“Look,” she says, holding out the screen. “See this? Atmospheric particle distribution, post-storm. Something weird’s going on with the lower ozone layer. I think the vents are leaking trace amounts of?—”
Her words blur, not because they don’t matter, but because I can’t focus. Not when her hand brushes mine. Not when her scent curls around me—earthy, electric, real. She smells like the wilds, like rain hitting scorched stone.
She notices me staring and stops.
“What?” she asks, quiet now.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
But it’s not nothing. It’s everything. Everything I never should’ve let myself feel.
“You don’t care about this data, do you?” she asks, folding the compad shut. “That’s okay. I can’t tell half of what you’re thinking either.”
I look at her. Really look. The way her lashes catch the light. The small scar just beneath her lip. The grit in her hair, like she doesn’t care if she’s clean so long as she’s here. With me.
“You bring it anyway,” I murmur.
She shrugs. “Makes me feel less useless. Like I’m not just… talking to a wall.”
“I’m not a wall.”
Her smile curves slow and warm. “No. You’re not.”
Silence stretches between us, but it’s not empty. It hums. It breathes. Outside, wind whips dust against the dome with a sound like static rain. Inside, the air is thick with heat and things unsaid.
She sets the compad down, then leans back on her elbows. Her boot nudges mine. “So, Maug… do you ever talk about yourself?”
I grunt. “No.”
She laughs, and the sound lights something in me. “Shocking.”
I glance sideways. “You never stop.”
“I’m making up for both of us.”
“Hm.”
She nudges me again, gentler this time. “That was a joke. You’re supposed to say, ‘Thank you, Jillian, for being endlessly fascinating and keeping the conversation going.’”
I huff. “I don’t lie.”
That makes her laugh harder, until she’s nearly breathless, and I feel it again—that warm, dangerous thing coiled low in my chest. I should crush it. Stamp it out like fire before it spreads.
But I don’t.
Because then she does something new. Something reckless.
She leans. Just a bit. Just enough.
And rests her shoulder against mine.
I freeze.
She stays there, quiet, eyes closed. Not asking anything. Not expecting. Just… being.
Her warmth seeps through my skin, into the cracks I’ve spent years sealing shut. Her scent floods every breath. My claws twitch against the stone. I could move. I should move.
But I don’t.
