Bryce

I awoke in a dark, unfamiliar room, and found myself trying to piece together what had happened last night. I wasn’t hungover, which probably meant I didn’t drink all that much, and I had just been exhausted.

Exhausted enough to fall asleep in a loud strip club after eating a few too many synthetic chicken wings. I honestly kind of wanted to go back there someday. For the wings.

Thea had woken me up, and we found a motel together near the port where we could get some actual sleep. We never got the chance to meet with Sora. Which was frustrating, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

It was still early, which meant we had time to track them down and leave later that day. That’s assuming they would pack up their entire life and step onto a starship with almost no warning. It was a stretch, but again, we didn’t have a choice. Waiting until tomorrow wasn’t an option.

“Bryce, it’s too early, go back to sleep.” Thea grabbed my arm and pulled it tighter around herself. I figured we could spare a few minutes, so I settled back into the bed.

The kind-looking human at the front desk had offered us a room with a single bed, instead of two smaller ones. Thea claimed she didn’t want to confuse her by asking about other options.

It had been a pretty flimsy pretext, but it was one that I was more than happy to go along with. While we both had been too tired to do anything overtly sexual, the pretext hadn’t lasted long. Thea hadn’t even pretended to stay on her side of the bed.

It had been one of the best nights of sleep in my life. Thea ran hot, like, physically unnaturally warm. Which made her an amazing bed warmer for somebody like me, who usually required three blankets and thick pajamas to be comfortable at night.

We had thrown off the scratchy comforter and were lying together under a single scratchy sheet.

I didn't think I had ever been more comfortable, which sucked because I had to pee really badly.

“We need to get up, Thea.”

There was a groan as her arm tightened around my waist and she somehow dug herself even deeper into my sidelong embrace. I kissed the top of her head and relaxed into the position. Her hair smelled like cherry wood smoke, which was a smell that I was learning to adore.

“Come on, I need to use the bathroom. Besides, we still need to find Sora. Once we convince them to join, they are going to want time to get ready and we’re in a hurry.”

Thea loosened her hug but made no more effort to move.

“Fine, you can go to the bathroom, but when you’re done, come right back. No excuses. We don’t need to meet Sora for at least a few more hours, and we aren’t far from the port, so we have plenty of time for more sleep.”

I somehow untangled myself from the mess of sleepy devil limbs and urgently rushed to the bathroom. My hair was even more of a mess than it had been yesterday. I tried to triage the frizzy disaster while I washed my hands, but just resigned myself to buying a hat when we got to the port.

After finishing up in the bathroom, I climbed under the thin sheet and slipped my arm back around Thea. She scooted in closer to find the position that she had been enjoying earlier.

She must have found it, because a sigh permeated throughout her entire body, which was now wrapped tightly around mine. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the return of burnt cherry wood.

“What did you mean about meeting Sora at the port? Did you leave a message with that orc woman at the bar or something?” I asked softly, wanting an answer, but still a little trapped in the moment.

I felt Thea sleepily shake her head against my chest before quietly responding.

“No. Sora showed up for their shift about an hour after you fell asleep.”

I pulled my head back slightly and tried to shoot Thea an annoyed glare, but I was met with her closed eyes and content smile resting against me.

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There wasn’t a good way to fight an opponent that was this skilled at psychological warfare. Instead, I leaned my head back against the pillow in defeat, gently running my fingers through Thea’s short hair to massage her scalp.

The devil let out a muted moan, and the smile on her face grew.

“Meeting them at the port seems like a good sign. Did you convince them to join us?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just explained what was going on and they understood. Although, I promised them and their sister half the ship. I didn’t think you’d mind,” Thea explained. “The two of them are a package deal, and they needed to know that we wouldn’t be bringing weird perverts on board without their approval.”

That was fine. I had intended to offer Sora a similar deal, anyway. A navigator is in full control of the ship once they’re attuned to it. I had even been told that it becomes an extension of their own body.

Which means if your navigator isn’t happy, then in the best case you aren’t going anywhere, and in the worst case, well there are a lot of ways to kill somebody when you have full control over the life support.

Basically, I was pretty damn invested in Sora being happy with anything that we offered them.

Besides, if a ship really became an extension of a navigator’s body, then they were being generous in sharing half of it with us.

“I don’t mind. It probably would have been the first thing I offered them, anyway.”

Thea nodded an acknowledgment but said nothing.

We stayed like that for the better part of an hour in companionable silence before I noticed the clock and saw there was only about half an hour until the sun would rise.

“So much for getting to the port early.” I let out a defeated sigh as I mentally prepared myself to get up.

“Oh no. There’s really no point in going, now. I guess we’ll just have to stay like this forever.” Thea pulled herself into me further, and gripped my shirt in preparation to resist any attempt I made at leaving the bed.

For how physically strong Thea was, she was equally light. I theorized it was a consequence of her physical body being mostly powered by mana, but she weighed only about half of what she appeared to, and she didn’t look very heavy.

I still wouldn’t like anybody’s odds against her in a fistfight, or my odds if she had actually been trying to restrain me, but I had a plan.

Without warning, I rolled to face Thea and kissed her directly on the lips. In a fit of surprise, she let her legs go slack, which allowed me to reach with my free arm and scoop her up underneath her knees.

It took me a moment of awkward movement but I stood from the bed, holding a stunned Thea in a princess carry.

“Sorry, but we don’t have time for your antics. We need to get to the port.” I turned to hold her over the bed before I gave her a longer, less nefarious kiss and dropped her onto the mattress.

I half-strutted over to where I had left my black cargo pants the night before and pulled them on. Thea was sitting up on her elbows, staring at me with her jaw hanging open. I tried really hard to maintain my composure, but started laughing, anyway. Her expression was just too much.

“That was so unfair. You can’t do those kinds of things to me and then expect me to just… I don’t know, exist after that,” she said.

By the time I got control of myself, Thea was sitting upright in her wrinkled mess of a black dress with her arms crossed, glaring at me.

“I’m sorry, it’s just the look on your face. Come on, we really need to get to the port.”

She didn’t move from the bed and her glare intensified. She actually looked really upset with me.

“You were laughing at me.”

I felt awkward under her glare, which caused me to shift my weight and scratch the back of my neck.

“Yeah, I was, look I’m sorry, I tried to stop myself but…” I saw just the barest flash of gold in her eye and I instantly recognized what was going on. “Okay, Thea, how can I make it up to you?”

Thea put a finger to her chin and pretended to think. I knew she had already thought of something. I just didn’t know what that thing was, and she was clearly enjoying the performance.

“I want to sleep in the captain’s quarters on the new ship, otherwise I’ll never forgive you.”

That was it? I didn’t mind. Since we were being given Teolix’s personal ship, I was expecting even the smallest room to be of a decent size. I certainly didn’t need to stay in a room that a dragon would consider a captain’s quarters.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Are we good now?”

She nodded dramatically before standing on top of the bed and jumping down to the floor in front of me.

“Yep! That’s all I wanted, we can go now. Although, if there was any confusion, the biggest room, that’s the captain’s quarters, it’s where the captain sleeps. That’s why it’s called that.”

Oh, so she had “tricked” me into agreeing to let her be the captain. Sora and their sister would still have to agree to it, but I didn’t mind. I had never wanted to be the captain in the first place.

Besides, the captain’s identifying information would be recorded on the ship’s title during sale, which meant we would have to register the sale with the Galactic Federation and even after we sold the ship, it would still show up in the sale history.

Title information wasn’t freely available to corporations, so I wasn’t worried about EVI corp tracking me with it, but I still had a warrant out for the Para Vista incident.

Which meant unless we wanted to be branded as outlaws, I was probably the only one of us who couldn’t be the captain.