“Fine, fine...” Alex rolled his eyes and sat up enough to strip his shirt off again, tossing it over the edge of the bed. “But that’s all for now. This is still... It’s a lot.”
“Mmhn. Too subtle.” Carbon huffed softly, cheeks puffing up for a moment as a hint of disappointment crossed her face.
“What?” How in the world was being half naked too subtle? By his estimation it was pretty forward, particularly since the not-naked half was just underwear.
“I made a joke.” She left it there until she realized that wasn’t the only joke she had made in the last few minutes. “Another one, that you did not seem to notice.”
Neya rolled over to face the wall and scooted away from their conversation, grumbling in her sleep.
“Wait, really?” He tried to recall what she’d said between the one about Eraei and now, going through the conversation they’d just had as close to word for word as he could manage. Couldn’t think of a single thing that’d fit the description. Time for the worst possible outcome. “What was it?”
She grunted and rolled over onto her stomach, chin stretched out on a pillow, and stared at the shelves of the headboard before closing her eyes. “I used a contraction.”
Alex went over the conversation, again. And then once more for good measure. “When?”
Carbon cleared her throat and repeated herself. “You make me feel as though I’m underdressed.”
“Yep, I didn’t even notice it.” His shoulders raised a smidge in the most half-hearted shrug possible.
“It is best you did not, it was unkind to play off your discomfort.” She sighed softly, tilting her head away from him a little, the closest ear lifted to listen to him. “I am sorry.”
“Sometimes jokes work. Sometimes they don’t. I don’t think it’s even that bad, just way too subtle for me. You, of all people, should know that me and subtlety aren’t friends.” He waved a hand and shrugged before bringing it to rest on top of her head, fingertips working over the muscles around the base of her antenna. “So do you... not like to use contractions or is it not a feature in Tsla? I’ve noticed you don’t use them, and the default setting for my translator doesn’t use them either.”
“There are, but they are different - long words or phrases might be contracted down, but it is not the same as how your English uses it.” An eye opened and she watched him before the iris darted away, focused on the headboard again. “For instance, the Windward Coast Geosynchronous Orbital Spacedock is usually just referred to as Windward Coast Geosynchronous Orbital Spacedock.”
Alex broke out in a grin, sighing before he started laughing. “Sorry, sorry. Translator was on and I got the full name in English both times.” She had switched between English and Tsla as she spoke, and the translator caught it - though the first time it had given him the translation word for word, and the second time she was done talking well before the translator was finished.
Carbon’s eyes closed and she laughed with him. “Would you like me to try again? After you have shut your machine off?”
“Nah, not right now. I get what you’re explaining though. Several Human languages do something similar.” He was pretty sure several did, at least. Not including portmanteaus, which was a different thing entirely.
“Very well - perhaps another time.” She inched over, pressing her shoulder against his as she stretched out.
He shut his translator off, then the whole Amp system. No need for either right now. They laid there in silence for some time, Alex idly kneading Carbon’s head. “So... Why didn’t you ever tell me about her? It’s pretty clear how important she is to you, and vice-versa. I mean I get not leading with that, but why not when we were back? When we talked about our family? When we were talking about our future, if it could even happen?”
“Zeshen are not family.” Carbon said quietly, bright blue eyes opening as she reached up into the headboard and pulled a large hexagonal coin off the shelf, the bronze disk disappearing into her hand. She sighed and rolled it over her knuckles. “I have asked myself that question often the last few days. When could I have told you. I... I never expected that I would have to.”
That didn’t feel particularly good to hear. “How do you mean?”
“Do not mistake me - I desperately wished for this relationship to continue. At the same time, I had expected that the Empress would simply transfer me to another project, and I would disappear into the embrace of my work once more.” The coin flipped back and forth over her fingers, Carbon staring intently at it.
“She really threw you for a loop with all of this, I take it?” Alex groaned, catching himself too late. “When someone does something surprising or shocking.”
The corner of Carbon’s mouth turned up in a smirk with a quiet snort of amusement. “She did. Shocking is a good word for it. Even if I had expected to stay in Sol, I thought things would continue slower - normal courtship takes between two and three years for Tsla’o. I would have time to fix things with Neya, to acclimate you both to each other.”
“Fix things with her?” Neya’s apparent interest in suicide had come as a shock to Carbon when he unintentionally revealed it to her. What else was going on there?
“She has suffered badly. When the council was... alive, she would have had more support from them. I knew what remained was not in a position to spare that, and I chose to abandon her to participate in the Kshlav’o expedition instead of remaining with her to offer that help.” The bitterness that crept into her voice was all directed inward, eyes narrowed as she flexed a claw out to drag along the edge of the coin, clicking over one ridge at a time.
“Abandon is a strong word.” He had a suspicion that someone was being needlessly harsh on herself, and shifting history around to do it.
A derisive little snort. “It is the truth of the matter.”
“So if I wake up Neya right now and ask her if she felt like you abandoned her, she would agree?” He had a real good idea of what the answer would be.
The coin shifted in her hand, thumb running along the face with some kind of tree on it, the relief well worn. Carbon looked away, studying something in the kitchen with deadly intent. “No.”
“You’ve talked to me about the importance of what you were doing on the Kshlav’o before. You’ve been upset about the fact we didn’t get the whole two years. It was for your people, and she’s one of them.” Alex found himself rather mad about this, his hand resting atop her head now. “I swear, I’m going to ask her about that and if she has any sort of positive response about you taking on that challenge... You know what? I’ll have her show me that whole conversation, as a matter of fact, because I bet you didn’t just take it on without talking to her.”
Carbon didn’t say anything, but he could feel her jaw working.
He gave her a gentle tap on the top of the head with a single finger. “Stop giving my wife a hard time. It makes me into something so bad she won’t even tell me what it is.”
She closed her eyes and laughed silently. “I make no promises, but I will try.”
“No, you have to make a promise. I will accept nothing less.” Alex replied quickly, obstinate, as he rolled onto his side, arm sliding under the dark green comforter and draping it over her shoulder.
“I promise I will be less hard on myself.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced of that, but she said it.
“Mmh, alright. That’ll do this time.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “I can’t believe that this is somehow ‘less harsh’ - I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as irrationally hard on herself as you.”
Her shoulders lifted under his arm and she shifted her gaze back at the headboard, the coin clacking softly against the wood as she put it back. “I have often...”
Alex made a quiet affirmative noise, just enough to let her know he had heard her and was waiting for her to continue.
Carbon said something in Tsla, the lights dimming to just above darkness, and she joined him on her side, nestling back against him and pulling his arm down around her shoulders protectively. “Almost all of my decisions are based in fear. Every major choice in my life has been driven by it. Accelerating my schooling. Becoming a Lan. Taking the position on the Kshanev. They shouldn’t have even offered that to a sprouted Lan, it is too much. Even accepting Neya - the rumors denying so carefully chosen a Zeshen would have caused. Unthinkable.”
“This may be incredibly arrogant of me, but I noticed someone didn’t get listed there.” There was a hint of a chuckle in his voice as he gave her a squeeze.
She continued immediately, paying his comment no heed just yet. “Could I have even said no when the expedition with the Kshlav’o became a reality? The Empress came to me and asked me to take the role. Almost any Lan would have been a fit for it. Most anyone who had become an engineering commander. It was - I have heard Humans call similar things ‘optics.’ The citizens like me, I am seen as an ideal of what a royal should be. Diligent, high achieving, taking active leadership roles. All the while, never being perceived as arrogant or disrespectful. And I broke. It took a long time, but I broke and then I took that out on you. The first person I did not have to impress, with no prying eyes to see it, and I bit like a spider.”
“Every time you talk about your life it sounds worse.” Alex slipped his other arm under her, wrapping her up in a full hug and eliciting a surprised squeak. “I’m going to be honest with you here, you weren’t that bad. Like, you always seemed annoyed and distant, and kinda pissed at me when I talked too much... But you weren’t mean. Gruff, maybe? Abrasive. Sure. But I can think of a half dozen people from high school that were actually shitty to me, and you never did anything half as bad as them.”
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“I was very disrespectful.” She sounded like she thought he was lying, her voice pitching up as she spoke. “I thought very little of you because of your casual manners, and while I did not voice them, I had many-”
“Did you ever hit me with anything?” He inquired as he rested his chin on her head. “Throw stuff at me?”
“That would be a wild breach of ethics, as I perceived you as a subordinate at the time. Even as someone of equal standing on the ship, basic decency would prohibit that.” Carbon tilted her head, the ear that was pressed against a pillow rising up with a hint of indignation.
Alex was having more fun with this trip down memory lane than he should. “How about those times you pretended to trip and dumped soda on my pants to make it look like I pissed myself?”
It took her a second to parse what that meant, but Carbon twisted her head around, eye gleaming in the dim light as she looked at him. “What?”
“Hazing a freshman, you know. I mean, based on that reaction you don’t, but eh... traditions die hard.” He shrugged again.
“You were assaulted as a child? By other children?” This appeared to be all but unthinkable to her sensibilities.
“We were teens - high school is the last few years before university. I was kinda short the first year, but sophomore year I started at like 175 centimeters and just kept growing, so that stopped happening to me, my friends, and people that those assholes thought were my friends.” There was a little pride in his voice, the shield that getting lucky with genetics had provided him also protecting others. “And you know, I wanted to be a Pilot and started training like it and maybe I got into a fight once and punched a guy out.”
“While you were a student?” Carbon relaxed somewhat, not trying to keep her neck craned back enough to make eye contact anymore.
“High school is a real confusing space. You’re not kids anymore but not adults, and everybody is trying to figure out where they fit in while hormones are doing a number on them. Lots of mistakes are getting made.” Alex considered himself pretty lucky in that department, for the most part he didn’t have much trouble that ended up in the books.
She was still appalled by it. “That sounds terrible.”
“Most of it was fine, but that doesn’t help to illustrate how utterly benign your ethical disrespect was. At worst it was like butting heads with someone.” He just let that one go. She’d ask if it wasn’t clear enough. “But I knew what had happened, why that expedition was unique. I figured you were having a hard time because of that. Turns out it was for a lot of other reasons as well, but it doesn’t change the fact you were hurting.”
Carbon didn’t respond immediately, taking his hand in hers and bringing it up to kiss it. “It is appreciated. Though... You think I did not choose you out of fear. I do not know. Perhaps I was just scared to die alone.”
She had sounded pretty scared when she found him asleep in his cabin after getting dumped out of the mediboard in the middle of the night, though her reaction to his admittedly clumsy attempt at reassuring her that he wasn’t going to abandon her out there was not tracking with that idea. Alex shook his head. “Nah.”
“Nah?” Her ear twitched, voice incredulous. “Explain.”
“You invited me to sleep in your bed.” It struck him as being a bit more than not wanting to die alone. “And let’s not forget that little fantasy you concocted.”
Carbon stammered out a hasty reply. “Wh- Yes. That was. That was some time later.”
He lowered his voice and spoke directly into her ear. “You don’t have to sound so embarrassed about it when I’m actually sleeping in your bed.” Technically he wasn’t sleeping yet, but he wasn’t going to let semantics get in the way of teasing her for that response.
She bit him on the hand. It was very gentle, nowhere near hard enough to break the skin, but she still bit him with an angry huff. “I am trying to be serious!” Carbon hissed quietly.
“Ow.” Alex laughed, not even bothering to pull his hand away. “I am serious. I think your brain is trying to fit past events into that narrative. Maybe it’s vain of me, but I don’t want our relationship to be because you were afraid of dying alone, or afraid of anything else. I am willing to accept that it played a part in our paths crossing, but I’d much prefer it if I was something you wanted for yourself.”
She still held his hand and had begun massaging it where she’d bit him, a worried little noise coming from her. “You are something I want.”
“Good, otherwise it would make this whole situation really awkward.” Alex kissed the top of her head. “I thought you said there wasn’t any more biting.”
“You were getting off the subject.” Every word she said carried a little bit of a smirk in it. Carbon continued to work on his hand, warm thumbs pressed into the muscles of his palm.
Alex rolled his eyes at that. “Uh huh. So that’s how it’s going to be.”
“Only when necessary.” She brought his hand to her mouth again, just a kiss this time.
“I feel like that gives you a lot of leeway.”
Carbon hugged his arm to her chest. “It will not be abused, this is not your high school.”
“Color me skeptical.” Alex laughed and gave her another squeeze.
“With paint?” Such a cheeky response.
They went back and forth like this for a while, before Alex suggested they should actually get some sleep. Carbon taught him a few words to run the lights, and he shut them off for the evening.
Sleep came quickly to Carbon, nestled down next to him and wheezing softly minutes later. He found himself envious of her ability to do that, tired but still working over the day in his mind.
Even though it was the right place for him to be sleeping by Tsla’o standards, Alex couldn’t shake the impression that he was intruding. Carbon and Neya had a decade long relationship that he didn’t quite understand, and he felt like he was taking Neya’s place. He wasn’t, apparently. He consciously knew that. But the relationship he was supposed to have with Neya now, and the idea that Neya ‘belonged’ to them was... Well, it was just alien.
At least the bed was large enough to accommodate them all without crowding. He disregarded his own good advice about sleeping, now very sure that his mind wasn’t going to simply disengage. He turned his Amp back on, called up the document editor, and started to work through his first report for ONI. Mostly he just wanted to get things in order, he would do all of the fit and finish at a terminal later.
This report was just going to be light weight stuff anyway. A better look at how society was arranged, formalities, methods of dress and what they meant... things that would make the primer more useful in a day-to-day capacity. It was all interesting to him and made for a pleasant distraction.
Neya shifted in her sleep and rolled over to face him again, draping an arm over his abdomen. Alex told himself it was normal, no big deal, this was part of being in this relationship with Carbon. He told himself that quickly and repeatedly. He still felt uncomfortable, shifting his hip away from her and carefully removing her arm. She’d understand. Worst case, he could show her how he felt.
Alex went back to work, interrupted a few moments later when she grabbed the waistband of his compression boxers with both hands.
He turned the lights back up to low, pulled the blanket back and looked her over. Her pale fur was disheveled and one ear was splayed out from the side of her head, chest rising and falling slowly. She looked like she was still asleep. An exploratory tug revealed that she had a death grip on the elastic material, not so easy to just move her this time. He set the blanket down and shrugged. It didn’t really matter, people do weird things in their sleep all the time, why should she be different?
He called up the file again and she started to twitch. It wasn’t bad at first but got progressively worse in short order. He grunted in surprise as her body jerked and she punched him in the side, a whimper emanating from under the blanket. Sure, she didn’t kick in her sleep...
“Carbon.” He whispered and gave her a poke in the shoulder.
She rolled away from him, disappearing under the comforter.
“Carbon.” Alex said it a little more forcefully this time and pulled the blanket back.
“Yes?” She mumbled, sitting up.
“Something’s wrong with Neya.”
That got her attention. She sat up and watched the lump under the blanket shift and whine quietly before climbing over Alex and sliding in between them. Carbon cupped a hand to Neya’s cheek and whispered into her ear. She jerked awake, eyes searching and wide with fear.
They softened as she recognized where she was, flooding with relief that didn’t quite wash away the terror they had held. Her body relaxed and she whispered back, soft words too quiet for Alex to hear.
Carbon smiled and leaned down to kiss her, hand stroking her forehead. She waited for Neya to return to sleep before rolling over and situating herself against Alex again. She stretched and set her arm across his chest, rubbing his leg with hers. “She has sleep terrors. You should have just woken her up.”
“I wasn’t sure what was going on and I figured you’re the expert.”
She closed her eyes and smiled again. “Yes, I am.”
That got a grin out of him. “So modest, too.”
“It is nice to have your virtues recognized.” She laid in silence, the smile fading. There was a certain worry in her voice when she spoke again. “If you do see her having a terror again, please wake her as soon as possible.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m just... I’m still an outsider here.”
“You learn very fast.” Carbon nodded and stretched out to kiss his cheek. “She suffers from the disaster worse than most. I know she has been seeking every avenue of treatment...”
The brief discussion in the sickbay had been enlightening, and horrible. “She told me that everyone she knew had died, except you.”
“Her home city and the college for Zeshen were both in the caldera. Almost all she had ever known wiped away in seconds and she watched it happen”
Neya hadn’t mentioned that. “How could she have seen it?”
“She was in orbit at the time, traveling to take care of a meeting for me. They didn’t know what was happening at first, but she got to see it all. Her grief is... indescribable.”
“That’s a lot worse than I thought.”
“Many lost someone, but few lost as much as her. Even less had a clear view of the destruction as it happened.” She pulled the blanket up over them. “At the end, I was all she had left.”
“That’s something.” He filed his report away and shut his Amp off for the night, sliding his arm around her shoulders. “You are pretty great.”
She snorted and shook her head. “She is still so hurt...”
“Of course she is.” Alex thought that was obvious, but he hadn’t been there to experience these events. The enormity of them, the scope of a billion deaths and a dead planet was incomprehensible to him as anything but a report to read, a page of statistics. The thought of it being a slow trickle of news, coming through bit by bit and getting worse all the time filled him with a sickly dread. “That’s some massive trauma she has to work through. You can’t just wave your hands and make it go away.”
Carbon grumbled but otherwise stayed silent.
“Have you worked through all of your hurt from the disaster?” He knew the answer before he even asked the question. She had told him that she hadn't grieved her dead. Didn't know how long it would take and couldn't afford the time.
“No.” She seemed particularly recalcitrant to part with the word.
“Right. Everyone takes their own time to process grief.” Alex had been down this road with a few grandparents, and they hadn't died all at once. Not really an expert at it, but he had a healthier relationship with it. He slipped her hand into his wove their fingers together. "You'll both get through it. Yes, it'll take awhile. This is a mountain of hurt. For both of you, before you try to diminish what you've gone through because she's had it worse. Don't think I can't see you preparing to do that."
Carbon gave a sad laugh, then sighed and squeezed his hand. “You always make me feel better about bad things. I hope you can do that for her as well.”
“Yeah, well...” He spoke a few sibilant words and the lights went all the way out. “I hope I can too.”