"Bebo, I will end you."
"I am simply providing biometric context."
The sonic shower is designed for human-standard occupancy, which means it's tight quarters for a seven-foot-two Varkaani with horns that need clearance and a five-foot-two courier who takes up less space than my arm span. But we manage. Krilly programmes the settings with the focused efficiency of an engineer optimising a system, and when the heated vibrations hit muscles that have been running on adrenaline for nine days, the sound I make is involuntary and deeply undignified.
"Good?" she asks, her back against my chest, her hands working station-issued cleanser through her hair.
"I have not had a proper shower in three months."
"That explains a lot about your general ambiance."
"You said I smelled like safety."
"You smell like safety that needs soap. Turn around, let me get your back."
Her hands on my back. Small and purposeful, working cleanser over the scars and the circuit traceries and the places where the harness used to sit. The texture of the scars under her palms, the cold artificiality of the traceries against the warmth of living skin. I feel what her touch does to the bond: the specific tenderness she carries for the places where they hurt me.
And underneath the tenderness, the heat. Her hands on my bare skin in warm water, the steam rising between us, the full-body awareness of how close we are and how little separates us. The drag of her fingers along my spine sends want flooding through the connection, and the feedback loop starts before either of us can stop it.
"This was supposed to be efficient," she says, her voice unsteady, her hands stilling on my lower back.
"You proposed it."
"I know. I underestimated the feedback loop." Her forehead presses against my spine. "The bond makes shared showers a terrible idea."
"Or an excellent one, depending on your priorities."
"My priority is supposed to be not getting distracted before the most important hearing of our lives."
"And?"
"And your back muscles are making that very difficult."
My hands find her hair, work the cleanser through the red curls that have been tangled with jungle debris for over a week. The intimacy of it is different from sex. Quieter. The simple, devastating act of caring for someone's body, washing away the evidence of what they survived together. Her head tilts back intomy hands, and the sound she makes is contentment so pure it resonates through the bond like a bell.
"Your hair is a structural engineering challenge," I observe, working through a knot that has its own gravitational field.
"It defies three known laws of physics. I've accepted this."
"Don't fall asleep in the shower," Bebo announces through the bathroom speaker. "Station water rations apply. You have approximately four minutes remaining."
We finish. Step out. And the logistics of getting dressed in station-issue clothing presents a problem I had not anticipated.
The sleep pants are standard human-male issue. They are too short by approximately eight inches, ending mid-calf in a way that looks neither deliberate nor dignified. The waistband sits low on my hips because the ratio of my waist to my thighs is not a ratio human clothing was designed to accommodate, and the fabric stretches across my thighs in a manner that leaves very little to imagination.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and consider the couch.
"Oh," Krilly says from the doorway.
A spike of heat so specific and vivid that my markings flash opalescent before I can control them.
"They don't fit," I say.
"They don't fit," she agrees, her voice approximately one octave higher than normal. Her eyes are travelling from the too-short hems to the stretched thighs to the low waistband to the strip of emerald skin visible between waistband and the claiming color pulsing at my hipbone. "They really,reallydon't fit."
"Should I request a larger—"
"No." Too fast. She catches herself. "I mean. They're fine. You're fine. Everything is fine."
