“Omarion said I should publish my botanical research too. I’m going to be the most published eight-year-old in the sector.”
“You are certainly the mostincorrigibleeight-year-old in the sector.”
“Eight and three-quarters.”
He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. The real smile that crinkles his eyes and makes his markings glow steady-warm.
Dove leans into the frame to adjust a console setting, and Papa’s gaze tracks her the way it always does — like she’s the most important variable in any room she enters. His markings flicker brighter.
Time to collect data.
“Papa, your markings are doing the courtship display again.”
He goes still. “I am experiencing minor electromagnetic fluctuation due to —”
“It’s not electromagnetic. Dove leaned forward three centimetres and your bioluminescent output increased by approximately —” I check my data pad — “I don’t have exact numbers because I don’t have Pickles’s biometric scanners, but I’m estimating forty percent based on visual brightness assessment.”
“Thirty-seven percent,” Pickles supplies. “The small person’s visual estimate is commendably close.”
“PICKLES.”
“I am providing scientific accuracy. The small person is conducting research.”
Papa covers his face with one hand. Dove has turned away from the screen, but her shoulders are shaking.
“Also,” I continue, because science waits for no one, “Dove does Lividian nesting behaviours and I don’t think she knows she’s doing it.”
“We talked about this,” Dove says, still not turning around. “The sock thing is organization, not nesting.”
“You sorted his socks by teal gradient. Darkest to lightest. In a drawer you reorganized with dividers you made from spare cargo partitions.” I consult my notes. “You moved the medkit to a defensive perimeter position on your side of the bed. You rearranged the kitchen so his favourite mug is within arm’s reach of his workstation — that’s resource provisioning for a bonded mate. You started keeping a backup ration bar in his lab coat pocket, which he has never once asked you to do. AND —” I scroll down — “you sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door. That’s the protective position in Lividian pair-bonding. You’re guarding him in your sleep.”
Silence.
Dove turns slowly. Her cheeks are extremely pink.
“How do you know which side of the bed I sleep on?”
“Pickles told me.”
“I provided generalized spatial arrangement data,” Pickles says. “In an educational context. The small person’s research methodology required comprehensive environmental data points. I was merely facilitating academic rigour.”
“There is nothingacademicabout our sleeping arrangements!”
“On the contrary, Captain. The small person is conducting a longitudinal study of cross-species pair-bonding behaviour. Your sleeping position is a relevant data point. As is the ration bar in the lab coat. I have catalogued that particular behaviour as ‘nutritional provisioning with stealth delivery’ — a subcategory of mate-feeding that is, I must say, rather endearing.”
“Pickles.”
Papa has emerged from behind his hand. His markings are blazing — not with embarrassment, though. With the warm-deep pattern. The settling display. The one that meanshome.
“She’s not wrong,” he says quietly.
Dove looks at him through the screen. The pink fades from her cheeks, replaced by something softer. “About what?”
“Any of it. The mug placement. The sleeping position.” His voice drops into the low harmonics — the ones I can feel in my chest even through a comm link. “You nest, Dove. It’s beautiful. I notice every time you do it.”
Dove’s hand goes to the claiming mark on her shoulder. She touches it the way she does when she’s feeling something big — fingertips against the scar like she’s checking it’s still there.
“You’re not supposed to be romantic right now. You're supposed to be angry about the stowaway.”
