Domestic Pressure
Dove
Thesmellofrealcoffee wakes me.
Not the recycled, twice-filtered ship coffee that tastes like despair and bad decisions—this is the kind that makes you believe the universe might not hate you after all. For three seconds, I forget where I am.
Then yesterday crashes back: the storm, the gorgeous alien scientist, his adorable daughter, the debt collectors tracking me. The week I thought I had shrinking to three days.
My stomach growls loud enough to echo off the walls.
“Captain, your glucose levels are suboptimal,” Pickles announces through my comm unit. “I calculate you require nutritional intake within the next seventeen minutes to maintain peak cognitive function.”
“You’re monitoring my blood sugar now?”
“I monitor all relevant biological systems. It is my function.”
Yesterday’s clothes wait for me, cleaned and folded on the chair. Apparently this station runs on terrifying levels of domestic efficiency. So much for formulating an escape plan before facing the day.
The door slides open to reveal Tavia sitting cross-legged right outside, data pad in her lap, yellow eyes bright with anticipation.
Plan status: failed before it started.
“Good morning!” She bounces to her feet, markings pulsing with delight. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up! Pickles said your circadian rhythm suggested you’d emerge within the next fourteen minutes, and he was right! He’s really smart, isn’t he?”
“He’s something.”
“I heard that, Captain,” Pickles says through the corridor speakers. “I am currently integrated with station communications systems. I must note, the small person has asked seventy-three questions about you since awakening. I have answered forty-two of them.”
“Pickles!”
“What? You said I could ask him things!” Tavia looks between me and the speaker. “He told me about how you saved him from the derelict ship, and how you spent three weeks putting him back together, and how you named him—”
“That’s enough biographical data for this morning.”
“I found the narrative endearing,” Pickles offers. “The small person demonstrates exceptional emotional intelligence for her developmental stage. I am… fond of her.”
Tavia’s markings blaze bright enough to light the corridor. “He’s fond of me! Papa, did you hear? Pickles is fond of me!”
Cetus emerges from the kitchen.
I’m immediately, painfully aware that I look like I slept in my clothes—because I did—while he’s unfairly put together in clean work coveralls that somehow make his shoulders look even broader. His yellow eyes find mine. His markings brighten, patterns chasing across his shoulders like bioluminescent circuitry coming online.
“Good morning.” His voice drops into those low harmonic registers that do illegal things to my nerve endings. “I prepared coffee according to your stated preferences. Two sugars, minimal milk, temperature maintained at sixty-eight degrees Celsius.”
He remembered. Every detail.
“You… remembered all that?”
“I remember relevant details.” The patterns along his neck pulse warmer. “Your comfort is relevant.”
Tavia’s watching us with barely contained glee, her markings doing rapid little pulses like a strobe light of smug satisfaction.
“Thank you.” I accept the cup he offers. Our fingers brush—his skin radiating heat that sinks straight through to my bones. The contact lasts half a second too long to be accidental. “That’s very… efficient.”
“Efficient,” he repeats, and something in his tone suggests he knows that’s not what I meant.
I take a sip to avoid responding. Perfect. Exactly how I like it.
