He carries me to the cabin. Staggering. His legs are not working at full capacity, and mine are not working at any capacity. The corridor is strewn with my green dress and two halves of lace and his overalls and wet footprints from the head to the cabin door.
The bunk. The blanket. Clean sheets.
He puts me down and lies down behind me, and his arm goes around my waist, and his chest presses against my back, and the hum-sense hums through both of us like one sound.
I am crying. Quietly. The kind that comes when the body has too much joy and no other way to express it.
He pulls me closer. “Did I —”
“No.” Through the tears. “No. Jazil. You didn’t hurt me. I have never felt anything like — I feel alive. Like I’ve been hearing the world through a wall and you just took it down.”
His relief is physical. His whole body sags against me.
“Don’t scare me.”
“I’m going to cry sometimes. It’s a me thing.”
“I know. I just need you to be okay.”
“I am so okay.”
Quiet. His breath in my hair. The hum-sense between us. On my thigh, the mark. His fingertip tracing the edge.
“What does it look like?”
“Pearlescent. Like the inside of a shell. It shifts when the light changes.” He traces again. “Nobody can see it the way I can. In my spectrum, it glows.”
He presses his mouth to the mark. A kiss. The gentlest thing he has done all night.
Quiet. The ship hums. The lights are low.
“Jazil.”
“Mm.”
“I was hiding my whole life. From the colony kids. From the drill officers. From everyone who made me feel like being found was dangerous.” My voice is steady. The steadiest it has ever been. “You found me. Not just tonight. Not just the duct. You found the version of me I had been hiding since I was nine years old. The version that takes up space. The version that is loud and clumsy and spills things and talks to scared things in her mother’s voice and is not sorry for any of it.” I press my hand against his chest. The hum under my palm. “You found her and you wanted her. The actual her. Not the small version. Not the quiet version. The real one.”
His arm tightens around me. His face is in my hair and his breath is unsteady.
“You saved me too,” he says. Rough. Into my hair. “You know that. I was fine. I was fourteen years of fine. Completely functioning, operational fine. And you walked up my ramp in a top that didn’t fit and set off my quarantine and held a Vrennak’s gaze with a cat trick and told me I wasn’t broken and I —” His voice cracks. Just at the edge. “I wasn’t fine, Lorri. I was never fine. I was alone, and I didn’t know it because I’d forgotten what not-alone felt like. You reminded me.”
My tears are falling again. His are not happening because Skiveth males don’t cry, but his voice is doing the cracking thing and his arms are holding me too tight, and the too-tight says everything the tears would say.
“I love you,” I say. Simple. Clear. The way you say something that is true and has always been true and you are only now finding the words for.
“I love you.” Against my hair. No hesitation. “I have loved you since the ramp. I have loved you since you apologized to my cargo bay for triggering the quarantine, and I knew — I knew right then — I just didn’t have the word for it yet.”
The hum-sense. Between us. Through us. The frequency of two people who have found each other and will never stop.
“Stay,” he says. The word. The first word. The word that started everything.
“Always,” I say. “Always, always, always.”
Morning.
HORATIO has been waiting for this.
“Captain.” Full volume. Full theater. “Good morning! I trust you slept well. I trustbothof you slept well. I have prepared breakfast. Two places. Also a third, for myself, metaphorical, but the occasion warrants it.”
