway that it’s nothing to do with her.

That’s his own fault. Rat bastard, she says, hand in hand with the little eight year old. Nomi knows not to repeat it, but she tucks those mean little words inside her to later think on. They have one suitcase that carries everything they own. Nomi, in her other hand, holds the stuffed rabbit she has had since she was not Nomi. It’s always been her favorite and that was never changing. One of it’s ears is half torn off and her mother would usually dutifully start about restitching it on, but they’re not home any more.

The little square room adjoining another families little square room all stacked on top of each other in a tall building squeezed between other tall buildings, is not their home any longer. Nomi has no idea if she’s meant to be upset about that or not. She’ll miss the corner she slept in, because it was right underneath the window and she liked looking at the smoggy sky and it’s sometimes twinkling stars.

But she wont miss the paper thin walls, the constant drip from the sink, or maybe even her father. Maybe she wont miss him at all. She hasn’t decided yet.

—

Even though she’s only eight, Nomi is very smart for her age. That’s what her mother says, especially when brushing through her ever growing navy dark hair. Smart, beautiful, kind. Her mother’s praise never felt empty; Nomi felt and believed every word. But it also felt like her mother was trying to quilt a blanket to cover her with. That if she said it enough, Nomi wouldn’t hear anything else that was said about her. Obstinate child, rude, sneaky, wrong.

Nomi knows to wait outside the room while her mother ducks inside to talk to the head of staff. A severe woman in a black dress with no adornments, her gray hair swept into an equally punishing looking bun. It was so tight, it looked like it peeled her skin back from her face, cut an intimidating and cruel expression. But when she had placed her hand on Nomi’s shoulder to guide her to the door, it had not been cold. It had been light, but gentle.

“Your mother will be out after her interview,” she’d said. And Nomi, who is very smart for her age, had plucked the edge of her skirt and curtsied and then turned to look elsewhere.

Because she’s eight, Nomi has no concept of how much time her mother is gone. Eventually, Nomi sits, with her legs thrown out in front of her and the rabbit sitting on her lap. Weary of it’s torn ear, she pinches the other soothingly, feeling the soft velvet of its material. It’s small, bead eyes stare at her, expressionless, offering nothing to the little girl whose whole life and name has changed in an instant.

And because Nomi is preoccupied wondering what an interview is, or why her mother had looked so nervous, she does not hear the other girl approaching at all.

“What are you doing?”

Nomi looks up and a girl her age stands there and amongst all the finery and the obvious wealth of the hallway, she is more beautiful than anything else. For a moment, all Nomi can do is sit there, holding her rabbit, with a wide eyed, open mouth stare. The girl is taller than her, as thin as a reed, with a sharp and cunning stare. Her long hair is braided to the side, but strands fall all around her face, framing a pale and angular shape. She seems less like a child, to Nomi, who is acutely aware of her round, baby face and cheeks that adults love to pinch.

“What?” she finally says.

“Hello?” The girl walks to stand directly in front of Nomi. She puts curled fists to her hips, feet stood firmly apart. She wears a little emerald dress with a neat sort of bow around the middle. Nomi’s dress is grey, to her ankles and too big on her because her mother had hastily bought it from a neighbor before they’d left. A newish dress to go with her now new name. The sleeves poke over the ends of her knuckles and she’d had to tie the back twice to not make it sag around her shoulders.

“Hi,” Nomi replies.

“What are you—Oh, nevermind. Get up, then,” the girl says with a huff and a gesture of her hands. Nomi only stares, her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose to sit daintily at the tip. “You’re not busy, clearly. And I need help—and my scientist isn’t around.”

“Your scientist?”

“A man. Not tall, dark hair, glasses like yours. In a white coat usually. I’m his favorite.”

“You mean your father?” Nomi stands, using her back against the wall to make it easier, subtly trying to tuck the rabbit behind her. The girl notices of course, with eyes that are glinting and brilliant. But she doesn’t comment on it. Her face screws into a confused and annoyed expression.

“No. My scientist.” There’s a beat of silence between the two children. Nomi realizes she can’t remember the last time she talked to someone her own age. She feels a fluttering fear in her heart, a nervous and anxious broil beneath her skin. The sudden realization that this girl could judge her in a matter of seconds and deem this conversation no longer important. Nomi doesn’t want to be alone. She’s tired of waiting for her mother.

“You’re weird,” the girl decides and Nomi’s stomach turns cold and her hands go tingly. “No one talks back to me like this. Sometimes, they don’t even talk to me at all.” She turns up her pretty, long nose again, surveying Nomi with a calculating stare. She wants to rake fingers through her hair to make sure it’s untangled. She wants to pat down her dress. She wants to appear like a Nomi.

“Well, I’m Matilda. Isaac took our game of hide and seek too seriously and now I can’t find him.” A dainty and pretty hand is held out to her. Nomi stares at it a moment too long until she finally closes her own around it. Girls didn’t shake hands, she didn’t think and yet this feels right. A proper introduction.

“I’m Nomi. Who is Isaac?”

“Come on. I bet I know where he’s hiding. He thinks he’s so clever.”

Matilda doesn’t let go of her hand. Instead, she turns down the hallway and tugs Nomi along.

They spend an hour looking for the boy, who Nomi later finds was simply in his own bedroom, reading a book. They spend that entire hour talking, or rather, Nomi listens mostly as Matilda talks. She tells her all manner of things, secrets about the manor, a ghost story about a fireplace that’s big enough to walk a horse through. She tells Nomi about her mother and the mysterious suited figure that comes in the night to see her mother. She talks about the scientist again.

Nomi tells Matilda about her new name, about the window she’ll miss, and how her mother is in interview. Matilda surprises her by actually listening, hanging on to every word. She snorts and laughs sometimes or makes a comment here or there, but she listens. She squeezes Nomi’s hand sometimes and laces their fingers and then unlaces them and then stops them in front of a painting that’s as big as a grown man to talk about a hidden safe behind it. Nomi has no idea whats the truth of not.

But she’s in love, she’s absolutely head over heels, she is captivated entirely by Matilda immediately.

Her mother is in tears when the girls are finally found, sitting outside on a stone bench in a garden that is looking worse for wear as winter approaches. Her mother cries and shakes her by the shoulders and tells her never again, never run off again like that, I didn’t know where you were, what were you thinking, Nomi, Nomi, Nomi.

But the head of staff stares down at Matilda only, with not a single reprimand. Just smooth, ivory colored hands folded in front of her. One swift glance to Nomi and then back to Matilda—and Nomi’s mother has the job.

—

At thirteen, Matilda complains enough that Nomi is the only one allowed to do her hair. She’s not yet actually at the age where she’d be taking over a lady’s duties like this, yet it doesn’t matter. Matilda, she found in the five years she’s lived on the Rhoades estate, usually gets what she wants.

“I don’t know how you’re so good at that,” she pouts. Matilda’s mother has imported dye to make her hair this beautiful, rich, red color. It also makes it shiny and soft, makes it a bit slippery, which makes designs with it difficult. Nomi ignores the difficulty, like the reality of it doesn’t matter in comparison to the reality that Matilda, well, she gets what she wants. And if she wants Nomi to braid her hair into something beautiful for the little dinner party her mother is throwing, it happens.

“You’re too lazy to do it yourself, so I’ve learned well,” Nomi teases, a pin between her teeth as her pale fingers make quick work of the intricate knotting braid. Matilda snorts, undignified and entirely unladylike. She’s started wearing more bold dresses, things that have cut outs along the arms, sheer lace and dark velvets. Heavy necklaces that accentuate her slim, delicate throat.

Nomi wears the exact same black dress Agathi wears. It’s high around her throat, with a row of buttons down the back. Nomi liked its simplicity. And she liked matching the head of staff, the single most intimidating woman that Nomi had ever know, besides Matilda’s own mother. Jaqueline Claire Rhoades stares at them from a painting across the hall, Matilda’s door open to allow the sounds of staff getting ready for the night through into her wide open, luxurious room.

“Why would I do it when I have you?” Matilda twists suddenly, turning so she can look up at Nomi. A strand of hair falls to her cheek. She looks mischievous and pretty and Nomi decides to leave that strand, like a suggestion to Matilda’s furiously strange side. She might be the only daughter to a wealthy and terrifyingly influential woman, but she was also, to Nomi, a wicked little girl.

And her best friend.

“Aren’t you done yet?” Both girls jump in surprise, whirling to face the sudden intrusion at the door. And at the sight of him, Nomi’s hands twitch and she tucks them nervously behind her back. A warmth on her cheeks makes her uncomfortable, ears full of a faint ringing sound for a moment as Matilda’s oldest brother stands there. Well. Leans there. His shoulder to the door frame, an ankle crossed over the other. He looks bored and annoyed, with an annoyed look on his handsome face.

Leo and Isaac look remarkably like Matilda, as though they were triplets instead of siblings. Only, where Nomi could spend a whole day with Isaac, she has avoided Leo as much as she can. Something about being around him makes her stomach hurt. Makes her hands feel clammy and awkward and her awareness of her pores and hair and teeth feel stark and evident. That’s why her hands stay behind her back, to prevent her from checking to make sure all of her is presentable. She does not know why she even cares what Leo thinks of her at all.

“Aren’t you done yet?” Matilda mocks in a deep, brusque voice. Leo’s cheeks flare a pretty red color. His voice had started to crack and deepen, his awkward entry to adulthood evident in the way his hands were suddenly too big and his voice didn’t stay in one octave. “Go away, Leo. If you hadn’t interrupted, Nomi would be done. Barging your way into a room, demanding attention, that’s not how you get a girl to notice you.”

“Matilda,” Nomi grinds her teeth together and Leo, looking as stormy as he did boyishly beautiful, stomped out into the hallway and slammed the door shut behind him.

“He’s been trying to grow a mustache for a year,” Matilda comments, examining her nails as Nomi resumes her work. Its cathartic, almost rhythmic.

“Only for a few months or so,” she hums, standing back to admire her work.

“Caught,” Matilda replies in a sly hiss, turning fully around in the ornate wooden chair to stare triumphantly at Nomi’s burning face.

—

Nomi is fifteen and spending the night in Matilda’s bed, as usual. They girls have stolen romance paperbacks from the expansive and beautiful Rhoade’s library. They keep a candle lit, each of them taking turns holding it while the other holds the book and reads aloud passages that make them blush and snicker. Nomi sighs wistfully over handsome knights with big swords and Matilda rolls her eyes at it all, but secretly makes Nomi read her the second novel of a rouge like serial.

They stay up too late, their legs entwined, their heads bent together as they whisper. Nomi isn’t meant to be sleeping in Matilda’s bed anymore. In fact, it was strictly forbidden, in the way things are strictly forbidden to girls of Matilda’s stature. Many things changed in the last year alone, the sort of parties she went to, the kinds of dresses she wore, what sort of paint she was allowed to use on her face and who could be her friend and who couldn’t.

Nomi had tried to keep up with it all, but that part of Matilda’s life was not for her. She was the girl who braided her hair—she was not meant to be more than that. It scared people that sometimes, she was more than that. There was a bridge between them that was wider than just money. It was nature for Matilda to be above Nomi, yet here she was, in the girls bed, petting her hair softly and reading about a thief who stole a maidens heart in the night.

So, the assassin is not aware there are two girls in the bed that night, because Matilda is meant to be alone. It is meant to be easy, something quick and savage and ruthless. A knife in and out and the Rhoade’s only daughter a candle flame snuffed in the night. And the assassin liked killing young girls, he’d taken the job for cheap, because he found their eyes prettiest when they died. The assassin is not aware that the one girl is still awake and staring at him in the dark, her pretty eyes still open and seeing him.

The blade is luminescent against moon light that pours in through the same window he’d crawled through. It’s long and curved, with a hook at the end, something she’d seen the cooks use to gut the fish. Nomi, for a wonder, feels no fear in that moment. Only an intense knowing that permeates her entire body. That knife was going to go into Matilda’s stomach and that assassin was going to carve up to her heart, and then pluck it out like fish guts.

“No,” she manages to gasp in a breathless voice as it descends—and then Nomi is leaping up. She is surging forward from the bed with her hands and grasping the knife in both of them. She makes no sound, almost an eerie lack of it as she stares into the assassin’s night black eyes.

The blade is sharp and cuts through the meat of her hands like butter. She feels the curved tip touch bone and she still makes no noise. Nomi isn’t sure she remembers how, her only thought is no. No. No. Not Matilda. Not her. I won’t let you—she’s mine. No. And the pain is overwhelming, like her hands are in boiling water, it arcs through her veins and along her entire body. She moans at the feeling, the only sound she makes as he saws the knife, but her grip doesn’t relent. It is caged iron around the blade.

“Bitch! You bitch, let go!” The assassin’s voice is a wasp nest hiss, his eyes wild and furious. He yanks her entire body around, throwing her to the floor, but he can’t get the knife from her grasp. He raises a fist, as if to punch her in the face and Nomi knows if he does that will be that. She won’t be able to hold the knife and he’ll get to Matilda. He’ll get her.

“Fuck you,” she snarls in a voice that is low and raspy and deathly cold, her foot whipping out to connect to the assassin’s inner thigh. He grunts with the pain and it’s enough to make the blow glance off her temple and connect more with the ground. White hot blood pours down Nomi’s forearms. It almost feels like nothing, it’s almost—

The mans hand wraps around her throat and squeezes so hard she almost loses consciousness from the pain.

“Get off her!”

Matilda’s scream is everything Nomi isn’t. It’s loud and shrill and scathing, like a flaying knife. She’s screaming more, repeating herself (get off her, get off her, get off her) like a demoness. Nomi watches with eyes black at the edges as Matilda pounces onto the mans back. Her sharp nails claw across his face, causing him to howl. But it’s the hairbrush in her hand that’s turned into a real weapon; it’s made of ivory. Perhaps real whale bone, how pretty it is. And it’s handle is a sharp point.

Nomi watches in a mute daze as Matilda shoves the point of the hairbrush into the mans neck. Over and over.

Then, the door to her room is broken open. So hard it comes nearly entirely off the hinges. Nomi’s vision continues to blacken at the edges as she watches. Matilda is pried off the man, still screaming, wild and bloody, by the very scientist she loves so much. Nomi had never thought of him as strong, yet he wraps arms around her and even though she thrashes, he moves not an inch. His glasses are askew on his face as he stares at Nomi, on the floor.

The moonlight hits his eyes and they reflect, like he is an animal in the night.

Then Nomi loses consciousness.

—

The moonlight is once again her friend, a single light across her bed. It hits her mothers face perfectly, accentuates her heart shaped face beautifully, but does not wake her up. Her eyelids flicker, as if she’s dreaming and Nomi thinks of waking her up—but she’d cried herself to this sleep. Maybe she needed the rest. Even though her mother has not left her bedside in the three days Nomi has rested.

Her bandaged hands are thick and awkward. They burn, even then. The pain has not dulled since the torn flesh has been sewed together. She’d only managed to get herself up to a sitting position by leaning on those hands and snapping her teeth together through the pain. But she was tired of laying. She was tired of not knowing anything but this little room.

Why hadn’t Matilda visited her?

Nomi isn’t sure how much time passes, because there is no clock in her room. She keeps it mostly spartan—her rabbit sits on the bedside table. She hasn’t slept with it in years. She hadn’t needed the company. She hadn’t been lonely until now. Nomi reaches out, but the bandages are so cumbersome, she couldn’t pick him up even if she tried. She feels a pinch of tears to her eyes, but ignores it.

The door creaks open.

Light from the hallway—yellow and buttery in comparison to the cool silver of moonlight—spills across the hardwood.

Jaqueline Rhoades walks in.

Whatever time she was cognizant of stops altogether. Nomi has lived in this manor, on this estate, loving this woman’s daughter for eight years. The same amount of years she’d been alive by the time her mother had been hired as a laundress. She has been in Jaqueline’s presence alone maybe only three times and not a single one of those times have they ever shared a private word.

It is not just Jaqueline, but the presence of her. The room is suddenly filled with the dense, heaviness of a powerful feminine force. Her elegance is striking, even in just a moonlit room. Her posture straight, but not tense. Nomi feels like she should say something, like she should get up from the bed and ask what the lady needs. But in her hands is a tray and on that tray is a bowl of soup and a chunk of fresh bread that still steams slightly. The woman says nothing as she slowly crosses toward Nomi’s bed. She spares the mother a look. It’s not remotely unkind, merely assessing.

Jaqueline slowly puts the tray down across Nomi’s lap and then pulls in another chair from her modest desk and sits down.

They stare at one another. Jaqueline’s children all look like her; they all have the high cheekbones, the arresting eyes, the smooth and unblemished skin. Their height must come from someone else but Nomi dare not think of him as a father. She knows very little of that situation, but she knows that no matter what DNA says, those children belong solely to the woman sitting in front of her. Nomi’s hands throb, the pain secondary to the absolute awe of this late night visit, but a constant nonetheless.

“Is Matilda okay?” Nomi bravely asks. Jaqueline tilts her head, a sheath of her pretty blond hair falling to her cheek. She does not wear it in the fashion that every other woman in her league does. Perhaps to set her apart. Perhaps because she knows that her beauty would radiate no matter how she wore her hair.

“You’re the same age as my daughter, yes?”

“Fifteen,” Nomi answers. Which feels stupid. Jaqueline knows her daughters age. But it feels good to say something, to use her voice for something other than softly reassuring her mother that she was okay. Her hands were ruined. Perhaps permanently, perhaps forever, but she was alive, wasn’t she?

She’d never braid Matilda’s hair again, not with these hands.

“I’ve heard something about you,” Jaqueline says as she reaches for a spoon on the tray. Nomi realizes with sudden surprise that the woman means to feed her. Should she refuse? She can’t possibly let the lady reduce herself to that; it is so beyond appropriate that Nomi feels briefly terrified. But when the spoon of soup is raised to her mouth, Nomi only leans forward and accepts it.

The broth is delicious and salty. It tastes so good she can’t help but sigh. She’d not even known she was hungry.

“My other staff, they tell me that you never lie.” Jaqueline rips a piece of bread from the chunk and dips it into the soup. Then she places it on the spoon and lifts it. Nomi blushes, her eyes fighting to stay on Jaqueline’s piercing and terrifyingly cool stare. She chews before answering.

“Everyone lies,” Nomi says. Her eyes go wandering to her mother, who doesn’t wake, even with them speaking. She is exhausted with the sudden awareness that she has a daughter who is now, essentially useless. No man would marry her if her hands were covered in scars and she wouldn’t be able to do laundry work. She wouldn’t be able to work much at all. The doctor had said he’d done what he could but surgery might be necessary and what money did they have for surgery?

“But you?”

“It’s not lying, if you don’t say anything at all,” Nomi offered. She opens her mouth to accept another spoonful of soup. It’s richness makes her feel relaxed, warm to the bones. Even her hands hurt less, somehow. “When something is uncomfortable enough to warrant a lie, I just stop speaking.”

“Pragmatic, I suppose.” Matilda’s mother feeds her a few more spoonfuls. They share a silence that is not companionable because they are not companions. Nomi is the daughter of a servant and Jaqueline is the woman who employees that servant. Yet their silence isn’t pained or awkward.

“You won’t lie to me when I ask why you saved my daughter, then.”

“No.” Her voice is unwavering and cool, belying the nervousness that makes her bones feel like jelly.

“Should I ask?” Jaqueline’s stare is so overwhelming that Nomi has no choice but to look down at the slowly disappearing bowl of soup, the little chunks of leftover bread. The pain in her hands truly has dwindled to a simmering fire instead of an overwhelming burn.

“I love her. She is my best friend. I didn’t want her to die. I would be all alone, if she died.”

“That’s a hint of selfishness I wasn’t expecting.” But Jaqueline is smiling when she says it. Not a smile necessarily, but the sort of sideways tilt of a red painted mouth. It’s not pleasant but nor is it cruel or angry. It’s assessing. Nomi feels like a puzzle that is quickly being solved. “You would still have your mother. Mother is God in the eyes of her children, correct?”

“I don’t read philosophy,” Nomi admits, smiling in her own crooked and tilted way. “But a mother isn’t a best friend. I would do it again. Even if he cut them off this time.” She raises her bandaged hands, feeling a bit woozy as she does. There’s a sleepiness to the edges of her. A softening of all her muscles. “Is she okay?”

Jaqueline doesn’t answer. She only continues to stare. Then she reaches out both hands and slowly tucks strands of Nomi’s navy hair behind her ears. The gentleness is disarming and it makes her close her eyes and tilt her head back. She feels the motherly tenderness as her pillow is adjusted. She feels a cool and soft hand on her brow and then on her forearm.

“Have you met the scientist?”

“I love Matilda, but she’s very selfish with her favorites,” Nomi admits boldly. And the scientist had never really paid Nomi much attention, perhaps because any time she saw him he was flitting about rooms with a nervous, high strung energy. His occasional pause to indulge Matilda in something, or to pat her head or cheek was always between the running around he did. Sometimes, there was something red on his coat, so he scared Nomi enough to not mind that Matilda kept him locked in a tight chest inside her heart.

“Would you let him look at your hands?” Jaqueline asks, setting the tray on the desk beside them.

“We don’t have money.”

“My daughters life is not measured in money, Nomi.”

A cool shiver makes her open her eyes and roll her head to the side. Nomi had expected to be met with those cool, intense eyes, but instead there is a sudden softness about Jaqueline that makes her inhale with wonder. She is still holding Nomi’s forearm. She is leaning in closer, with a mother’s pained expression of worry. In that moment, Nomi would have taken a knife for her too. She would have let anyone cut her to pieces for any of the Rhoades family.

“But if you need a transaction, I have one.” The hand on her forearm squeezes in a tender way. “He will fix your hands and you will never leave her side. Could you do that for my family?”

Nomi’s eyes close again and she smiles.

“Yes, I…” the painkillers in the soup sweep her under.

—

So Nomi is twenty six, sitting at an expensive and elegant oak dining table.

A man sits, slumped into his pork roast dinner, foam at the edges of his mouth. At the far end of the table, Matilda pokes her nose into her glass of wine and takes a healthy few sniffs. She dresses in a fashion that is so uniquely her, so sensual and somehow uncaring at the same time, with sleeves that plume transparently over her arms and a tight bodice that she hadn’t bothered to lace entirely.

Nomi has not changed out of the high necked, black dresses. She slowly peels the soft, supple velvet gloves from her hands and sighs.

“I put too much in,” she says with a dour expression to the dead man at the table. Matilda rolls her eyes and leans back in the chair, splashing her own poisoned wine across the table. The glass gets tossed behind her, but it doesn’t shatter, which makes Matilda pout a bit. A crease between her brows and a delicate pinch to her lips. Nomi snorts and then laughs.

“Well, I’m not sorry. Idiot tried to poison me first, didn’t he? Good that he went out frothing like a disgusting beast.”

“That’s an insult to beasts,” Nomi replies, rising from the table. She needs to speak to the staff to ensure that the clean up crew gets to this room before anyone else. Candles snuffed, midnight plunged into the hallway, someone to take care of—well. Another idiot in a long line of idiots that have tried to kill a member of the Rhoades family. Murder is not entirely surprising in Dunwall.

Surprising, she supposes, that they keep trying when—

The wind wheezes as a dark figure slides in through a window. He straightens and dark eyes blink at the dead man and then go severely cold. The rogue is in all black, head to toe, even a mask to cover the lower part of his face. A shock of blond hair pokes from beneath a hood—a choice he’d not entirely been the owner of. His black hair suits his job better, but what Matilda wants, Matilda gets and—

Nomi thinks its sweet that her little thief had sat still for her while she’d tested expensive overseas dye on his thick, wavy hair.

“I told you not to let him in,” Lark’s voice is a cold knife jab as he darts around the table. Matilda hasn’t moved an inch, she merely lounges with a bored expression, an arch of her dark brow.

“I didn’t realize you were my father and told me what to do?”

“Don’t say that—”

She knows this argument will last for as long as she’s in the room with them. She knows the argument will then fall to hushed voices, to intimacy she shouldn’t be around for. A cupped hand on a pale cheek, a kiss to Matilda’s slim throat, hurried words of worry, thinly concealed emotions. So instead of delaying Matilda’s romance, she swipes her gloves and makes for the door. Her scares are thin and white on her hands, and she pauses to look at them for only a moment, before she throws it open to find Agathi.

[unknownjpegs]

titan

They share everything, because of course they do. Nomi never realized that was what best friends did until she met Matilda. Until they linked pinkies together walking down the street, or put two straws in one fountain soda, or used the same lip balm on a night out. Nomi didn’t realize it could be like that; to find a person that felt so similar and dissimilar at the same time. To find someone who all at once had felt like they were missing from her life all along.

And it explains why they kiss.

It’s not long after they become friends; Matilda had complimented her Bristol accent and Nomi had disparaged her Philly one and they had nearly fought about that until Matilda realized Nomi wasn’t being a cunt, she was being honest. And Matilda was the kind of girl constantly on the hunt for anyone to actually be honest in this world. It’s not long after they spend a whole week sleeping in the same bed because they stay up too late watching awful youtube conspiracy and drama videos.

Not long after they practically kiss one night anyway, when they’re at a party and Matilda playfully, drunkenly asks if Nomi wants gum and offers her the already half chewed stick in her mouth. Nomi opening her mouth just as jokingly and Matilda leaning in, like she’d complete the kiss.

It’s just not long after that but frankly, the time sort of blurs because it’s some of the best Nomi has ever had.

It makes it easier, when they both pull away from each other and realize that was not what either of them wanted. Not to say it wasn’t a good kiss—Nomi later ruminates on it and realizes she had liked the kiss, just not who. They had been in her bed, with all four of it’s blankets and too many stuffed animals and Matilda’s long leg had slid between her own (and that had been, admittedly, very nice) and her soft hand had trailed up over her rib (very nice) and touched her cheek (so nice) and when they had both leaned in, the lightest brush of tongue had been sensual.

“Oh.”

“Hm.”

And either girl had erupted into laughter at that, thankfully. A jostling of their bodies together that no longer felt heated or sexual; back to playfully platonically intimate. Nomi’s mood lighting in the background made Matilda look neon and so beautiful. It was nice to still find her electrically alluring, even after the kiss had made her realize this was only friendship.

“Okay, at least we tried it,” Matilda snickers, tucking freshly dyed red hair back from Nomi’s face. Just two strands—dark navy mixes with Matilda’s technicolor cherry hair as well.

“I don’t think you’re my type, love,” Nomi sighs, smiling. Matilda’s chapstick is vanilla flavored. It’s nice. They get comfortable in the bed again, cell phones out, ready to fall into the comfortable silence of two firmly decided best friends. Only Matilda pauses, eyes flickering up as she grins softly.

“Nomi, what is your type?”

She finds herself so stunned that she cannot reply. Nomi doesn’t know. She doesn’t think she’ll ever know.

—

They don’t share Lark.

Which makes sense.

Nomi can’t recall ever seeing Matilda fall for someone so hard so quickly—but she never actually says that out loud, because Matilda still follows routine with this one. Lark had popped up so suddenly that sometimes Nomi thinks Matilda had wished him into existence. That she had pulled out a secret diary and journaled about him and someone magic (maybe Matilda’s terrifying, awe inspiring, beautiful mother) had simply created a boy that was so wholly…her type.

Lark was gorgeous, with facial features that were a mingle of masculine and artistically pretty. His monolid eyes were dark and the intensity of his stare when he looked at Matilda was nothing short of enviable. And yet…not her type, maybe.

Nomi could sit down and write everything good about Lark and see where Matilda fit in. She could see, even when Matilda was picking fights or testing Lark’s patience or trying to make things difficult—because that was Matilda sometimes, always on the hunt for someone to give up before she ever got too attached to really let them closer—she could see what it was about him that drove Matilda fucking insane for him.

Nomi’s lists didn’t help her.

“Xavier is pretty,” she decides to say randomly, to see what Matilda will say back. They sit at the bar, waiting for drinks to get paid for them, because they inevitably will be. Matilda adjusts her earrings using her phones camera as it stays propped against the beer tap.

“Too tall,” she jokes, with a clever eye roll. Lark’s height was not something that Nomi had even noticed. Or thought might be on that left con column for some people; and yet Matilda was hyper aware of the way people treated her boyfriend.

“Do you think he’d like me?”

“He’d be a fucking moron not to,” Matilda replies as she swipes her phone and stuffs it into her top. She’d borrowed one of Nomi’s and it sits gracefully oversized on her more slender frame—instead of looking sloppy, she looks artfully designed for comfort and the erotic suggestion of what could be underneath that baggier top. Nomi thinks Lark will start bar fights over that suggestion, but she admits to herself that she does want a free drink.

“But,” Nomi points out with a raised finger. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I love you,” Matilda starts out, with a sideways glance. It’s her I love you but expression, where she is about to say something honest. Nomi likes that expression. Likes even more their commitment to that honesty. “And Xavier’s type is absolutely goth-alt-punk to rival his good boy, definitely went to a Catholic school vibe—but I think his tastes are skewing a little more masculine these days. Do you read me?”

Nomi pouts over her shoulder, scanning the crowd for the friend group she isn’t entirely sure she fits into. They share that too, she supposes; this new found gaggle of humans that had come along with her pretty little Lark. Xavier is hip close with Benji, because it seems impossible to find one without the other when they’re all roving as a pack like this.

They look like friends. They stand close, but no closer than friends always do in a crowded bar. Xavier touches occasionally, a hand lifting to cup Benji’s elbow, or a brush of their shoulders on what must be a funny joke because both of them grin conspiratorially together. Nomi watches Benji’s upturned face go soft, Xavier lost in conversation—she blinks over at Matilda, whose vape hangs from her clenched together teeth, eyes narrowed in elated triumph.

“Eugh,” Nomi concedes. “I hate when you know somethin’ before me. You’ll give me the details on that later, yeah?”

She has to admit that she did find Xavier pretty. He was so classically handsome; freckled and warm, with a wide smile that invited people to talk to him. He was generous with his affection, which she’d rarely experienced before. But he was no Lark, Nomi guessed. She had not written him down in a diary.

Maybe Benji had.

—

“Don’t let me fall,” Nomi pleads, with big, wet, terrified eyes. “OhmyGod, Maran—please, don’t let me fall.”

“I’m not!” He’s laughing, but it isn’t mocking or condescending or cruel. It’s soft and genuine but—he’s soothing her, Nomi thinks. Innately, with that sweet voice of his. Second nature. This gentle, from the chest lullaby. His arms wrap around her waist—respectful like. He doesn’t try and cram their bodies together, or touch her where she might not want to be touched (where would that be? From him? She isn’t sure, suddenly).

They’re a four legged strange beast on the roller skating rink. Her legs keep threatening to shoot out from underneath her and Maran’s broad shoulders are the only thing keeping her upright. He is broad, too. Nomi isn’t small (she’s supposed to be, she thinks, like Sunshine; she’s meant to be petite and dainty and tiny and thin) but Maran sort of makes her feel a bit small. His hand catches hers and even that feels rough and large, unlike holding Matilda’s. Their fingers interlock.

“I got you, I promise—look at me, Noms, I really do.” Underneath the insane colors of the skate rinks overhead lights, he looks so fucking beautiful. They flash across his freckled face, make his eyes liquid. She stares up at him—her lungs suddenly seem uncooperative and not because she’s terrified of falling on her ass and making an absolute fool of herself.

They manage—how, she isn’t sure—to scoot their way to the booth at the edge of the rink. It’s empty, because the rest of their friends are either occupied on the skate rink, or to the attached arcade. Nomi had felt panicked the second she’d stepped into the place, but had also felt such a vicious determination to have fun and do something new. And it had only bit her in the fucking ass. The clunky roller skates were giving her a blister, and the adrenaline fear of falling and her skirt ripping and showing herself in the middle of—

“Did you have fun?” Maran sits close to her in the booth. One of his arms is thrown around the back. He’s smiling at her, Nomi realizes. It feels…intimate. Private. Warm. Her chest constricts and her stomach hurts. Painfully. Looking at him feels painful. Oh fuck, he’s so good looking sometimes when she closes her eyes, he pops up accidentally.

“No,” she blurts out. His smile falters a bit and she quickly raises her hands, shaking them. “No! I mean—no, I—I don’t think skating is for me, right? I was fuckin’ dismal at it.” Her bubbling laugh catches her off guard, but it ignites Maran’s smile back to full force. He has freckles on his lips, even. She wonders about those freckles. Where else they might be.

“You made it fun, though.”

“Benji’s older sister taught me how to roller skate,” Maran says, tucking himself just slightly closer. She notices how good he is about not touching her. Sometimes, she wants him too, but the fact that he doesn’t go about it just assuming it’s okay—he makes her fucking dizzy. “She’s so cool—you’d get along with Saha. One of my favorite people on the planet, really. Wish she was here in the US sometimes.”

To be briefly compared to someone he thought highly of made Nomi’s heart feel oddly sized underneath her sternum. She presses a hand there briefly, smiling at the array of half devoured food on their booths table.

Nomi wants to ask if he’ll go to the arcade side with her, but she’s interrupted when Benny slides in front of the booth.

He’s good at skating. He had been effortlessly gliding around the rink with Matilda, the two of them showing off by going backward, or pulling some funny footwork. She’d watched him for a long time and maybe that was why Maran had offered to pull her onto the rink and help her learn. Maybe he’d noticed her watching Benny—because truthfully, she watches Benny a lot.

His light blond hair is only slight sweat darkened. He pushes stringy strands of it back from his forehead, his other hand lingering in his pocket. He looks almost too tall in the skates, his posture so easy and relaxed. He smiles at the both of them in that way he smiles; like he knows a secret. Like he knows all their secrets and no one knows any of his. That smile makes her warm all over. Makes her stomach hurt, just like before.

“Nomi,” he greets. Hearing her name said like that makes a tingle jolt down her thighs. She crosses her legs and when his eyes fall to them, she almost regrets it. Almost. Because, him looking there feels—she doesn’t want to think about how it fucking feels. “Can I ha-have my boy back?”

She can feel Maran shifting beside her in reaction. My boy. Nomi taps her long, acrylic nails on the booth table. What is it like, then? To be Benny’s boy. To belong to him. Nomi tries picturing the two of them together; she’s done this plenty of times with all her friends. Stared at the couples she inevitably gets surrounded by and wonders what the inner, secret workings of their relationship are like.

But when she imagines Lark and Matilda, or Mouse and Naima or Kacie and Cole, she usually imagines what their dates are like or if they share toothbrushes or something disgusting but fondly romantic.

When Nomi thinks of Benny and Maran (my boy) she instantly pictures them kissing. Their tongues touching, Benny’s large, tattooed hands cupping Maran’s pretty freckled face. Maran’s broad shoulders and Benny’s ice colored eyes, hooded, looking down at Maran as he sinks lower and those kisses descend and—

“I wasn’t holding him hostage, babe,” Nomi says, to quickly cover the sudden spiraling happening inside her. She suddenly understands why some people have nicotine addictions. She craves something to stop the other cravings.

“Oh no,” Maran jokes, hands held up, his wrists together in mock surrender. “Hold me hostage.”

“Little bastard,” Benny growls out the words like a purr, leaning in to wrap arms around his waist and yank him from the booth. They stumble together. They nearly slip and fall to the ground. As they skate away, Nomi entertains the briefest thought of what it would be like to be in the middle of the two of them.

—

“I think you need to masturbate about it,” Matilda says with grave finality.

“Don’t be nasty!” Nomi slaps her best friend’s shin in retaliation. Matilda’s foot wiggles between her thighs, like she might kick, but then settles. Instead she grins wickedly, stylus to her tablet as she sketches her next project. The music in the room is set on low and mingles with the television, which also has a repeat of a terrible show they’d been watching together about an insufferable mother and daughter pair.

Nomi dips the nail polish brush back into the bottle and returns to her work, despite Matilda’s wriggling.

“I’m not even joking,” she continues. She has that careful look of concentration on her face as she stares at her iPad. Nomi watches her tap fingers on the screen to edit something. The neon artwork that’ll come to life in months from this newest idea that had sprung half formed into Matilda’s head at two in the morning needed near constant attention. And so Matilda also needed constant distraction.

Nomi offered that in the form of both painting her toe nails and talking non stop about her current problem.

“It’s wrong,” she mutters, capping the nail polish and sagging back in the bed. “They’re together, aren’t they?” Matilda is silent for a moment. Not ignoring Nomi, but thinking of what to say next. It makes her nervous, because Matilda is not usually careful with her words. She says what she means; they share this. Their honesty ties them together. Nomi needs it.

“Yes,” Matilda replies slowly, dragging the word out. “I think they are like, firmly dating now.” Nomi makes a sound of utmost suffering, throwing her head back against the pillow behind her. “Okay—but you’re allowed to have crushes? Like, that’s not a sin! Maran is cute. Benny is—unique.”

“Oh shut up,” Nomi snips, flapping her hands with annoyance. “I know you think Benny is hot.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. He’s so up your alley it’s not even funny.”

“He just has tattoos, Nomi. Tattoos make everyone hot.”

Nomi bursts into laughter then, covering her face with her hands. She shakes her head until the laughs die out into pitiful sounds that are not her crying. She sniffs a few times, as if to cement that she is not crying and then admits—

“I didn’t even notice his stupid tattoos. I know they’re all over him—like, he’s proper fucking covered? Even his neck—ridiculous scorpion—but I swear, it just didn’t even click. One day he was handing me a beer and I looked at his hand and went oh God, he’s got knuckle tattoos?”

“Bad ones,” Matilda points out, but her hand has found Nomi’s and is gently squeezing it.

“Awful ones,” Nomi agrees. She imagines those pale, tattooed hands spreading across her thighs, touching underneath her knees, hiking them up. She groans, lowly. “Poor Maran. I can’t believe—he’s my friend—and I’m here thinkin’ that about his boyfriend?”

“Well you aren’t thinking anything innocent about Maran either.”

“Mati!” Nomi sits up, but the crying becomes a laugh at that.

“What? How long have we been friends? I’ve never heard you talk about anyone as much as you talk about Maran.” She wants to deny it immediately—but she can’t. Nomi had noticed herself doing exactly that and had even tried to mediate herself. She’d start a conversation, Maran at the center (because he felt so completely core in her life now) and then have to reel herself in. She’d started taking mental notes at how frequently she said his name. She started trying to lessen it—and it hadn’t worked.

“It can’t be both of them,” Nomi argues quietly. “That’s so fucked of me. Both of them? And they’re dating each other. That’s even worse. Not like they’re single. Matilda, I’m so fuckin’ wretched.” The crying starts up again, and this time, she knows it wont stop. Because she hasn’t stopped. She’s been thinking of nothing but this, for weeks. On end. Cycling herself through the misery of knowing, with complete certainty she’d found two fucking Lark’s.

Matilda launches across the bed to hug her.

“I just painted your toes, you’re messing them up.”

“Oh my God, Nomi, shut up.”

And she does, and let’s herself cry about it on Matilda’s shoulder.

—

That becomes a hilariously soft memory for them and only them. Nomi never talks about that night to anyone else; but Matilda will remind her of how bad her mascara had run and how awful she’d looked the day after, with puffy sad eyes. It’s not malicious—this gentle teasing is wholly Matilda. And the reminder is funny, because of how everything had worked out. That Matilda had been there, for the very beginning to the very now.

Well. Not right now, because no one will ever be in this right now except the three of them.

Right now is—

***

Nomi buries her face to Maran’s neck, her panting cries louder with every push of her body forward into him. Powerful hands stay closed around her hips, yanking her back just as she’s driven forward by the man inside her. Nomi’s eyes roll and close and her nails drag down Maran’s back, because she holds onto him as best as she can.

All three lay on their sides—Benny behind her and Maran in front of her, pillows cast off the bed, blankets nothing but forgotten messes. They move in a flowing rhythm of push and pull, limbs arranged to make the position possible. At some point, she had stopped paying attention to whose hands were whose and whose lips were whose and who was moving her, or touching her, because it didn’t matter. It was them, it was Benny and Maran and both of them at the same time.

It had started with that request from her. And some would think it a statement like I want you both, because that’s what it is, really. Her, in the middle of them, Benny fucking from behind as Maran fucks from the front, as they both fill her in a way that makes her dizzying head go soft and beautifully warm and safe and so good, so so good.

But it was more I want us. Three. I want it to be all three of us. That’s what it is, more than the two of them fucking her at the same time, that’s what it is, when the position shifts so Benny and Maran can kiss while inside her. That’s what it’s about, when she is asking for harder, and Maran’s gentle thumbs are brushing tears from under her eyes. His soft, plush lips across her jawline, to her ear, to say things to her that make her almost closer than the throb of them inside her.

The positions change so she can lay against Maran’s chest, so he can welcome her tongue with his own, outstretched, erotically obscene and yet adorable and him. Benny’s hand holds her shoulder and his brutal thrusts keep them snapping together. She whimpers into Maran’s welcoming mouth, her sharp pointed hands digging into his skin. He makes noises at the pain of it, at the feel of being inside her as Benny sets pace.

There is a sudden hand from behind, cupping her throat, tilting her head. Maran pushes them upward, his hand braced on the bed—all three of their faces get so close then. Their heavy breathing, their panting, their moans mingling. She can barely see through her pleasure fogged eyes, head falling forward to rest on Maran’s shoulder.

Nomi means to say, I love you both so much and I love that you love each other and love me.

Instead, she is crying out, “Don’t fucking stop, I’m so close, please—” and both men take that as a challenge to make it the best one she ever fucking has.

—

She sleeps almost immediately after. So tired, it’s difficult for her to even stumble back from the bathroom and into their welcoming arms. She thinks she sleeps anyway, laid on one of them, hands soothing her sides up and down. One pets her hair gently and the murmur of their voices intertwines with blue watery dreams. Every time she shifts, one of them does as well. A hand never stops touching her.

“Are you talking about X-Files?” Nomi barely registers her own hoarse voice but it silences the two men for a moment.

“Yes,” Maran admits in his sheepish, sweet voice.

“The series only, n-not the movie. It was bad.”

Nomi’s hands have no sense of grace as they pat their way to faces. She cups either of their cheeks, eyes not opening, cheek still firmly planted on one of their sternums.

“I love you both,” she says and then really does fall completely unconscious.

***

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Matilda leans with her elbows on the bar, a toothpick from a martini tapping against her lips. She keeps them glossy so men will look at them, and that is exactly what the stranger is doing. He’s tall and white and handsome with short blond hair and the exact kind of look that says he knows hes tall and white and handsome (and with short blond hair? Maybe, he doesn’t look that level of self aware).

“Hm,” Matilda plays the hum out, continuing that tap to draw attention to her pretty mouth.

“You can fuck off and die,” Lark says as he approaches, a hand sliding across Matilda’s lower back and sneaking onto her thigh from behind. She’s toweringly tall sitting on the bar stool but Lark—somehow Lark never looks short. And he is, compared to Tall White Handsome, who stares down at him with an incredulous expression.

“Fuck you, man—”

“I’ll kill you,” Lark says, so easily and efficiently, it doesn’t need to sound like a threat. It sounds a lot more like guaranteed fact. Lark tilts his chin up slightly, staring with those dark, intense eyes. The Short Haired Blond steps back with raised hands, defeated and embarrassed. Lark turns his flat gaze on Matilda.

“You’ve been playing darts with Xavier for like two hours.”

“We got here thirty minutes ago.”

“And?”

Nomi slips away as they ‘argue’. She’s seen this ritual enough times to know its an excuse for them to take that argument home. She wont be surprised by the text message apology that Matilda is abandoning her, when she’s really not. Especially because Nomi feels anything but abandoned as she crosses the bar to the darts area. Matilda is only half wrong—it was not two hours, but Lark and Xavier had done nothing but when they’d seen the dart board.

Benji watches, but seems like he’s almost trying to pretend like he isn’t. Nomi has noticed—and not mentioned—that Benji often seems to be pretending like he isn’t watching Xavier recently.

“Did you get a Halloween costume yet?” She asks him, now both of them watching Xavier land perfect bulls eye after perfect bulls eye. His shirt stretches across his muscular back. It is…not an unpleasant sight.

“Mm,” Benji replies.

“Is that a yes?”

“What?”

“Where did my two go?” Nomi asks, instead of bothering him further.

Benji looks briefly apologetic, a dark palm rubbing the back of his neck. He offers her the sort of smile he only really ever gives his friends. She’s stunned sometimes to be counted among that small circle. Sometimes, Nomi thinks her and Benji are alike, but she doesn’t know how. And sometimes, she wants to tell him that, put her forehead to his and try and get him to crack open a bit, but she can’t pry. She won’t—she should, maybe. But instead, she lets him pretend not to watch Xavier out his peripheral.

“Outside, ‘round the back.”

“It’s fucking freezin’ out. Maran’s going to get a cold,” she huffs with annoyance. Benji softens more at the edges. He shrugs out his leather jacket, a thing well loved with patches and pins and hands it over to her. Underneath, he’s not dressed for the oncoming winter months either, sleeves cut off, arm holes drastically low on the sides to reveal the tattoos underneath his pectorals. She wonders about them a lot.

“You’re such a doll, you know he’s always forgetting his jacket.”

“Did you see that?” Xavier hoots, turning on his heel. “Bulls—” His voice catches in his throat and he clears it with a fist to his mouth. “Bullseye,” he offers, eyes flickering back and forth between them—and Nomi realizes that the pretending goes both ways.

“Lark and Til are going to leave,” Nomi predicts as she starts for the exit door. “You two occupy yourselves for a bit. I bet Benny’s found toads outside or somethin’.”

Nomi leaves the two of them then, a small hidden glance to watch them step closer in the low, amber lighting of the bar.

—

When Nomi approaches the two men, Maran’s hand outstretches as if automatic. She lifts her hand and his closes around her wrist and then slides up her arm. Benji's jacket is unfortunately ignored (but she has a feeling he isn't missing it, or Xavier is not unhappy about it's absence either). He pulls her closer and Nomi realizes it isn’t toads. It isn’t any animal, but a picture on Benny’s phone.

“Saturn is out tonight,” he says, in a sort of awe inspired voice. “I tr-tried to get a picture.” It’s blurry and the the bar lights make it impossible, but Benny is still staring at the little dot in the black sky like it’s everything. Nomi wraps an arm around his middle, leans her head against his shoulder.

“Saturn’s moon, Titan, is th-the only moon in our solar system to h-have an atmosphere,” Benny starts, and then doesn’t stop for a minute or two. He gets quieter, but that only makes the sense of privacy intimate. Maran’s hand moves in gentle circles on Nomi’s lower back until it firmly cups her waist and all three of them dig in just a bit closer to listen to Ben talk.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

have fun

wc: 12,150 au: space horror au ch: xavier, benji, lark, matilda, benny, nomi, maran

“We’re allowed?”

It’s Maran who asks, his voice laced with surprise, but also a giant shine of hope in his eyes. They’re thickly lashed and pretty, with a biotic ring in the middle of each iris that glows, especially when his gaze is sharp on something (or someone, either blue haired technician or nasty tattooed sniper). In the dark holding room, he is slightly ambient lit. The only one of the trio of bounty hunters so obviously modified—if not the only one modified.

Xavier hasn’t exactly had the chance to check Benji, has he?

And if Matilda is at all altered, she must have been to the sort of bone cutters that charge prices a man might never even see in writing; and her elegant sort of pretty seems entirely her and not physician made. She sits on a chair with legs crossed, arms tossed behind the chair, staring at Xavier with suspicious, narrowed eyes. She’s perfectly at ease, despite circumstances. He can see why Lark likes her.

But Xavier doesn’t immediately answer and his eyes can’t linger on either Maran or Matilda for very long before they slide Benji’s way. He stands in the corner, staring out a viewing port to the base they’ve docked at. It’s a sprawling city now, once just a military out posting where they refueled between jumps. It’s nothing glorious, but after so much time space side and after…everything they’ve been through—the look of humanity, even the seedy underbelly of it, is welcome.

Benji doesn’t look his way. Xavier tries not to be nervous because of that.

“Captain said he’s not holding you as prisoners right now.” He can’t help but ease himself into a militant stance as he speaks, hands folded behind his back, booted feet slightly apart.

“There’s a catch,” Matilda says, examining her nails, nose tilted up.

“There’s always a catch,” Maran sighs, sinking back into the chair he’d stood from when Xavier had delivered the news they could leave the ship. He bites into his lip, trying not to look back to Benji. Of course they’d make him be the messenger. Captain Mataro hadn’t asked, not really. They were too clever an Imperial Legionnaire to not notice what was happening between their prisoners and their soldiers.

Xavier had never been able to hide much from Mataro. Maybe that was why it hurt to know they’d never necessarily intervened with Tillman. Xavier’s loyalty ran too deep to ever say no. He’d walk to a firing squad with hands raised if his captain asked. Of course they’d ask him to liaison between the military and the prisoners like this.

“If you run,” Xavier starts, unwinding his hands from behind his back. “Captain Mataro will release your details to the base. Not just the military. News stations. You won’t get far.”

“Fucker,” Matilda snips, folding arms around her stomach, sinking further into the white shell of a chair she’s in.

“That one felt obvious,” Maran comments, chin in his hand as he leans on the modest table in the room. Xavier feels like they could have been friends—could be friends. If the universe weren’t such a cruel place that put Maran and Xavier on very opposite ends of space, where they’d never interact except for this slim and horrible chance meeting.

Benji had talked about their home world, just once before, when they’d not been able to sleep. With the lights down, and just the two of them, it had felt so safe and private. Xavier had talked about the belt system he’d grown up on, the over abundance of children in their small home pod. The virtual screen their parents had bought, stuck on a vision of Earth’s old sea.

“They also don’t want you to tell anyone about the prison carrier.”

“Yeah.” Benji’s drawl from the corner makes Xavier jump. His hands tangle together in front of him. He should be embarrassed by the amount of nerves he’s displaying in front of three criminals—two of which he’d helped capture. The one he’d brought to knees himself, striding forward. He stands by Maran and their closeness seems inevitable like that. Their gravity pulls to one another and Matilda is their beautiful moon. Xavier feels an abstract loneliness thinking like that.

“Right, now that one fuckin’ checks.”

“Who would we tell?” Matilda throws hands into the air, laughing. It’s a cold sound. “What a bastard. We’re not his little toy soldiers.” That insult stings, but she isn’t wrong. Xavier folds hands behind his neck, sighing loudly, tilting his chin up to stare at the ceiling.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Maran teases, but even his friendly voice is strained.

Would you run? Is that why you’re all mad? You’d get off the ship and just leave? It’s such an incredibly selfish thought that it sours his stomach. Of course they’d leave. They should leave. They’re notorious, they’re infamous for their crimes and like ghosts in machines, they are the sort of people that disappear in mist and shadow. It had been something of a miracle to capture them in the first place. Xavier’s eyes lift to Benji, who is finally looking at him.

You’d leave?

“So does that mean you don’t want to come out with us?” Xavier asks.

All three bounty hunters blink in near unison. The room goes entirely still and quiet. Xavier would be proud to catch them all off guard (it isn’t exaggeration, they are criminals that had hated him just a month ago), but he feels a little silly. Standing there in his black spacer fatigues, delivering the news that they are still very much prisoners if not just in name, and also that his lame fucking friends put it on him to invite them to the base for a night out.

“Whose us?” Matilda asks. Her voice hasn’t changed, nor her aloof mannerisms, but the interest is not easily hidden. Her foot bobs a little, knee high white boots pristine looking against her neon attire.

“Yes, Lark is going,” Xavier replies tiredly, then looks at Maran directly. “And Nomi.” He pauses and then shrugs his shoulders with a heavy doggish sigh. “Fuck, even Benny, and he hates this place.”

“And you?” Benji startles him again, asking like that. Being underneath his stare makes Xavier’s skin flush. His cheeks burn. He can’t think about that supply closet, not with the others right there. He can’t think of Benji’s mouth and his eyes and his heavy breathing, or the way he makes soft noises in his sleep or how he blinks himself awake and sometimes looks directly at Xavier before anything else.

“And me,” he finally replies, with a wolf of a grin. His hands fumble behind his back again. “Plus, Lark smuggled some stims from the—”

“Well, I’m in,” Matilda announces, rising from her chair. Her slender frame just keeps going, even taller in those clean boots. Her striking beauty is dizzying. Maybe she is modified. Maran’s head tilts back to look at Benji, who only just seems to be able to tear his eyes from Xavier and look down. The thin white biotics in Maran’s eyes sparkle.

“Let’s get off this fuckin’ ship.”

—

What had started as a military base had grown into Red God, which was the very city they navigated together as a unit. Atmosphere had been turned to night, which lit all the glowing signs, foggy air misting around them. Red God was not entirely unlike all civilizations that grew sprouted off a military base; it had a pleasure district and a marketplace and dark alleys for crime that the military police ignored. There were people who stood outside buildings, offering drugs with coded names, or cheap augmentations that would certainly leave an infection worse than the modification itself. Housing piles atop housing, in tall buildings that cramp together little cubes of space.

The city is a loud buzz of activity, even at ‘night’.

Lark spearheads the group, because although Xavier is undoubtedly intimidating as the tallest and Benny precisely looks the type to enjoy the settlement, Lark is like the bounty hunters. Undeniably street savvy—his confidence leads them quickly and stops people from approaching. Little throngs of Red God citizens part for them. Their group isn’t small, meaning it would be a target for thieves or a small gang, if not for the tight cluster they make.

Being off the ship feels undeniably good.

Xavier can almost forget the horrors they’d endured not that long ago, on a prison carrier they were being forced to pretend didn’t exist. When he catches Nomi’s face underneath her hood, he remembers. Whenever his arm bumps into Benji’s, he remembers. But there’s also something soothing about fading into the obscurity of this obscene city, in this pod of people who should not be together. The air might be tight with pollutive fog, but it’s better than the ship, all that recycled oxygen they’ve all already been breathing.

“Okay.” Lark brings them into the small, enclosed alley beside an entrance near flush to the wall with glowing symbols that he must understand. He’s grinning, in that sharp way he smiles. Close lipped, slightly crooked. Matilda drifts to his shoulder, looking at the small terminal on her wrist that Xavier should have confiscated from her.

She won’t risk Benji and Maran’s safety and freedom. He doesn’t think anyway.

Lark withdraws his hands from his pockets, holding upraised palms with stimulant inhalers.

“No, thanks,” Nomi says immediately, drifting to the wall, looking at it curiously.

“Alcohol only,” Benny replies, following her. Maran doesn’t say anything, but finds his way between them, chin tilted on his shoulder to keep one eye on Benji.

“More for me.” Xavier reaches out and takes one, uncapping it swiftly. Matilda follows suit, as if she doesn’t want to be outdone. They stand in a protective circle of each other and Xavier doesn’t miss that Benji is not taking the last one. Lark doesn’t do drugs often—not that there isn’t plenty of opportunity to do drugs on a military cruiser. In his early days of soldiering, his medkit had come with a highly addictive painkiller that Xavier felt was rather purposeful. It was an easy way to keep recruitment.

But the stim is mild; a light blue color that tastes bad on the back of the tongue as he inhales it. A puff of air escapes from around his mouth and into the rising fog of Red God. There’s a hiss following all three of them taking the drug together and then Lark collects the inhalers and tosses them back into the alley. It must not count as littering since there is no nature to pollute to begin with.

The drug hits his blood stream in a way that is instantly satisfying. A floaty feeling that makes his head light and slightly off hinge. Benji hasn’t said anything since they got down the alley, but Xavier refuses to let paranoia make the high tank. Instead, he elbows the bounty hunter softly, who looks up at him in reply. The neon glow of the club beside them plays blues and pinks across his dark skin. Xavier’s lips tingle.

“It’ll wear off in an hour,” Lark says, his pupils already blooming wide. “I’ll meet you back here.”

“You’re not coming into the club?” Nomi suddenly pipes up, sneaking back into their circle. Xavier mourns the way it parts Benji from him.

“Promised I’d show Matilda the marketplace.”

“Hopefully two very wanted criminals with semi-recognizable features don’t get into trouble while I’m gone,” their pilot sniffs. She dabs a finger around her eyes, the stimulant making them glittery and pretty. She’s loosened into a bit of a smile. None of them could have worn their helmets out; they sit in the storage of their rooms together. It would be have been reckless, as those helmets saved their real faces from becoming famous, but they were in turn tuned in on every surveillance bank worth its salt.

Not that Red God likely had a very good security system.

Lark leans toward the door, patting symbols in an order that Xavier would have been able to memorize if the high wasn’t curling at the edges of his vision. The door slides away to reveal a long dark hallway that is already pulsing with music. The sound calls to him, makes his muscles feel instantly twitchy. Adrenaline dumps into him like cold ice. Xavier wants to be inside. To move, to feel free, to not be on the ship, to not be a soldier for a night, to enjoy this breath of freedom, as artificial as it is.

“Have fun,” Lark whispers to him, a squeeze to his bicep as he walks by. As he disappears with Matilda, his arm is slung around her waist in a possessive way that makes Xavier laugh.

—

“Benji, wait.”

The hallway seems to thrum with the club music, in a way that is most likely the stimulant acting in his system. Benji halts as the other three continue, Maran and Nomi once more animated with each other as Benny trails with them. It’s not shocking that he came out when Xavier watches Nomi pull down the hood of her wicked hi-vis yellow jacket. It pools around her shoulders, her blue hair slightly messy. Maran’s sleeves are missing, that one black mechanical arm displayed along with the organic one he has left.

“Alright?” Benji looks tight with an energy that Xavier doesn’t think is excitement. His eyes flicker to the black double doors separating the hallway from the club. Xavier fishes into his back pocket, pulling out a sleek black device that springs open at a touch to a minuscule button. It’s curved and lightweight and impossibly thin.

“I brought this for you,” Xavier explains, stepping closer. The drugs are making his heart beat only a little erratic. He’s glad for how dark it is. Benji’s brow quirks. He has to lift his chin to look up at Xavier, their height difference putting Benji as his chest. It makes it temporarily hard to breathe. Xavier laughs, gesturing to the device. “It’s one of my rebreathers. I thought—maybe you’d want something…like this.”

Their fingers brush as Benji takes it.

He doesn’t say anything as he looks down at the now borrowed rebreather. An emotion passes over his features.

“Are you two fu-fucking coming?” Benny snaps over his shoulder, hands buried in his jacket pockets. His sunglasses are a dark maroon, slid down on his nose, so his near white eyes are even more eerie above them.

“Fuck yourself,” Xavier yells back at him. When he turns to Benji once more, the rebreather is firmly in place. He could never forget what Benji’s mouth looks like—he’s sure he’s dreamed of the shape of Benji’s lips and how soft his facial hair seems—but it completely erases his identity save for the wild curls and heavy brows. The breather comes to his nose bridge, so even that aspect of him is hidden. It’s flush, yet completely obscures features.

Selfishly, Xavier thinks, good. He doesn’t want others to look at Benji. But he also knows that Benji doesn’t want them looking either.

“Nomi wants to go to th-the virtual reality section.” Benny’s voice interrupts the moment, making Xavier spring back. “She saw a sign.” He indicates with a tattooed hand. The sign does say IMMERSE REALITY BECOME A NEW YOU and it also has a red sign attached that says TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR RENOVATION. Underneath that is a crude drawing on the wall in neon yellow of a xenobite getting a blowjob. Xavier raises his brows, but Benny shrugs.

“You can’t st-stop her when she gets started.”

Which is true. Nomi already has both arms around Maran’s sleek black one, pulling him toward a shuttered door at the end of the hallway. Maran looks a mixture of nervous and absolutely smitten. His cheeks are splotched with color. Benny’s stare at him and the blue haired hacker is a hungry thing.

Thinking of Lark and how he’d immediately found a way to be alone with Matilda, Xavier laughs. He shoves Benny by the shoulders toward the retreating duo, and whispers, “Have fun.”

—

The inside of the club is large enough to not feel claustrophobic despite the bodies. Paid dancers entertain on raised platforms, rings of people surrounding them. There is a wall of a bar to the side, a pit of a floor where everyone mingles into one throbbing mass. The lights are every single color all at once and somehow coming up mostly purple. Xavier’s entire body reacts to the club.

He had somewhat of a vice for clubbing. He’d picked it up during his second run through on the cruiser, when things had first started to get bad with Tillman. When he’d realized how much was wrong about a superior officer approaching him like that. Xavier had retreated off ship every time they docked, and found places like this. It wasn’t so much that he needed to be drunk or high. He liked that too, the feeling of everything else being pushed out and replaced.

But it had been the simplicity of it all. Music and movement and no military or back logged calls from home he hadn’t answered or a sergeant that suddenly wanted to know why Xavier wasn’t answering his door at night. Xavier’s body hums in memory of all those clubs, all those different escapes. Only he isn’t alone now.

Benji stands beside him, slightly turned with shoulders curved. It’s obvious he’s marking exits. His dark eyes sweep and scan.

Xavier reaches for the zipper of his jacket, slowly peeling it open. Benji stops staring at everything else and looks toward him. He shoves it off, tossing it to an area he already knows he’ll forget to stop by when they leave. He’d switched from his fatigues into civvies. Tonight, Xavier doesn’t want to look like a soldier. Instead, he’d borrowed something from Benny; this mangled net top that was far too loose, and a long sleeve black shirt underneath that was entirely too tight. He liked that it was long enough to tuck over his knuckles.

He grins at Benji, whose stare is firmly pinned to his upper body. He’d wanted to look good. He’d even let Nomi dust some of her black shadows at the corners of his eyes. Your green is natural? She’d asked. When he’d told her yes, she’d snorted and shook her head and told him that belters genes were a gift from some old Earth God. Xavier had never thought about it. He’d known in obvious ways that he was good looking. It had never done any good for him, though.

But now, with Benji drinking him in, he’s suddenly grateful that he’d made some sort of attempt.

The bounty hunter himself is in all black, a borrowed shirt from Xavier of all things. Something buttoned down, sleeves rolled up, loose at the top. The peeks of his skin are enticing like water for thirst. The rebreather blends with the outfit seamlessly. Good for a club, where no one will think twice about it. Half the fun is dressing up for a part. Someone might think him an entertainer. That thought makes Xavier’s stomach turn with acidic jealousy so he steps closer.

“I wanna dance,” Xavier says, just loud enough for Benji to hear him. Others around them aren’t paying attention anyway, which feels silly. Everyone should notice Benji. How could they not notice him?

“I don’t dance,” he replies, brown eyes almost black underneath the swirling purple lighting. The hard tempo music reverberates in Xavier’s chest, reminding him of the body high that will only last for so long.

For a moment, he considers taking Benji and finding a small place for them to be alone. A corner of the club where the music isn’t so loud, where there are no dancers, where people won’t find them. It could be like his bedroom, where it’s safe and small. He could…But instead, his wrists drape over the bounty hunters shoulders. He captures a curl with his fingers, rubbing it and appreciating the soft texture. Sleepy eyes widen, pupils going huge like Benji had taken a hit. Xavier leans in, brushing their temples together.

“I’m going to go dance.”

—

Once in the crowd of people, Xavier really does lose himself. The music carries him elsewhere. He isn’t particularly good at dancing, nor is it really anything other than just letting his body do whatever it wants to the sound all around him. People fade in and out, people he pays no attention to because he’s not there for them. He fishes his necklace from his collar, holding it like one might a leash, head hanging back, smiling with eyes closed to the ceiling. Sweat collects along his skin, under his arms, on his back, over his throat. It dampens his hair and sticks curls of it to his cheeks and neck.

He doesn’t care about being jostled, or the occasional person that slings an arm around him, or someone he touches in turn. There’s no intimacy to dancing with these strangers. It’s just movement.

Until a hand slides purposefully across his back. It briefly cups his hip. Xavier’s whole body shivers, recognizing an intense desire unfurling in his lower stomach. Every want pools there, his hips tight and his thighs burning. Benji, he thinks, smiling to himself. Only when he turns, it isn’t Benji, but a lithe man with shocking white hair. He smiles, the club lighting turning his teeth florescent. Xavier stares for a moment. Then he smiles back, hesitantly.

The white haired stranger holds his elbow, a thumb brushing along the crook. It isn’t like accidentally stumbling into someone dancing and sharing a few gyrating movements together. This purposeful touch stuns him. The man steps closer. He’s young, with dark violet eyes that search up Xavier. He’s not short, but no one is necessarily tall next to Xavier.

“I’m obsessed with you,” he yells over the music. You don’t even know me, Xavier thinks immediately. He doesn’t yank his arm away just yet, but he doesn’t invite the man in closer either. “You just look so happy.” Xavier narrows his eyes, tilting his head, staring down at the man. He wonders if this is some sort of joke, his smile twitchy on his face. The drugs are burning off in his system, making him cold despite the air in the club being heavy and warm.

“Could I dance with you?”

“It’s a club,” Xavier finally replies, finding his voice. “We’re all dancing together.”

“I want to dance with you.”

“Hey, man,” Xavier laughs, feeling it come out more on edge than he’d have liked. “Do whatever you like, I—”

Suddenly, a cold glass is shoved into his hand. Xavier looks down at it. Then up and Benji stands there.

“Queue was long at the bar.” His voice comes out with that electronic twinge to it from the breather. His eyes are shiny underneath the club lighting, his only feature visible. He’s not looking at Xavier. He’s staring at the pale stranger. The man tilts his head back and forth, surveying before releasing Xavier’s elbow. Then he steps back, a graceful turn on his heel. Xavier isn’t sure how to process the moment. The glass in his hand is delightfully cold.

“Weird fuck, that one, hey? Why’s he touchin’ you like that?” Benji shuffles closer. The rebreather hides his sneer, but just by the pinch of his brows, Xavier know’s its there. He brings the glass to his lips and takes a quick, happy sip. Then he sputters and laughs.

“Is this water?”

“You’ve been dancin’ for a fuckin’ minute, Xavier—aren’t you tired?” Had it been long? He’d not really noticed. Xavier feels guilty for leaving Benji like that; he’d really only meant to dance for a song or two. Or…truthfully, maybe for Benji to join him after watching him go. He’s joined him now, though Xavier doesn’t see Benji getting into the music. The people around them are closing in, forcing them closer and closer. Xavier kills the glass of water in one go and then puts it on the ground at his feet. It’ll likely get kicked somewhere, but he isn’t thinking much.

“I am tired.” Xavier gets closer still, their bodies nearly pressed together, so he doesn’t have to yell. “Come with me?” He won’t force Benji to go—and maybe the drugs had been scrambling his senses, trying to tease Benji to him like that. Now, he feels more steady. Maybe the water had helped. He thinks of the man touching his elbow, that soft gentle press of thumb to the rarely touched spot on his arm. He thinks back to that sudden, intense longing when he’d thought it had been Benji’s hand on his lower back.

“Let’s go.” Benji’s voice is not loud, but it cuts through the music. Through everything. Xavier, with nothing else to do, takes Benji’s hand. Their fingers do a slow, unsure lace together. Xavier tries not to think of the way his heart climbs his throat at that, the way it makes a throbbing feeling pulse through his whole body. Instead, he turns and begins tugging Benji through the crowd.

—

Clubs always have private rooms available. It isn’t hard to guess why. These are a hallway past the bar where the music suddenly becomes muffled, like an afterthought. The bass line still echoes down the passage, still feels tingly in his fingertips. Sparse people stand around, either waiting for someone to come join them, or needing a break from the crowd. Their conversations are a low murmur. They don’t pay attention to the new duo and that anonymity makes him giddy. Xavier doesn’t let go of Benji’s hand as he finds a room marked vacant. He holds the chip in the webbing of his thumb to the wall reader.

It chimes, reading off an electronic amount of credits immediately yanked from his account—Xavier briefly hopes he isn’t going to catch a bug from this and have everything drained overnight. He can’t find it in himself to care as the door slides open with a hiss and the sign beside it switches to a red OCCUPIED.

Once inside, the club music truly does disappear. The vibrations still pulse along the floor, underneath Xavier’s feet. But instead the room is washed in an ambient setting, a dim garnet color with some soft humming soundtrack instead. The furniture isn’t particularly lavish, but two couches and a low table are enough. In fact, Xavier decides they don’t even need the table—he crosses to it and using the toe of his boot, shoves it neatly to the side where it clatters against the wall.

Then he turns to Benji.

Sweat cools over Xavier’s entire body now that he’s not dancing. His hand is still firmly in Benji’s, their fingers tangled together. It does nothing to stop the hammering heart in his chest. It beats so loudly, he’s afraid Benji can hear it. They’re unusually quiet. Silence doesn’t often linger between the two of them. It hangs there now, along with a thickness to the air. Hairs raise along his skin at the thought that they are truly alone.

Xavier steps closer and puts his hands on Benji’s waist. Then he turns, swiveling him toward the couch, where he lands with a soft exhale. The rebreather makes it an electronic whisper.

He thinks about all the things he could say now that it’s just them. This isn’t like being in his room at night. The ship isn’t buzzing around them, the threat of Benji’s predicament right outside the door. This isn’t the supply closet either, where they’d come together in that lusty, messy way. And not even kissed, Christ, they’d not even kissed. Maybe it’s no better that it’s a sleazy private room in a club he’d paid for. But it feels different. Nothing else is in that room, except them.

Instead of speaking, he steps forward. Benji’s knees part to accommodate him in a way that makes his eyes vibrate in his skull. Xavier’s breathing is rapid, as though he’s still recovering from dancing. He’s not—he just can’t catch air. He pushes closer and Benji’s knees widen more. His hands stay flat on his thighs, but he looks up as Xavier stands in front of him. With Benji seated, Xavier is even more imposingly tall. It’s not too different from the first time they’d met and Benji had been on his knees.

A slim pale hand, with black sleeves tucked over scarred knuckles, lifts. Xavier reaches out slowly, in a tentative way that could be brushed aside. Benji could stop him. He gives him that option, moving lethargically. But Benji doesn’t stop him. His chest is rising and falling just as rapidly, the sound whistling through the rebreather. His eyes are glassy, as if he’s the one that’d taken drugs earlier.

Xavier touches the edge of the rebreather and gently tugs it away. Once free, he tosses it to the side, where it joins the discarded table.

“Fuck, you are so beautiful,” Xavier breathes, his voice shaky. “Jesus, do you know how beautiful you are?” He puts the back of his knuckles to Benji’s cheek. It’s a gentle touch. Then he moves, slowly dragging his fingers across Benji’s jawline, underneath his chin. A thumb touches the corner of Benji’s lip. Xavier doesn’t stop, his imagination nothing close to the way Benji’s warm skin actually feels. His fingers trail over his cheek bone, one touching his eyebrow, another brushing a curl from his temple.

As he touches, Benji shivers. That shivering turns into a shaking, and his head falls back as if off hinge. His lips part and he makes a whimper of a sound that shoots directly into Xavier’s lower stomach. Both of Xavier’s giant hands take Benji’s face then, holding his cheeks. He hunches over, bringing them close, staring, thinking about that pretty, high sound. Benji’s face pinches in embarrassment and desire, lip curled as if he’ll need to defend himself. The vulnerability in him is so terrifying it makes every muscle in Xavier’s body flex.

“You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to touch you,” Xavier says, their faces close as he bends over. One of his hands sinks into Benji’s dark hair, tilting the bounty hunters head to the side. Benji’s eyes don’t leave his, but they flutter at the sensations.

“Got a handful now, hey?” Benji’s usual bravado is wavering, his voice thick. He wets his lips with his tongue, lips staying parted after, looking lonely. “Where’s this comin’ from, Xavier?”

“This is from way back, Benji. Since you were staring at me on your knees like you wanted to kill me.”

“I did want to kill you.”

His throat bobs. Xavier’s back muscles strain at the way he’s folded himself. His one hand still cupping Beni’s cheek tightens, fingers underneath his ear lobe, touching softly to sensitive, thin skin. He grins ear to ear, buzzing eyes narrowed.

“And now?”

“Might still kill you.”

It’s met with a laugh as Xavier sinks to his knees. It levels their heights, putting them face to face. Not that Xavier leaves them much time to appreciate that. He pushes forward, his lips skimming Benji’s temple. He’s thinking of that fucking closet. He’s living in that closet and has been since it happened. Watching Benji’s tongue and his lips. Enjoying the sight of his eyes rolling closed, holding him as he fucked into his mouth. Xavier wants to apologize for that moment, not that it wasn’t good. But God, he should have found a way for this to happen first. He should have gotten to taste Benji before Benji got to taste him.

He moves his mouth slowly until a frustrated sound leaves Benji, so much like that touch starved whimper from before. His chin tilts up abruptly and then—then their mouths are right against one another. Just breathing. Xavier thinks he hears his name, in Benji’s voice, high strung with want. It snaps something inside him and he crashes them together.

They kiss—and it’s a hungry thing. Xavier crushes his body forward, hands engulfing underneath Benji’s thighs to yank them around him. Benji’s hands snag at the net top, the sound of fabric tearing loud in their ambient private room. Neither of them stop for anything. Xavier parts their lips forcefully, his tongue pressing into Benji’s mouth. He moans at the sensation, at the sudden taste of him. He tilts his head back and forth, hands roaming up Benji’s body to grasp his face once more.

The kiss is messy and frantic. Teeth nip his lower lip and he responds with his own bite. He devours as much as he’s being devoured. Benji pants between every turn of their heads to find new angles to taste more of each other. His hips grind upward into Xavier’s torso, while Xavier’s hips buck hard against the couch. Maybe it isn’t so different from the supply closet, then. Maybe this is oral sex, because it feels remarkably like fucking.

Xavier instantly wants more, his hands yanking Benji’s borrowed shirt up. Buttons pop as they go, revealing more brown skin, coarse dark body hair. He shoves harder than he means to, Benji slipping on the couch, his torso undulating with movement. The sight of his tattooed body makes Xavier feral and his mouth dives down.

He isn’t slow about it at all, but he takes as much time as he can. Sucking kisses to Benji’s chest, his sternum. His tongue drags and finds a peaked nipple, pulling it into his mouth. Benji’s hand tears at Xavier’s hair, the other fisted into that netted shirt that’s slowly being torn to shreds. The sounds he makes are unlike anything Xavier’s ever had the fortune to hear. They’re growls and grunts mixed with sudden inhales and then more of those beautiful whimpers. Especially when teeth join his tongue on the nipple he hasn’t abandoned.

There’s a certain revelry in how sensitive Benji is. How every touch elicits movement and sound, as if his body is writhing upward and begging for attention. Xavier’s ego is stroked for a moment until he realizes that desperation for attention feels strange with everything he knows of Benji.

Shamefully, he’d dug surface level into the bounty hunters past that he could find. He’d read more than a few newslogs; some of them blatant tabloids and gossip spheres. He couldn’t help himself. He’d wanted to know more, had felt mad for the desire to know anything else he could know. And among those sordid details, Benji had been called a lover. Someone with many partners, a string of them that he left around the galaxy, all sighing over the helmeted criminal.

So why was Benji so…hopeless for touch? Why was he moving like it was the first time in a long time someone had put hands and mouth to him? The thought comes to him, just as he’s withdrawing his tongue, a string of spit still connected to the pectoral he’d been abusing. No one was touching Benji like this. No one was making him feel good. They were only taking. And Xavier feels gruesome about that. He feels hot anger pour through the arousal in his veins, a dangerous alchemical concoction.

Maybe a bit righteous about the want to draw Benji’s pleasure out, kicking and screaming and moaning.

Xavier hears his name in that breathy groan, but he can’t focus on that. Instead he sinks lower, shoving fabric away. For a moment, all he can do is rub his face against Benji’s torso, the smell of him like an aphrodisiac. He groans, tongue out, lavishing, not caring how messy it is. He kisses his way down Benji’s navel. Then lower. He kisses directly underneath Benji’s belly button, feeling muscles dance and flex. He wants to shove his fucking nose into the thick dark hair above the zipper he’s nearly gotten down. He wants smell and taste everything.

But calloused hands cup his cheeks. They tilt his head back. He relishes the feel of those fingertips across his cheeks, his face nuzzling sideways to capture a palm in a close lipped kiss. The point of his nose drags to the delicate, throbbing pulse on the inside of Benji’s wrist. Then his head is tilted again, a little more forceful.

“Hm?” Xavier hums.

Benji moves his face back and forth, peering closer at him. For a good moment, Xavier is too fucking bludgeoned by the feel of his hands and the tickle of his breath on his swollen lips once more to really notice that Benji is checking his pupils.

“Are you,” Xavier withdraws somewhat, but not enough that Benji’s hands move from his face. He cracks a disbelieving smile and then laughs. “Are you checking to see if I’m still high, you asshole?” The laughter catches in his throat when he realizes he’s right, as Benji grumbles to himself and doesn’t stop examining. Then an emotion swells up inside his chest, nearly cracking his ribs open to reveal his bloody, beating heart.

His head falls forward out of Benji’s grasp. He presses his face into the bounty hunters thigh, trying to make his breathing even. The emotion keeps pressing, up his throat and making his hands curl tightly into Benji’s shirt.

“Did I take advantage of you before?” He doesn’t give Benji time to answer. Instead, he shakes his head, rubbing his face on the coarse, black denim clad thigh below him. “I shouldn’t have—I just—you were so—and I wanted you and you wanted me and—”

“Don’t take that from me, Xavier.” He stills and rises from his hunched over, apologetic position. His hands don’t unfurl from Benji’s shirt. They’re a bit painful, with how tight he’s holding on. “Alright?” There’s not many words and they’re caught in Benji’s throat, but his eyes are burning into Xavier with meaning. Something unspoken passes between them, in the way silent communication works with two individuals that are—what? That are close? Like this?

“That was the best one I ever gave,” Benji continues with a crooked grin. He’s not saying out loud everything else he means, but Xavier gets it. He leans in again, his hands finally escaping their unyielding torment on Benji’s shirt to cup around his ribs. He can feel the way they move as he breathes. “Yeah, Xavier, kiss me again. You fuckin’ dickhead, I want you to kiss me again.”

This time it’s a slower affair. Benji is moving, laying back on the couch as Xavier crawls above him. Their hard bodies line up together, even though his legs are far too long. One hangs off, knee still to the ground, but they laugh about it. Their mouths come together again, this time slower. This time it’s languid and their hands roam in appreciative gropes. Benji’s hand digs into his lower back and then cups around Xavier’s ass, making him laugh into the kiss.

He buries his nose to Benji’s neck. He inhales. Hard. He rubs his nose along the pulse that’s only started slowing.

“What a dog,” Benji murmurs, his other hand petting hair back from Xavier’s face.

“Woof,” he pants close to Benji’s ear.

They’re going to kiss again. Maybe, they’ll do more in the privacy of this little maroon room, with their friends spread across Red God. Maybe they’ll use their hands, or mouths or simply press together until it’s enough.

Maybe, but then, there’s the alarm.

The sound makes them jump—makes Xavier scream and roll off, onto the ground on his knees. His hands go to his ears. It’s the emergency all station alarm; too loud to be ignored by anyone. It’s an alarm that only sounds when something mission critical is happening. Nuclear or catastrophic. Invasion, turf war that’ll leave everyone dead, military policy finally getting what they deserve. Something. The alarm is so loud, Xavier stumbles to his feet as Benji does the same from the couch.

“Fuck!” He yells it right as the alarm cuts, and all that’s left is the emergency lighting.

It reminds him of the prison ship. The blue and red, the flashing, the enviro turned off as they melted, the crawling dead things. The twist of flesh and merciless fear. Xavier’s hands shake as they pull from his ears, staring at Benji with wide, desperate eyes.

“No way,” Benji pants, shaking his head. “It’s—can’t be here too.”

Panic threatens Xavier with bile in his throat. He slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes shaking as he tries to ignore the bright flashing emergency lights. There’s commotion outside. The music shut off, the sound of pounding feet. People evacuating. For a moment, they only stand there and stare at each other until dread pours over Xavier, his skin going icy and clammy.

“Nomi,” he moans, a thread of terror there. “Oh, fuck, we have to find her.”

“Yes,” is all Benji says, darting for the door.

The club has dissolved into absolute chaos. With the emergency lights on, it looks like a garish crime scene. The bright white interspersed with blue and red makes it look clinical and shameful as people dart for the exits. Xavier jolts when someone running collides with his shoulder, sending him stumbling forward. He sneaks a hand into his pocket so he can have a grasp on his mechanical knife, but there’s too many bodies to switch it open without a close accident.

“This way,” he yells, starting for the double doors they’d come through. They’re all the way slid open, a vein of people shoving their way through. He’s running, doing his own fair amount of pushing. But the tidal wave of people maneuvers him. And in the herd of terrified people, Xavier is lost. He doesn’t see Benji, his wild curly hair, his beautiful face, his worried brown eyes.

He’s dragged toward a side exit.

“Benji!” But his yells aren’t very loud over the rest of the commotion. Fuck, fuck, fuck his anxious lizard brain chants. And then, someone random holding his arm and tugging him, their panic making them as helpful as they are harmful, Xavier is suddenly behind a grate of bars that slam down. Someone’s screaming down the dark hall. Xavier’s blood pulses in his skull, pressing himself against the bars.

“No fuckin’ shot,” Benji growls, shoving himself against the opposite side.

“It’s security,” Xavier pants, his hands shaking as they close around the cool metal. He puts his forehead against it, eyes closed. “I dunno—I dunno what’s going on.” He pats frantically at the communicator chip behind his ear, but it’s crackling silence. There’s no connecting to the ship, or the captain. He presses himself harder against the bars.

“Xavier, alright, mate, look at me. Look at me.” When he does, Benji is reaching through the bars, taking his face. He smooths fingers over Xavier’s cheeks, a thumb brushing his eyebrow. “Go back to the ship. I’m goin’ to double back, look for Nomi and Maran.” There’s a pause and a brief pause before he snorts derisively. “And Benny.”

Benji’s hands withdraw. Xavier tries to summon the soldier that lives inside his head, the corporal that operates with a cool, detached calm. He has to keep his eyes closed, because he’s afraid if he looks at Benji, it’ll shatter the effort to switch that mask on.

Then he regrets it, when he opens his eyes and Benji is gone.

***

The poster hadn’t been lying. Most of the virtual arcade is under shrink wrap, a construction set of tools scattered about, a sleek black ladder leaning against a wall. It’s cavernous, because virtual reality games don’t require much. Benny kicks over a bucket that spins and spits black oil everywhere in little splattered patterns.

At least it’s quiet. Maybe a little too quiet, compared to the hallway they’d come down, with the music bleeding through it. He wonders how Xavier is fairing with that sullen little bounty hunter that looks at him like he’s a bone to chew on. Their steps echo in the arcade, on slick white tiled floor, especially Nomi’s chunky boots. Benny keeps his hands to himself as they wander, ducking exposed wires from ceilings that are cracked open for easy access.

“Wicked,” Nomi quips in her cute colony English accent. A word stolen straight from their corporals vocabulary. It makes Benny smile at her, head tilted down, eyes scanning over his sunglasses as he takes in their derelict environment. Half the games are shut down. The lighting is on, but Benny suspects that’s because the power is connected to the club, not because anyone is there. They’d likely have been kicked out by now, after he’d borrowed a trick from Lark and broke the lock keeping people out.

“I played this one back home. Got the highest score every time, yunno,” Maran says proudly, standing in front of a large blocky machine. XENO INVADERS is a giant flashing title above a huge, inky screen. He takes the controls in his hands, pretending for a moment to be shooting something, faking sound affects under his breath.

Nomi giggles and collides her shoulder with him, which makes his face light up. Benny wonders where the jealousy is. If he needs to drag it out with a knife, because he’s unused to it not being there. Usually if someone glanced Nomi’s way, his loser sensitive emotions were already spiraling and telling him to either kill himself or the person in question.

But Maran is so fucking easy to like. Not just because he’s so boyishly handsome; though he is. Especially with those arms exposed, one fake and one real. The curve of his brown bicep is inviting in a way that makes Benny’s mouth water. His face is freckled, like he got actual organic sun as a child. And even in the low lighting, his eyes spark not just because of those thin white biotics.

Maran’s also just ridiculously sweet, isn’t he? Hands to himself as Nomi keeps inviting him to touch, with her hard to read body language. The few conversations that Benny has trapped him into there was just a current of openness to him. Hadn’t the world been cruel to Maran? Hadn’t someone hurt him? Why wasn’t he angry? Why wasn’t he worse?

Benny follows them as they dig deeper into the arcade. He ignores the swirling emotions in his gut. He’s very good at ignoring things.

“Oh, I love this game,” Nomi says, darting to a virtual pad with a sleek, minimalistic motorbike attached. It’s a suggestion of the real thing, no tires, just mounted to the sensor pad underneath it. The lights are dancing technicolor, but the visors attached are blank, resting on the console. As is the screen in front. She hums as she goes to her knees, feeling her hands across the ground.

Benny and Maran stand side by side, watching her.

They’re so close, they might as well be actually touching. Benny can sense he’s being stared at as well, but he doesn’t turn his head, or risk glancing to the side. He continues watching Nomi, but he does indulge himself with imagining what could happen. If he did turn, put his chin to his own shoulder and stared back at Maran. Would he smile, that bashful, proud grin that he has around Nomi?

The technician in question touches behind her skull, deft fingers pulling a thin little cord free from the mess of her blue hair. Her other hand rummages the pockets of her oversized jacket until she comes up with a slim all purpose tool Benny had gifted her. He shifts at noticing it, trying to contain the strange elation that pulses through his veins at how comfortably she flicks it open. That she kept it on her.

The two men continue to watch as she gets a panel free, and then jacks herself into it.

Nomi looks up at them, her pink eyes turning bright blue.

“Wow,” Maran says quietly. “That’s impressive.”

“I guess so,” Benny replies, affecting nonchalance. The burning sensation is back, like Maran’s eyes are crawling over his tattooed neck. Benny fakes a yawn into the crook of his elbow to cover the nervous energy that’s making his arms jittery and his stomach spin. There’s a brief moment of silence and then Nomi exhales and unplugs.

The screen comes to life immediately, muted sounds following from the visors on the console. Nomi stands and dusts her hands together, smiling proudly at the two of them. Her pales cheeks are flushed slightly pink, as though from exertion. Neither of the men seem capable of saying anything for a moment, until Benny firmly puts a hand behind Maran’s shoulders and pushes him forward.

“It’s m-more fun if there’s two,” he explains with a wicked sneer as Maran looks over his shoulder back at him. His thick lashed eyes are wide. Nomi, who must agree, has already climbed onto the bike, sorting out the visors. She has to scoot herself forward to let Maran climb on behind—and he does so with this gentle, nervous energy. His hands stay firmly planted on his thighs, rubbing an anxious pattern back and forth.

Benny observes the two of them with what he hopes looks like disinterest. Instead, he is following Nomi’s hands as she tucks hair behind her ears. He’s watching her pass the visor back and put her own on with the rapt attention of someone entranced. Benny watches Maran sling it around his face, his anxious scoot forward bringing his chest to Nomi’s back. His hands fall back to his thighs, fingers curling. Benny breathes in and out evenly, pulling his tin case of cigarettes from his pocket.

He slides one behind his ear as he approaches the rear of the virtual reality bike. Maran is wide enough to dwarf Nomi, his shoulders broad. His thin shirt is flimsy enough that his light brown skin is slightly visible. Benny takes the criminals wrists from behind, gently navigating them forward until they are on Nomi’s waist. Maran stiffens. Benny is so far pressed forward that he can feel him go still against his chest. His mind fills with the image of Maran’s back flexing like that in very different circumstances. Benny’s chest to his back in very different circumstances.

Then he relaxes. He leans back. He grips Maran’s thighs and gives them a short squeeze before letting go. His lips to Maran’s ear, he whispers, “Have fun.”

—

Benny doesn’t wander far. Just because he doesn’t want to watch them, doesn’t mean he necessarily wants to be away from them. It makes his nerves prickle to think of them being separated, so instead he wanders back to XENO INVADERS. Benny stares at himself in the full black screen. He inhales hard on the cigarette, lazy about the exhale so smoke curls all around him. He shrugs his jacket off, feeling strangely warm. The enviro must not be cycling in the arcade very well.

He leaves it on the stool beside the game.

Nomi had kissed him first, after repairing his arm. There was still oil on her fingers from where she’d gone poking around in the sensitive bits of his non organic matter. She’d leaned in, with her fingertips brushing the side of his jaw and put her mouth to his. Benny had loved her probably sooner than that, but it was worse now. Sometimes, it was such a consuming feeling he hated himself for it.

Benny doesn’t think he can handle that two fold. Maran’s face swims in his vision, his plush lips looking kissable even just in memory. He sucks a hard inhale of nicotine. He shakes his head, kicks the stool over and—

“Jonny…”

The cigarette drops from his mouth.

“Hello?” He doesn’t mean for his voice to come out as high pitched as it does. He’s not a baritone to fucking begin with, but it’s down right squeaky with fear just then. He clears his throat, rubbing a hand aggressively across his chest. He’s hearing things. It’s too quiet in this arcade. They never should have left Benji and Xavier. Lark never should have set that precedent.

There’s a shvhhhhh sound of plastic wrapping bunching together. Benny stumbles toward it. He should—he should run. Probably. He should go back to Maran and Nomi and tell them they should leave, but…it’s a worker. Maybe security. Even more reason to leave. But something snags in Benny’s skull and tugs. He feels an impossible pull. The strange human desire to investigate.

“Jonny.”

Maybe there’s curiosity to it. Hearing that name after so long. Benny hadn’t been on the ship. But he’d seen their faces when they’d come back. The shell shocked glassy eyes; Nomi’s nightmares afterward. Maybe he is afraid—he can’t not be—but maybe he’s also interested to know what the horrors really are. Benny, after all, has experienced horror so much already. What more could really happen?

He meets a wall of plastic sheeting. And inside he can see the murky silhouette people.

“Hello?” He calls again, in a rough voice. He clears his throat. His pulse thunders up underneath his jaw, hammering cruelly at his throat. He chews his lip, breathing in and out through his nose like an abused race horse. Benny’s hand shakes as he lifts it.

Jonny, something whispers inside his head. No, he thinks. No.

He yanks it away. And then he regrets it.

Benny should have listened to Nomi. He should have listened to Xavier, who was a scary enough man himself sometimes. Benny is ill equipped for the scene in front of him. It is a reality defying image, so reality warps at the edges of his vision, turning black. Tunneling him into the four men standing in a circle.

They’re dressed in the old republic uniforms. Pilots, with gas mask helmets on that wheeze with every inhale. They stand above a figure on the ground, huddled in on itself. Blood splatters the ground just like the oil from before. It drips from a broken nose. His own broken nose. A tooth sits on the floor. It’s his tooth. A back molar. They’d knocked it loose when they’d jumped him.

Benny is standing there, staring at himself, on the ground.

“What the fuck?” the words spill out with spit, because vomit rises in his throat. The air is tangy with sweat and blood and fear. He swallows it down, stumbling back. The noise makes the pilots snap to attention. All  of them turn and look at him at the same time. Their visors are black. Not the sort of black that the plasti-steel helmets are made of. It’s a swirling, liquid texture that ripples with acknowledgment. Those waves say, I see you. He whimpers on the ground. A hand out stretched. He’s thin and younger and pathetic and beaten black and blue and red.

All the pilots hold a knife. A familiar one.

Sergio had given him that knife. A sweet parting gift, from his pilot lover back in the force. It’s distinguishable by the curve at the end. S.R. is etched into the handle. He’s so distracted staring at that knife that he doesn’t notice the version of himself changing on the ground. He rises to his bloody knees and instead of being him twenty, it’s him at twelve. Benny can almost feel the child’s black eye, his split lip.

But when the child opens his mouth, it’s just the loud snarling sound of an animal.

And then Benny runs.

The snapping, snarling, growling follows, along with the heavy sound of combat boots on tiled floor. It isn’t human, whatever that sound is. It’s nothing distinguishable. No animal he’s ever heard before. It’s mingling with voices, with his voice, with his crying. Benny feels real tears in his eyes, pouring along his cheeks, more spit from his mouth as he screams. His shoulder clips with a machine as he runs, sending him sprawling to the ground.

He raises hands to protect his face—just like he’d down so many years ago—but it’s only one pilot now. It stands over him, switching the knife back and forth between black clad hands. The sounds it makes are wet and keening, like a hyena’s laugh. Benny kicks out, trying to strike the monster’s leg, but it swipes with the knife, catching a slash across his knee. Pain erupts like a white hot flash, then the wet feeling of blood.

“Fuck you!” Benny yells, sliding himself backward desperately on the tiled floor. He needs Xavier—he can’t win a fight without Xavier. Fear makes his body unresponsive, his limbs twitchy and useless.

And then a haymaker catches the pilot monster right in the fucking helmet. The force behind the punch sends the monster straight to the ground, where the helmet cracks against the floor like the shattering of a skull. Benny stares, open mouth, face wet with tears as Benji of all people stomps his booted foot down on the pilots hand. There’s an unmistakable snap of bone and the knife tumbles free.

Benji wastes no more time. His boot goes for the throat then. Over and over.

And over.

Until the creature convulses violently and black blood pools from under the cracked helmet. It goes still.

Neither of them speak. They stare at the impossible thing bleeding on the floor. Benny goes to his knees, panting wildly. His hands card back through his sweaty hands, his hand rubbing across his mouth. His knee burns where his lovers blade has cut his skin cleanly, like a surgeons scalpel. He’s not fully in control of himself as he crawls over, a hand prepared to yank the helmet free.

“Don’t.” Benji’s voice is eerily calm. Benny looks up at him. His face is a pure mask, lips thinned. He isn’t even breathing hard from that brutal explosion of violence. His hands are curled into fists still. “You don’t want to know, mate. I think—fuck. I think knowing makes it stronger.”

Benny doesn’t have time to ask what that even means. He gets to his feet, legs shaky and number. Bloods wet across his shin, but he doesn’t pay it any attention. He swallows more vomit down, hands closing over his mouth. He can’t speak. If he does, it’ll just be a stuttering mess. They made him into this. This terrified little creature. Benny shuts his eyes, trying to ignore the dead body on the ground. If it’s a body. Whatever it is.

“Did you hear the alarm?”

“What?” Benny finally drops his hands, looking at Benji. They step carefully away from the dead thing on the ground, putting distance, in case it gets back up. They’re careful not to turn their back on it for that exact same reason. Benji looks like he’s going to press, but there’s shouting and then suddenly, Nomi and Maran.

They skid around a corner together. Fear mangles their beautiful faces. Benny turns to try and put the corpse behind him so they don’t have to see, but it doesn’t matter. Nomi isn’t stupid—she notices and goes still, hands raised to her mouth.

And then, inexplicably, she’s stepping toward Benji. She’s taking his hand in both of hers, staring at him with giant, pink eyes. He seems momentarily startled by her—and then relaxes. Benny can’t begin to imagine what sort of bond forms between people who went through more of whatever just happened to him. How much did he not know about that ship?

“It fucking followed us,” Nomi whispers, her breathy, deep voice terrified.

“Was there an alarm, Nomi?” Benji steps closer, trying to crowd the answer out of her.

Benny jumps when there’s a touch to his elbow.

Maran stares at him, his gorgeous eyes filled with concern. They’re the same height, if not an inch skewed because of Benny’s boots. It means they can look directly at one another with barely any movement, as they do just then. The hand at his elbow curls. It holds softly. It’s warmth radiates through Benny’s cold, shocked body. He wants to cry all of a sudden. He wants to break down crying again, he wants Maran to come tuck arms around him. To know what that carbon metal skin feels like. If it would be cool against his tear stained cheeks.

Instead, he swats the hand away, taking a step back.

“I’m fi-fine,” he mumbles, tilting his head toward the ground and away. Maran doesn’t step back, but his hand recedes. Benny can’t handle looking back up and seeing that soft, inviting face. There’d been no hint of pity. Just genuine worry.

“Where th-the f-fuck is Xavier?” Benny asks, quickly realizing the corporal isn’t there. His chest tightens with panic once more, his frayed nerves feeling ambushed and bruised. Benji doesn’t answer immediately.

“The station alarm went off.”

“What?” Maran steps toward Benji, to his side. That concerned hand touches Benji instead, his shoulder. Benny’s scrambled and terrified brain focuses on that touch and hates it. Friendly little fucker. How could he stomach being jealous of that? He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, realizes his sunglasses had fallen off somewhere in the chase.

“Xavier and I got separated. He’s goin’ back to the ship—I was tryin’ to find you lot.”

“No.” Nomi’s voice cracks. She shakes her head, folding arms around herself. “He shouldn’t be alone—I think it—this fucking thing works better when you’re alone, yeah? It didn’t get us on the ship because we were never alone.”

Benny fumbles for the com chip behind his ear. But the ship sends nothing but static back. He jerks out a communicator from his pocket. His hands shake as he dials Xavier. It rings. And continues ringing. Bastard. He’s never not answered before. Unlike Benny, who often misplaces the technology, Xavier is often glued to it. There’s slim chances that logs from his sisters back home will come through, depending where they are in voyage. He never wants to miss them.

Benji is staring at him, his eyes dark. His jaw is tense. Benny feels a sudden surge of sympathy and chooses not to panic him. Instead, he finds Lark’s contact and dials it instead.

“What the fuck, Benny?” His annoyed voice is crisp through the line. Benny thumbs a button so that the other three can hear as well. “I’m like, very fucking busy right now, man.”

“You need t-to find Xavier.” Benny stutters, but his voice is unrelentingly firm. He’s surprised at his own calmness. It feels like a balm to the pain in his leg and the fear making every part of him twitchy. He wipes his pale blond hair back, exhaling slowly. The device is quiet for a moment.

“What’s wrong?”

“Too long t-to explain. He’s he-headed back to the ship.”

“Copy.”

The call cuts. Benny puts the communicator into his pocket, hands still shaking hard enough it almost tumbles free. They all pause then, the three of them standing there.

“Well,” Benji says, lifting a finger to point behind Benny. “That’s not fuckin’ shockin’ at all.” He doesn’t want to look, but he does. Turns his head over his shoulder. There’s a black stain on the ground, but no body. Nothing but the scuffed marks of it’s death and the now drying pool of it’s blood to say it was ever there. And the cut on Benny’s leg. That was real. There was no denying that.

When he looks back to them, they all three stare, as if he’s the one to make the next move. Benny blanches.

“Ship,” he says, a short, quiet word because he can’t trust himself to say more than that. When Nomi and Benji turn, it’s Maran who lingers, looking at him just a bit longer. Benny is almost thankful for it.

***

“This is a terrible date,” Matilda remarks, even though her eyes are alight underneath Red God’s overstuffed markets. They’re bursting with colors, especially with the environment set to night time. Stalls have neon lights draped over them and people hawk wares loudly and store fronts have doors open, inviting people to come inside and lose money. The smells are both acrid and awful and mingling with the scent of people and food.

It isn’t necessarily a place to go, but an experience none the less. He buys them cheap food at a vendor that deals with Earth delicacies. Something cold and sweet that melts quickly on your tongue and makes her pinch her eyes shut when she eats a scoop too fast. The energy is low and humming, nothing like the club would have been. The drugs make all the colors bleed together, harmonizing under the constant buzz of people yelling around them.

“No it isn’t,” Lark replies, an arm wrapped around her slender waist. She lets him, her own draped lazily across his shoulders. The feel of her body so close makes him feel even more intoxicated, even though its the tail end of the high. “Besides, you told me I couldn’t take you on a date.”

“You can’t.”

“So what is this?” Lark looks up at her, grinning wickedly. Her height only amplifies her beauty. He’s gotten her naked in his bed, her long pale body spread out across his shitty military sheets. The length of her is appealing, because it’s so much more for him to enjoy. He’d made a path of bites and kisses from her ankle to the inside of her thigh and taken his time too.

Maybe it was backwards that they’d slept together and only now were carving time out to be truly alone. Wander a shitty military base city, high and satiated off sweets that had cost too much. Truthfully, it was backwards to begin with, when she’d snuck onto the ship to steal Maran and Benji away. It would never not be backwards, considering all the stretched between them.

Lark isn’t sure if they’re together purely because they’re attracted to each other and there. Available. He gets the sense that she would flee very quickly. Take her boys and run and he’d never see her again and never forget the taste of her on his tongue. He isn’t even sure that Matilda would like him if things were different. If they met differently.

Matilda sighs, long suffering as she dances forward, yanking him onto a steel grated bridge that overhangs a dark abyss drilling into the planet the base is on. The height exhilarates him. He’s never once been afraid of heights. Maybe that’s why he’d joined the military—not just because he had to. But because being off the ground felt good.

He’s pinned back to the guard rail, her body to his as her hands curl around it behind him. Strands of her dark red hair fall from her messy yanked back pony tail. He’s dizzy at the sensation of her possessing him like that.

“You didn’t want to go dancing?” She pouts. Her lips are glossy from something she’d paused and applied in a window of a store, the owner staring at her with stars in his eyes.

“I wanted to be alone,” Lark replies, shrugging lazily, spine curving as he stands there. His booted feet are splayed around her, elbows to the rail, hands dangling even as they want to yank at her.

“You’re not alone.”

“With you,” he bites out, head tilting forward. Matilda looks down at him with her chin slightly raised. Her eyes are an overly large feature in her face, the stimulants making her pupils massive, even as they wear off. She curls her lip, like she might disparage him. But his hand curls around her hip. His fingers indent her skin, holding her tighter until she’s shuffling closer. The bridge is empty, save for them, darker down at this end of the marketplace. It’s not private. But…

“I don’t like you that much, Tanaka,” Matilda murmurs, even as her glossy lips are almost touching his.

The communicator in his pocket goes shrill. It makes Matilda recoil, stepping back from him. Lark promises a swift, brutal end for whoever is on the other end. A quick tap on the chip behind his ears brings the com length for the ship entirely inactive. It can’t be an emergency then…

—

To her credit, Matilda doesn’t ask questions. She doesn’t even offer a sarcastic word, or a clever quip. Something in his face must make her pause—something might even make her worry. Maybe not for the same person. Lark doesn’t think Matilda has any particularly strong feelings for any of them, least of all the corporal. But if something is wrong, it might not just extend to Xavier. She has to care for Maran and Benji. She’d come for them, after all. She was in this mess because she’d cared for them.

Some small part of him that he ignores as best as he can, wants her to care for him too.

Instead, he’s walking at a pace she matches with her long stride. The pass through the markets isn’t as rose tinted now that he’s scared. And it’s undeniable that he is, with his pulse beating Xavier’s name in his chest. Benny’s voice had been warped by the electronic cackle of the communicator, but he’d not sounded…right. He was an easily spooked man, which maybe made him perfect for his role as a demolitions expert, or a sniper. But hearing the thinness in his voice had made some animal instinct in Lark surpass rationale. Xavier’s name, said like that.

Not Xavier. Lark can’t do this without him.

“Fuck, where did everyone go?” he stares around at the emptiness of the entertainment district. It had been bursting with people just an hour ago, when they’d made their departure from the ship. It had been nearly overwhelming with populace. Half the reason why he’d dragged her away, because the thought of all those bodies pressing in on Matilda hadn’t sat right with him.

The pilot pauses beside him. He’s startled to realize she’s taken his hand. He doesn’t give her any placating words, but he does squeeze it once. She squeezes it back.

They slide around a corner together, connected like that—and a figure at the end of the hall pulls them up short.

Before Lark had ever been a soldier—before he was even Lark—he had grown up a poor boy on a colony made for food production. It was one of the nastier colonies, as food producers usually were. He’d grown up in a hot, two bedroom house, where he slept in the corner of the room beside his sister. Parents in the other room, sleeping only a couple hours a night before they went to the production plants. Everything they’d ever owned fit in one giant hover crate when they’d been forced to downsize, as the plant consumed everything around it, growing larger to make food for the rest of the galaxy.

He’d turned to crime easily, then, because it was the only way real money could be made. And he’d needed money. Lark never truly forgot the sort of fear that came with being cornered. Feeling backed in. And that’s how the stranger makes him feel, even though they are technically outnumbered.

But truthfully, it’s Matilda beside him that makes Lark even more afraid. Because she stumbles. Her hand goes tighter around his, so tight he can feel his bones sliding together.

“Mouse,” she whispers.

The figure stalks toward them with a rolling gait. Their foot steps echo loudly in the hall that had just been bursting with people and music. Plastic cups and cans and inhalers like the one he’d used earlier litter the ground. Where had everyone gone? Had they done something?

They resolve into features. A short and non lethal looking urchin, with messy brown hair and tawny skin. There is a long scar across the side of their face, stark white and mean looking. They’re smiling, but God it doesn’t look like a smile. It looks like a savage opening of the face to reveal teeth. Lark’s tongue touches his steel canine. His free hand slowly goes for the pistol in the back of his jeans, tucked away.

“Mouse!” Matilda yells. He tilts his chin down, staring with narrowed, cold eyes.  Fear becomes anger. His hand touches the cold metal of his gun.

But this person—Mouse—raises her own.

“Hi, Mattie,” they yell. “Baby. Did you miss me?”

Then they fire.

[unknownjpegs]

matter

“I came for you.”

“And did I fucking ask you to do that, Benj?” Maran yells, voice echoing around the tiny room. His hands are both splayed on his chest, face twisted with boiling fury. “Did I fuckin’ ask you to put more blood on me, or did you do it?” 

It’s the worst fight they’ve ever had. Just two months after their escape from the ship, everything seems to catch up to them. To Maran, in particular. He has room now. Space to think. And all he can think about is— 

“Maybe I deserved it.” Maran says quietly. The words are bitten out, bitter. His anger, loud and obtrusive, goes out with a hiss of steam. Benji’s cold, icy fury in a fight always dumps over him like a bucket of water. Makes him feel silly, sopping and pathetic for even being cross in the first place. He hates it sometimes. “You ever think of that, Benj? Was that in your plans, huh? That maybe they’re right. Everybody else gets conscripted. Everybody else joins. Not everybody swerves it. Not everybody blows up a fucking prison ship.” Maran punctuates each of those with a trio of shoves to Benji’s chest. He doesn’t move. “So why do I get to tap out?” 

“Mar —”

“No! No fucking Maran from you like that.” He snaps, pointing at Benji with one of his remaining fingers. The raw end of his shoulder has just started the slow process of mending the tear. Benji rewraps it for him every night. He’s got a stash of credits from jobs that he’s saving. He won’t say, but Maran knows they’re for tech. Tech for him. 

“Maran,” Benji says anyway. His voice is quiet. No longer frozen at the edges; he’s void of that riled sort of anger that leaves anybody standing too close, anybody stupid enough to touch, with frostbite blackened fingers. Maran’s melted it. They always get there eventually. Equilibrium.

He’s thinking of states of matter when Benji yanks him into a firm, inescapable hug. Plasma, solid, gas. When they pull apart, Benji reaches up and wipes over his cheek. Collects the tears and rubs them out into a darkened spot near the collar of his own shirt.

Liquid.

“It’s gonna get so fuckin’ nasty, Benj.” Maran croaks. He cradles the back of Benji’s head and pulls them together again, arms limp over his shoulders. “And it’s not gonna be worth it.”

“Yeah it is,” Benji denies confidently, with an immediacy that makes the tears sting at Maran’s eyes again. “And ‘sides, mate. Can’t get nastier than you.”

He laughs wetly, sniffling childishly. This time, Maran wipes away the tears himself. Uses the back of his three-fingered hand. “Fuck off.”

“Nah.”

*

Benji swings too hard, and he’s frowning and hissing oops, shit, sorry, as the clawed edge of his gauntlet touches bone and flesh. Cut through the air, nice graceful uppercut, touches bone and flesh, and keeps moving. 

He’s not apologizing to the guy. He’s apologizing because — 

“Aw, fuckin’ hell, Benj.” Maran is panting when he rounds the corner. He flicks off blood and coolant from his blade before it disappears with a smooth shickshickclink into the black, synthetic-weaved slot in his bicep. 

“Told you to kid glove that one.” He crouches down at the mashed face, frowning. There are bits of bone and half a chip and shiny, sleek metal messy in the remains. His visor’s black-out fades clear, sweaty face in the helmet illuminated by the red glow of the neon sign above them.

“Had those new optics.”

“You were gonna take ‘em off a corpse and pop ‘em in your own fuckin’ dome?” Benji sneers, mouth twisting on one side. The blood’s dripping off his plated knuckles onto the pavement.

Maran clicks his tongue, straightening to tower over Benji. “Well, can’t do it now, can I?” He shoves Benji’s shoulder. “And wasn’t a corpse until you made him one, you prick.”

*

Benji’s day begins with a flash of light, a nasty rumble of their vessel, and turbulence so bad it sends him flying across the room. Benji heaves himself from the floor, clutching his head as if it’ll stop the rattle. He’s barely awake. The ache blooms over the side of his face, along with a trickle of blood. Fuck, is he awake? Or is this a dream? 

“Fucking ow.” 

Benji’s head whips to the side. Maran is folded upside-down, ass over boots, in the corner by the cockpit. There’s a cut on his scalp too, a bruise blossoming on his cheek. Benji watches as he rights himself and presses a palm to the spot, nose crunching when it comes back wet. 

“I thought you said she was a fuckin’ pilot.” Benji coughs, hand pressed tight over another sore spot on his abdomen.

Maran sits up with a groans, shoots him a look with those spinning blue-ringed eyes. Not scavenged. Bought. “Didn’t say she was a good one, did I?”

“Figure if I ask you to get us a pilot,” he sneers, stumbling over as the ship shakes again to help Maran to his feet, “You might as well get a decent one? Or one that’s piloted at-fucking-all.”

“Listen, we’re up aren’t we? Next time, you can get the pilot and I’ll —”

“No you fuckin’ won’t, because the last time I left you to get the —”

There’s a clatter from the cockpit, and then the cabin fills with red light, shrieking warning sirens. 

Eject process initialized. Eject process initialized. Countdown until airlock disengaged: ten seconds. Ten, nine, eight —

“Best pilot I’ve ever seen, yeah?” 

“Really class. Can’t believe she was just sitting around. All that talent gone to waste.” Benji sucks his teeth.

The ship’s voice cuts as the red lights dim, its operator choosing mercy. 

*

The mechanical tear and rip of synthetic flesh when Benji yanks off the robot’s left arm have Maran’s skin shivering. 

Well, not really. He doesn’t quite shiver on that side anymore. Or have skin. When he flexes his right hand, the sensation is more akin to a phantom-like crawling chill. Disconnected. His brain’s capable only of pulling a memory of the feeling, instead of the real thing: uh, yeah, this is how it was, right? 

“Why’d the rich types always need a fuckin’ trophy?” Maran grimaces as Benji hands the arm to him so that he can better rifle through the pocket of its jacket.

Maran frowns. Its. His? Her? Robot’s not alive to explain personal perceptions of gender, anyway. The frown deepens. Alive? Off?

Benji straightens up, tucking a little piece of machinery into the bag slung about his chest. Part for Matilda to fuck about with, he supposes. Join her growing army of tiny pieced together, poorly-programmed bots.

He gestures at Maran’s side, where the arm is dripping electric blue hydraulic near his boot. 

“Oof,” Maran snorts, holding it further away. “Wet one.” 

“G’on, Mar. Give it a shake then,” Benji quips. “Make sure s’all done.”

Maran grimacing again at the growing pool of liquid, steaming even in the rain, as he does exactly that. But when he glances up at Benji, both of their faces crack into sleazy, suggestive grins.

“Give it a shake, mate?” 

“Awful,” Benji agrees, starts to laugh. Then of course Maran follows, and they’re both breathlessly hysterical when Matilda drops the ship down for pick-up.

*

Maran pokes his finger down the screen, cataloging scratched out entries. Names, nicknames, titles. Scrolling the data pad is audible, and a quick glance up at Benji in the co-pilot’s seat tells him that the repetitive noise is starting to bother. There’s a nasty pull of his brow.

“What about —” Maran reads one of the names off. 

Benji doesn’t open his eyes. Or move at all. He stays statuesque in the chair, feet kicked up and heels resting against a blank section of metal on the control panel. His chest expands with a thoughtful, slow sigh. 

“Blows.” 

“You blow.” 

“Regularly.”

Maran twists in his own chair. His eyes narrow as they level with Benji, even though his friend can’t see it. He’s got one arm behind his head, the other at a strange angle across his chest. He gets in the most uncomfortable fucking positions sometimes, Maran’s got no clue how he manages to relax that way. Sometimes, he’ll find Benji back in the engine room on the floor napping. Likes the residual heat of it, Maran supposes. 

Scares the life out of him sometimes, to find Benji prostrate on the ground like a corpse. He’s got a picture Mati took of him, shoulders flush with the ground and hips level with the right angle of the wall and floor. His legs had been stretched up into the air, one elongated towards the ceiling and the other boot flat to the wall paneling. In the picture, Benji’s fingers had been a blur, because he’d been fidgeting. Tapping — drumming, how he always did. 

“You’ve said that for the last fifteen.” Maran points out.

“The last fifteen,” Benji intones seriously, turning cheek to face his friend. He’s still not opened his eyes. “Have absolutely fuckin’ blown.” He twists a little to prop his face up in a hand. He looks as if he’ll fall asleep at any moment. “So I’m telling you that before you embarrass yourself. ‘Sides, wanting a mercenary name makes you sound like a loser, mate.” 

“You make you sound like a loser, mate,” Maran shoots back awkwardly. Benji laughs and his cheeks heat. “Fuck you.”

He deletes the data pad list huffily, turning himself away from Benji in childish annoyance. Matilda comes onboard later that evening from a shopping trip in the colony they’d docked at for the evening. Getting chased through the vast void, easier to lie low in a crowd than in empty nothingness.

She finds the boys with their heads balanced together, their chests rising in cute opposing rhythms. Maran’s in her seat. She’ll have to readjust the position; she’s particular about angle and height while piloting. Precious cargo. 

Precious cargo that fucking messes with her shit, even though she tells him not to. And yet it’s hard to be angry for an extended period, looking at the two of them peacefully resting together. Benji rarely ever sleeps enough that he isn’t woken by footsteps — no matter how light or quiet she makes them. 

“Big day,” Matilda mumbles to herself, carefully putting the woven, net-like bags of food and supplies in the corner. She pats a stray lock of curly dark hair down, then kisses the crown of Maran’s head. “See you two in the morning.” 

*

It’s a chore getting on the military vessel. Not difficult, but a chore. She refuses to concede any considerable sort of effort on her part, because they’re a bunch of authority-throating losers without her boys’ sensibilities. The difference between them and all the uniformed forces is that they had enough brains to get out. 

And here she is, Matilda thinks with a sigh. Getting in.

She navigates her ship’s modified escape pod towards the rear end of the carrier. It takes an age and a half to cross the distance, and by the time she hovers near one of the massive structures of a thruster, her patience has reached its end. The discontent she’d felt since the boys had left on their plan to smuggle off necessary parts has morphed into something perilously close to fear. 

She refuses that. Imagines, as she floats in the silent blackness, corralling it up like a handful of writhing snakes, stuffing it in a bag. Throwing it out the airlock to freeze and eventually, in a billion years, shatter against a comet. Maybe burn as it approaches an icy dying star. Get picked up millennia from now as an antique of the past. Matilda imagines the canvas sack containing her serpentine worries being opened long, long after she’s gone. Outlived by it, in a way.

She sighs. “I’m going fucking insane.” 

Her fingers, quickened by muscle memory, flick at a series of switches. The escape pod slows as it approaches the exterior of the military craft. This sort of ship is meant for transport, not to be in a fleet. Or else sneaking onboard would be much harder. The cloaking chip she’d installed — a tiny green circuit board she’d had Maran help weld and check for bugs — keeps her off whatever system they use to radar surrounding areas. On the other side of this ship is another. Larger. Meant to house a bigger population. Meant to — 

The pod beeps at her. Matilda sighs again, off-put by something that she can’t name or categorize, and readies herself to board.

*

She wishes she hadn’t. Matilda, as a general rule, trusts her gut. It’s one of the first things she’d been taught. Not even me, Mouse had once teased her, big eyes flashing up at her with the jest of it — and with a note of sincerity. As Matilda strips herself of the ego suit, meant to keep her alive had the pod crashed and launched her into space, she thinks of slim fingers brushing over her belly button. Trust this first. 

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up. Stop thinking.” She hisses under her breath, flattening herself against a wall. In the loading area, patrols are sparse among the crates and boxes. It’s easy to dart between them, avoid the two burly soldiers who chat as they make their rounds. 

They don’t make her nervous, but sweat collects on her upper lip. Her scalp prickles, that behind you! sense that has never failed to inform the angle of a gun, the trajectory of her dagger. In the next hall, the prickling changes to goosebumps. 

Another soldier strolls lazily in a pattern up and down. His boots look as heavy as the rest, but his steps are near-silent. She watches the graceful movements of his body for a second too long to constitute intel gathering. Her observation has landed summarily into appreciation. She can imagine the look of put-upon impatience on Benji’s face, and the opportunity to cause him a bit more trouble is intrusive. Demands she act. 

You stopped to bother some guard you thought was fit? Benji would ask her as she broke them out of their cage. Very fit, she’d correct.

She’s noting the extent of that attractiveness, the breadth of defined shoulders and tapered waist, as she follows silently behind him in the shadows each corner. The night cycle light is low; makes it easy. And when Matilda is close enough, she springs into action.

She presses the blade up against the small of his back. The startle reflex is enough for her to find time and space — slip the other dagger’s tip carefully perpendicular with his cheek. She’s got a few inches on him, so she leans on her tiptoes, pressed flushed to his back, to peer closer. Face is as cute up close as it was at a distance, and that makes her smile dangerous. 

“You can’t feel it because of the coating, but these are custom made. Super-heated.” Matilda shuffles closer. Her eyes dart around the hallway, an anchor of awareness she’s grateful for because the feel of a body is nice. It’s been awhile. 

Matilda notes where the control panels for each door sit, which corners turn which way. She has his route memorized, but not the rest of the ships layout. She’s never been on a cargo-class vessel like this — but they’re all kinda the same once you get inside. She’s good at figuring shit out. And she has a resource to do that, now.

He shifts a bit, like he might try to slip away. Might argue, fight back. Matilda huffs. 

“They’ll cut through tungsten, okay?” She sighs, resting her chin on the top of his head. His hair is soft, has the standard clean scent of readily available shampoo. Nothing fancy, and yet — 

 “So they’ll definitely cut through flesh. And you have a pretty face. Please, please don’t make me tungsten it. I just need to know where the prisoners are.” 

Unexpectedly, the soldier laughs. “I have a feeling you’ll find out where that is pretty soon.” 

Matilda likes the sound of his voice, so they don’t end up where the prisoners are. At least, not right away. 

First, Matilda is pressed into the wall of a supply closet. Both her wrists are caught in one hand. The strength holding them there makes her arch closer, and the sensation of her chest brushing against the firm armor of his has her shivering. They kiss, but it’s not only that. It makes her feel wild, that kiss. She’s wary of how right it feels, how good. Wary that he seems to know when she wants teeth to her neck, a tongue swept between her lips.

Not wary enough. Or maybe he fucking eats it from her, tastes the control and replaces it with him, smothers it with a heady flavor of want. Matilda lets her guard down for only a second, but it’s plenty long. The cuffs click around her wrists quick. She hadn’t even noticed his free hand had moved from the tight clutch on her hip to his back pocket. 

“Oh.” She licks her lips, tasting mint. She hadn’t even noticed he chewed gum. “I like you.” 

“Don’t talk.” The soldier rolls his eyes. There’s a tinge of color to his cheeks, across his nose. It makes him prettier. “You really were just gonna…what? Walk in here, take me hostage? What kind of plan is that?” 

“A decent one. At least, up until you decided to kiss me.” 

The soldier’s flush darkens. He scowls, no doubt feeling the heat on his face. The fact that it bothers him makes her feel victorious. “You kissed me first.”

“Hm. Alright,” Matilda concedes. “We can agree to disagree. Let’s just call it mutual? Move on to more mutual activities?” She bats her eyes at him, hoping for coquettish and knowing that the look still holds just a little too much of her usual, Mouse-like sharpness. 

The soldier hesitates for a brief moment before yanking her harshly by the elbow. But the hesitation is a victory too, so when she’s tossed into the cell and caught by Maran, wide-eyed and mouth open in shock to see her, Matilda has that nasty grin on once more.

“What —”

“Thought that was going to go better than it did, Mar. My bad.” She glances around the cell. “Where’s Benji?” 

Maran’s smile drops immediately. That’s how she knows something is wrong.

*

Maran hopes she’s okay. The ship, and Benji’s visit to it, had shaken Matilda. She’d taken one look out the tiny ovular window in their cell and gone white as a sheet. Real impressive that, considering how ethereal and eerie she tended to look in the harsh fluorescent lights of a ship. 

He’s worried about her not just because of her reactions to seeing that ship a click away, hanging in the air like a flightless, frozen bird. Massive metal one, without wings, and — well, yeah, all right. Analogy didn’t quite track. 

But that’s because he’s worried. The ship’s scared Matilda, and Mati doesn’t scare, so of course that gets Maran nervous, and she’s not even complaining about the lights washing her out. THat’s the worse part. That’s what lets him know something is very, very wrong. Matilda’s not complaining. Or spitefully trying to relieve whatever nuisance urges her lips to part. 

“He’ll be okay,” Maran says. It’s the only thing he can think to offer. That’s a shit feeling. Not knowing exactly how to alleviate someone’s anxiety. How to bring them more to center. He’s usually good at that — at least told he is. 

Matilda doesn’t acknowledge his assurance. She doesn’t even look at him. She gazes steadfast out the tiny porthole. She’s got ocular implants too. They’re newer than his, shiny and ringed with a narrow band of honey gold. They make her look spooky in the dark, sometimes. Maran presses their cheeks together to look out the window, too. He regrets it. Because — 

“What is it, Mar?”

“It’s a ship,” he says. Another assurance. But he doesn’t sound sincere in his belief of that. As they gaze at the ship, fear touches in his chest like a bitter, dry old visitor. He feels compressed, looking at that massive blot against the stars. The side of its hull facing them is complete cast in shadow, facing away from the nearby star. “Just a ship.”

Matilda shakes her head slightly, their cheeks rubbing together. Slowly, she lifts an arm to wrap around his waist and pull him closer. Like she needs the comfort.

Maran gulps around a sudden lump of anxiety in his throat. He doesn’t like to think about the fact that just a ship has scared the spooky thing in the dark. He doesn’t like to think about Matilda shaken. And he doesn’t want to think about Benji on that fucking thing.

Because Maran knows that running from fear means it chases you all your life. On a closed ship, surrounded by the vacuum of space? 

You run out of room to run.

*

Maran leans against the steel post to their bunk bed, his arm tossing behind him. “I just think it’s kinda mad that all it took to ditch us was —”

“Didn’t ditch.” Benji disagrees evenly. He doesn’t turn, back to Maran as he unpacks a small amount of clothes from a bag. They’ve been invited to stay, although the agreement seems tentatively peaceful at best. A for now sort of thing. Maran doesn’t like how other soldiers look at them. Their faces aren’t known, but their actions are — the day someone pieces those two things together, realizes who they are? Well, they’re fucked. They’re defectors on a military base, surrounded by people so blinded by the things they narrowly escaped that it would be admirable to hunt the two of them down. 

Three. Three of them. 

“She did.” Maran pouts, crossing his arms. He knows Benji’s right, but it’s hard not to hang onto the bitter taste of resentment. “And couldn’t even pick somebody fun?”

“I like Lark.” Benji says. He finally turns, a big navy t-shirt tucked under his chin as he folds it. Benji never fucking folds his clothes. 

Maran’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, of fuckin’ course you do. You both are —” Benji raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Oh, fuck off. You know what I mean.”

“Got a bit of bias there, Mar?” He winds his wrist in a condescending circle. “You’re so jealous, mate. Green with it. What, Til’s not allowed to have fun after we all —”

“She should be having fun with us,” Maran grumbles. He tosses himself into the metal desk chair in the corner. It’s not comfortable, but it’s a far cry from that shitty cell. “And it’s awful bold of you, talkin’ bias.” 

Benji glances up at him. There’s a careful, cold fury beneath his even expression. Maran sometimes feels like he’s even gifted a pair of x-ray eyes, specially made just to see what Benji’s got under the surface.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Maran tilts his chin peevishly. His eyebrows jump as he points to the shirt in Benji’s hand. “Looks big. Sure that’s not mine?” 

He doesn’t think his best friend is aware of how protectively he clutches the blue fabric to his chest. “No. It’s not.”

Maran stands again. The annoyed embarrassment has washed all the anger out of Benji. Poke him, Maran thinks in a voice that sounds like him as a child. Poke Benji. Get a reaction.

“Well it’s not yours either, is it?” He drapes his arms over Benji’s shoulders, leaning his entire weight so hard that Benji has to stumble back to catch him. “Wanna play a game?”

“No.” Benji elbows him to no avail. Maran’s sticky on someone when he wants to be. “G’off me, you fuckin’ prick.”

“Oh, good. Here’s the rules, mate, yeah? You give me five guesses as to the owner of that shirt —” he points at it again, adopting a posh, clipped tenor like some gameshow host. “And I,” Maran splays a hand over his chest. “Guess correct on the first answer, which is so embarrassing for you, really. Then I win a prize.”

Benji tilts his head back, eyes up at the ceiling as he wheezes out an exhausted sigh. “Honestly go fuck yourself. I’ll knock the fucking window out and it’ll take us both —” Maran cackles madly. “No, really, pal. Really, just go fuck yourself.”

“Mean,” he needles, squeezing his arms around Benji’s neck until that sneering face is trapped against his shoulder. “You’re so mean to me, Benj, you know that? First Matilda now you.”

“How do you still get a bad fuckin’ attitude, managing double what we all are, huh? How’s that happen?” 

Double? He doesn’t think he’s around Nomi all that much. Certainly not double the time Matilda spends doing who knows what with her strange, serious pet of a soldier. Or Benji and his. Nomi…

Maran shoves away immediately, feeling as though Benji has flicked a match at his face. He can’t even think of Nomi without all of him going solar-flare hot. He rubs at his cheeks — pretends the friction of skin is why they’ve gone so red. 

“Shut up. I dunno what you’re on about, okay, shut up.”

“Mate,” Benji says piteously, laying the blue shirt on the top bunk before taking Maran’s shoulders in his hands. “Yeah. You sure don’t. Fuck’s sake.” He shakes his head with a scoffing laugh. “I love you, Mar, but…” 

Maran grumbles it back under his breath, shrugging the hands off.

*

He’s not wrong, though. Maran has been doing a little defecting of his own again. A little ditching. And yeah, whatever. So what if it’s about double what either of them have been doing, giving in to vices and distractions. But it isn’t that way. Not how Benji thinks, at least. 

Nomi isn’t a distraction. She’s distracting, sure. Maran’ll concede that. She’s especially so when she’s got her nose shoved in the circuitry of his arm, her tongue pinched between teeth as she assesses and works. Sometimes she hums when she works, when their usual soft conversation and banter has mellowed. Maran likes that just as much, the relative silence. Sometimes he falls asleep in her chair like that, chin propped in his fist while she works not he inorganic one. 

It’s nice to wake up to her voice. Sometimes she touches his cheek when he comes out of it. She always tears the fingers away like he’s bitten her instead of woken up. 

“Dozed,” Maran mumbles it with the same cadence he’d say sorry. His face is warm with sleep, but also because Nomi is a few centimeters away, her big pink eyes darting between his. “Hey.”

She smiles a bit. His chest compresses like the window has been knocked out, the vacuum beyond crunching him in a fist. 

“Want to see something cool?” She asks in her pretty, careful lilt. Maran’s nodding before the question even fully leaves her mouth. 

They walk to a viewing area on the South Bay. With the ship in a good position, it’d be the perfect window to observe a star or galaxy. Instead, all they see is the pitchy forever of space and stars. Until Nomi taps a button on the panel that springs from her wrist, and the window’s shutters close with a robotic hiss that makes him jump. The lights go on, and then — 

Maran’s eyes flick back and forth across the fake horizon. Tracking the hue of orange and red as it flares and fades into blue. Then the artificial sun is gone. They had these sorts of rooms in prison. Most of them were broke.

“You don’t like it?”

He shrugs apologetically. “Bad memories.”

Nomi moves from her spot near the door towards him, eyebrow pinched. “Sorry. Here, what about this?” 

The projection changes to a telescopic image of a nearby nebula. It’s better, swirling purples and sparkling orange against the backdrop of space.

“You forget this kind of stuff,” Maran says, although he isn’t sure why he speaks up in the first place. “Everything, like, narrows down. Four walls and your own head. Then that feels like it might go too. You’ve just become MGC-12013 or whoever.” He shrugs again, like he hadn’t just. A twitch. A habit he picked up to remind himself, keep himself present. Rolling his shoulders with the motion so he’s no longer hunched. “‘Cuz if you’re not that, when you’re in there, then it’s you. And they take whatever you are. So might as well keep something of yourself, for when s’all done.” 

Left side, his dominant hand; three fingers tap on his knee. He remembers how strange it felt, how out-of-head fuzzy disconnected, to see them roll across the floor. He hadn’t even screamed. 

“Sorry,” he laughs suddenly cheerful. Spark back to him, spine straight. He shoots Nomi a beaming, crooked smile. “Anyway. All that to say… you know, I get it. When you lot came back and you came to talk that time? And that mess, it got me thinking. Minds, weird things. Like limbs,” he bumps his elbow into the plush fabric of her coat. “Digits, whatever. Those’re replaceable. We’re all like…replaceable bits. Might as well.”

Her rose-pink eyes stare up at him, unblinking, and Maran feels anxiety scratch up his throat. He rubs a hand over the back of his head, stubble tickling his palm and fingers pinching at nothing. 

“M’sorry for dumping’ that on you. Can you tell I’d be goin’ fuckin’ mad if I didn’t have Benji with me?”

“Yes.” Nomi says immediately. “So don’t apologize.”

“And Matilda.” 

Nomi nods again, but the recognition Benji holds isn’t there. Matilda has stayed intelligently away from a lot of the ship crew, and Nomi was no exception. Lark seemed to be the only one. 

“You’d like her.” It’s true, and he offers that information up with no hesitation at all. She would. Nomi has the same bite; she doesn’t flash her teeth often, but Maran has seen her snap at Xavier, twice her size. Chin-up to the ship captain, too, but he has a sneaking suspicion that might be a soft spot on his end, rather than an edge to Nomi. Nomi’s got teeth but she’s soft — she…actually, Maran can’t let his thoughts wander there. 

“Her home planet,” Maran reveals instead, hoping that the focus of a story will be enough to drain the slight flush to his cheeks, “Is this real lush set-up. One of those rich people colonies. Er, I dunno, proper whole government, or whatever. Society.” He waves a hand vaguely. “Not important. She’s like, wanted there too, I suppose.” 

“For?”

Maran shrugs a coy shoulder, glancing at Nomi from the corner of his eye. “Ooh, name it. Think Matilda’s got a bigger bounty than Benji’s got, even.” He snickers. “They’ve gotten in pissin’ matches about the number.” 

“Well, yeah. That’s like him.” Nomi giggles. Her tone make his chin yank to the side, eyebrows high. There’s a thoughtful, dangerous smirk curling her pretty mouth. “Benji seems competitive.” 

“Oh,” Maran laughs loud. “Oh, Nomi. Fucking hell, you have no idea.” 

She scoots closer to him, her boots scuffing on the riveted metal flooring. Maran tries incredibly hard not to react to the press of her hip to his, the brush of their fingers. It’s cold in the hall. She could be uncomfortably chilly, seeking out his warmth to remedy that. He really, really tries not to react. To think it might be something else, maybe. 

“Home planet?”

“Oh.” Maran says. He huffs a laugh, hoping the exhale takes with it all the nerves. “Right, well. It’s like, all green. You know? Just plants and trees and life everywhere. Almost completely covered in these dense fucking forests. There’s more something in the air, can’t remember what, so everything grows real big. And there’s lakes, like, massive fucking things of just water. More water than I’ve ever seen.” Maran thinks of his own home, of Benji’s. Dust and pollution toxic in the air, bringing down the quality to barely-livable on the best of days. There’s plenty of water there, but unlike the air there’s nothing livable about it. Maran had never been swimming until Matilda brought them. 

“Probably nice because they outsource all the resources to other sad little planets, huh?”

“Yep.” Maran’s head bobs affirmatively. “You got it. But man, I know it’s fuckin’ awful, right, but the place is — it’s just gorgeous.” He turns more towards the window, gesturing out to the blue-purple nebula. “Reminds me of that. The buildings — ‘cuz that’s where everybody lives, nobody’s on the surface — they’re these big spires. They go all the way up into the atmosphere. You gotta be careful coming in, gotta be a good pilot. Everything’s covered in this mist too, all the output from the plants and nature and shit. Makes it foggy, I guess, unless you live high enough to break the clouds.” 

Maran becomes aware of his rambling suddenly, twisting his hands together with a shrug. “It’s nice.”

“Sounds like it.” Nomi says. Even though her response is short, he doesn’t note any boredom or annoyance. She’s not trying to get him to go away, and that has Maran feeling…good. That she wants to hear more. That she’ll let him just chat shit at her — he wants to. He sort of wants to wake up, turn over, and find her next to him. Wants to talk.

“S’like a dream. Hazy. And it’s got two suns, so in the morning it’s all…” he waves his hands at the window, he expanse of stars they both gaze at. He doesn’t have a word to describe that view. He wants to show it to her. Maran catches her reflection in the window; he turns to see the real thing. His eyes trail over her profile; the soft cutting curve of her jaw, slips of shiny blue hair tucked behind her ear. He grins and nudges her with an elbow, waits for her to turn to him. 

“Hm?”

“Makes it all pretty.” Maran says, gathering himself a bit. He doesn’t feel awkward talking to people usually, but Nomi makes him want to tread carefully. Say the right thing. He nudges her again, eyebrows lifting suggestively. “Like you.” 

Nomi blinks up at him, her lips parted slightly. He can’t fathom the idea that he’s stunned her with that, and yet her cheeks flush intensely.  

He doesn’t pull her closer. Instead, he feels like vibrating out of his skin while he waits for Nomi to move. It feels like an eternity passes before she does. A slow, timid step towards him. It’s miniscule. Barely a few centimeters. But it feels like he’s just stood at one end of a field, watched her cross the whole thing just to stand closer. Maran pictures her at the edge of one of those forests. He pictures her laughing with Matilda over something, pictures her tossing her hair over her shoulder to look back at him. He pictures it against green. Nomi’s a full spectrum. All the color in it, blue and yellow and pink in her eyes, red to her cheeks —

“Nomi?” 

She stares up at him unblinking, her chin tilted slightly. Expectant? He has such a hard time reading her, but the mystery makes him breathe heavier. 

Urges him to touch.

So Maran tentatively reaches out. Keeps the movement of his arm slow, leaves it there. Lets her decide if she wants to pull away if she wants. When she doesn’t, he’s immensely fucking pleased that his fingers are allowed to brush the back of her hand, her knuckles. He weaves their fingers together, eyes lidded as he stares down at the pale flesh interlocked between dark, gleaming metal and woven carbon fiber. 

Best idea of my fuckin’ life, Maran thinks as he coasts his thumb over a vein between her thumb and index. Shellin’ out the extra credits for the neuro add-on. Worth it just to feel this. 

“You alright, babe?”

Maran knows it’s a nickname. Not for him in particular, just part of her vocabulary. It still makes him grin big, eager. “Best in awhile.”

Nomi ducks her chin shyly. It’s such a sweet, innocent gesture from someone he thinks of so much bigger than bashfulness. Nomi went on that ship with Xavier. With Benji. And all three of them had come back. Maran feels a bit air headed sometimes, but he’s not so foolish to think that Nomi didn’t have a hand in all that. Benji wouldn’t speak so highly of her otherwise. 

It makes the warmth in his gut climb higher, vines on a trellis. He blushes more, thinking of how they might have already rooted in other organs. 

“Yeah, sorry. Lost m’thoughts there.” Maran toys with her sleeve, tucking a finger underneath. “I was gonna ask —”

“Do you want to kiss?” 

Maran’s mouth drops open. “Yeah, yes. I mean — yeah, but… how’d you know I was gonna ask that?” 

Nomi tilts her head. “Sorry?” 

“I…” he feels the embarrassment take over then, making his laugh breathless and raw. “Oh, fuck. Being daft, huh? I mean, right, I was just gonna see if you wanted to kiss and then you asked me, so it’s—” He gulps for a breath, eyes wide. “Weird.”

She doesn’t interrupt his rant, even though Maran begs her wordlessly throughout to do exactly that. Instead she squeezes his fingers encouragingly and waits. Patient, with that slightly judgmental smile on her face that makes him feel unspooled, dizzy. As if she’s wound him up like hard just for the pleasure of rolling him loose into a messy, tangled pile. It isn’t a bad feeling. 

The second the final word is out of his mouth, Nomi is darting closer. She slings arms around his neck and pulls him down the few inches between their faces. Maran goes with a happy, shocked noise. Not just happy, but fucking thrilled. Nomi’s warm against him where they press from chest to thighs. And she’s soft; just like he knew she would be. Her hair, too. It spills like liquid between his fingers, the blue fluidity of it reminding him of the vibrant water on that planet.

They kiss — or Nomi kisses him, rather, because he’s stunned into inaction the second their lips touch. He expected a shy, quick peck. Instead, Nomi clutches the back of his skull and urges his mouth open, kisses him with an intensity and wild, biting eagerness that he wouldn’t have guessed from her. She tastes like something sweet, something tangy and refreshing. Maran smiles into the kiss because it’s exactly how he thought she would taste, because it’s fitting, because he likes her so fucking much for that and more.

More. He goes to tell her as much, breaks for a gasp of air to say more, you taste good, more, to wonder privately what her neck tastes like, the curve of her breast, and more, more — but he’s yanked back in. He groans loudly instead of speaking, blushing at the rattle of that sound from him. 

“Nomi —”

“Sh,” she hisses. Their faces are close enough that, when she licks her lips her tongue touches him. Just a hint. Barely a tease, if anything. And yet it’s enough. 

Maran blanks. He must stoop to pick her up, swing them both around, because somehow suddenly Nomi’s been sat on the ledge of the window. Her knees pinch tight to his torso, booted heels digging into the backs of his thighs as they kiss and kiss. It’s messy and hungry and she tastes — fuck, she tastes… Maran doesn’t want to stop. He’d rather asphyxiate than let go of her face, lose the sensation of her smaller hands roaming his chest, his shoulders. 

And he nearly does. When they finally part, his chest aches and he’s panting to regain some of that lost oxygen. He feels stupid with it, fingers clumsy and sluggish. They tremble as he tucks a messy bit of hair behind her ear. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he says, pinching the curve of it teasingly. She squeaks and bats at his hand. “Nomi. I  could take you to see it one day.” He bites his lip. “Maybe. I mean, if you’d like that? I would.”

Nomi doesn’t respond, but she does fist her nails in his shirt. Leverage to violently shake him, her face pinched in annoyed disbelief. And Maran only feels happily liquid.