Katie and I got dropped off at the ansible in the afternoon and waved Mel and the boys off as they went hunting for a different body of water to fill up on. We caught up with Francesca and asked if she needed help packing or preserving a crate for the trip home and she filed two small projects to coordinate on our last two days.
We stopped by Katie’s office slash apartment to pick up a box and a few other things to take back to our loft. I’m happy that she’s decided to move some stuff in, but I’m sad that we only have ten days left to enjoy it.
“Katie, do what you need to do. Just leave me a desk and an equipment shelf and you can change whatever else. I mean, leave the same for Mel, obviously, but if you need to add stuff or move my longer-term projects downstairs, have at it.”
“I forgot you have a full lab this size downstairs. Can I take some of that space too?” She seems . . . exited? Nervous? Both?
“What’s mine is yours hon. Please don’t change the explosive testing room with the Faraday cage. I have one or two experiments waiting for my attention, but there’s another 375 square meters or so left for you to play with.” Her eyes gleam for a moment before narrowing.
“Despite your attempts to distract me, you are to get in that shower and wash the week of suit stink off you.”
“And if I said, you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming if you want me to shower before I have a beer?”
“Your terms are acceptable.”
I start walking toward the fridge for a moment before I am hoisted off my feet and thrown over a shoulder. I squeal in surprise at first, and then shriek with laughter as I realize which part of the terms she accepted. She has us under the shower head with our rapidly wetting clothes before she sets me down. I’m still laughing when I pull her into a kiss, her sharp canines sending a shudder through me as my tongue traces their profiles.
We struggle to peal each other out of our wet clothes and our breath only becomes more ragged from there.
***
“Is it okay to miss the little belly you had?” Katie comes up from behind me to pinch my belly and kiss my neck.
I smile at her not so sneaky attempt to move from belly to boob. “I don’t know if I can get it back the way my Inefficient Digestion works, but as long as you like this me too.” I shrug and bury my free hand in her red curls.
“Mm, that’s nice.” She says casually lifting me into her lap so that she can hold me while I work and play with her hair. This is my happy place. Project, being held, hair to play with, let’s go.
We sit like that for maybe half an hour, I get up to refill our coffee once before work truly intrudes on our day.
“These mining ventures are getting pushy. Seems they want to test the new system ruler. They all want special considerations, breaks, or outright hand-outs.” She scoffs and angrily taps her screen. “Is there anything you want specifically from these deals?”
“Yeah, I want first rights to purchase rare earth metals. Reduced taxes for agreeing, increased taxes for not, etc. Oh, that reminds me. I need to assemble some standard, base-level contracts. I intend to have our systems alert visitors that anyone that stays past a 10-day visitor’s visa--without making other arrangements--implicitly agrees to a base level Mercantile Visa. Those that become delinquent on the provisions of a Mercantile Visa are subject to search, seizure and summary judgement.”
“I can make that work. At least one of these jokers is going to test us.”
“No one that visits is going to think that we have the power to enforce our laws. We just have to watch out for the dishonest. Hopefully some of them wonder for a moment why the V’tek Collective respects us.”
“I offered them all contract options, but the smallest company I sent several options. I like the idea of smaller companies coming in to grow with us.”
“Aww, Katie,” I lean my head back onto her shoulder and kiss her chin. “You do want to make a life with us.”
“I tried not being a part of your life. I didn’t care for it much. If you ever want to make this official, I’m all-in this time.” A flood of warmth fills me to the ends of my toes and the follicles of my eyelashes. I turn over and claim her mouth.
“I really like the sound of that.” I hug her with my whole body and bury my face in her neck. “Are you okay with waiting to make anything official until we meet Mel’s parents?”
She sighs, and I pout. “I’ll talk with Melissa. I don’t like the idea of waiting for someone that’s not in this relationship with us. Her parents can float for all I care.”
I chuckle at that. “I feel that. This new title is going to go to my head quickly.”
“It’s bound to after you name a planet, a solar system, and an Empire after yourself.” She chuckles into my hair.
“Don’t forget two months of the year.”
“You made a calendar and didn’t tell me?!” she starts tickling me and I squeal mercy.
“Tessa did the naming, I just said how many months!”
“Mmm, this does have her prints on it. You certainly wouldn’t have named the shortest month after yourself.” Katie snickers. “Tessember’s just lazy though, I’m ashamed of you Tessa.
“Better or worse than Penny Astoria of Astoria, Astoria?”
“Et tu?”
“I’m going with worse. Ego is more productive.”
“Jokes on you assholes, I’m going to put up an Astoria City on this place and make it our Capitol?” I push my arms down so I can stare Katie right in the face as I say it.
She groans and pushes my face to the side and me off the couch. “I take it back, this is worse.”
I have myself a little giggle fit on the shag rug in my living room as Katie starts puttering at her desk. Five minutes later I’m in a rash guard top poking at sustainment and source runeshapes, trying to figure out how to lower the downtime of the array now that I know it works.
Katie and I work like that for hours, save the first time she saw me with a top covering, she decided it offended her and threw it across the room. After that we trade trips to make coffee, short kisses and a casual grope here and there. It is cozy.
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“Why am I so hung up on this? These runes should work.”
“Explain it to me, maybe you’ll shake something loose.”
I walk over to her station and hijack her projector. And bring up the shuttle diagram. And plop my mini-runic assembly on her workstation. “I’ve modeled the system as well as I can here, but the parts just aren’t working together.”
“What does Tessa think?” Katie asks.
“Finally, someone asks me. I have all of the knowledge you have access to, Penelope,” she says in a chastising teacher voice. “I think that she’s forgotten the two approaches she can take to solve these problems. You can create a comprehensive spellform out of runes, like your sundering apparatus, or you can finally use the construct module you bought. I’m not allowed to help you figure out the details, but either solution seems more than a 10-day endeavor.”
How did I completely forget about making constructs? I was so focused on a few devices, that I forgot I could make a car. “If I pushed myself, I might have something workable in that time, but I definitely wouldn’t be able to store enough aether should it not work correctly. Crap on toast.”
“And sorry for not checking with you sooner, Tessa. It’s tied up in my Earth issues and has nothing to do with how I feel about you.”
“I thought as much, but I am restricted with what help I can just volunteer when you’re creating. Just keep that in mind.”
“Thanks Tessa, and thanks Kay. You two are awesome.”
“I agree, but I have questions about your diagram.” Katie doesn’t take her eyes off a side project I have in the same data file. She’s pointing at a mana collector and distribution ring I’m working on.
“Okay, that’s interesting, but how were you planning to store it? Surely not in the liquid form you create?”
I huff at that, “Apparently synthesizing my ink outside of my body is incredibly difficult. So no. I’m working on a sort of battery, but right now the bastards shoot their whole load off like capacitors and it’s maddening. So I put the project down for a while. I had an idea that I put in the notes but I have to build the apparatus to create the appropriately stratified gem. The chromium doped corundum I’m using for laser focusing lenses holds a fine aether web when charged and provides a satisfying boost to the laser’s cutting power.”
“Penny, how have you had time to do all of this?” She scrolls through the same file to find it littered with projects like a messy IRL workshop.
“I guess I don’t? But I picked up a skill called Parallel Minds a while back, so usually when I get stuck on something I switch to an idea one of my other thought processes has been ruminating on until my subconscious cracks the case. It’s annoying when I have a ‘Eureka’ moment when I’m sleeping though.
“I have a lot of raw data for various things, but haven’t spent the time to categorize it enough to ask Tessa for help. But if you want to wade through some data and pick and chose your next project, by all means.”
“And here I didn’t think you were into dirty talk.” She smiles and pulls me into a kiss, biting specifically to draw a bead of blood between our lips. She moans quietly into my mouth before licking my lips a few times. “I am very interested in your Battery data. Magitech power sources on the Exchange are very expensive.”
“Have at it Kay. Side note, I wanted to spend the afternoon soaking in what’s left of the infused lake water, you want to come with?”
She looks at her table and back the fridge and amenities, then back at me. “I suppose I can do this from anywhere. Can you teleport a crate with us?” I nod while smiling.
An hour later, I’m pleasantly wrapped in aether-infused water, with my head resting on Katie’s feet while enjoying a fruit beer. Katie is sitting in a lounger with attached umbrella looking at my data file and keeping notes in her own. We enjoy the day in companionable silence and I couldn’t imagine a better recovery day.
I hope Melissa’s doing okay.
***
Melissa is drinking Francesca’s moonshine and stumbling about her greenhouse waiting for Katie and me to return.
“Guess that means I’m flying then,” I chuckle. Katie looks disgusted at the whole situation.
I wonder what that is about? I decide that it’s hers to share, and leave it be. We’re only going to be here for eight more days, and some of these situations will be left behind for good. I try to corral the drunken woman but she says she’s not done drinking with her friend. I decide to not leave someone I care about in a stupid situation and princess carry her to the shuttle and strap her in a passenger seat.
She chastises me the whole way to Mercy for being a pushy girlfriend and that if I was going to run away with Katie, that she should be able to have some fun on her own. I get that she’s insecure about how close Katie and I were/are but getting drunk with Francesca seems like she was baiting a reaction from me. If this kind of manipulative behavior is going to be her new normal, I’m not going to be able to handle it long-term.
When we get to Mercy I drag her to our suite and dump her on the bed fully clothed. I leave her a note telling her that I didn’t love this situation and to call me when she’s ready to talk about it.
Katie and Beecham go over their plan for the next few days and that with some of the pre-fab panels they’ve already printed, they can focus on the airlock machinery while I do enchanting work on the exterior of the cargo pods and the elevator/airlock modification.
Four days of working on the shuttle with the team and Melissa still hasn’t pulled me aside. I originally intended for this to be on her, but I’m not going back to earth with this festering in my brain.
/Hey Mel, got a few minutes?/
/Not really, Penny. I’m pretty busy./
/Okay, let me rephrase, I would like it if you would make time for us to talk. Let me know when you have time today./
/Fine. I’ll be right there./
That’s a sure fire way to spin me up before a conversation that we should have had days ago. She finds me in our suite, at the table in the breakfast nook.
“What’s this about?” She wastes no time as she enters.
“Uh, it’s about that you seem to be avoiding me, and that I feel like you’re blaming me for something. I asked to talk about your potential bad decisions with Francesca days ago, but now you just seem angry.”
“I am avoiding you. It’s hard for me to see you acting this way around Katie and not with me.”
“I was acting that way with you too before we separated for my two-day break. What changed?”
“I saw you two, okay? I saw how easy everything was between you while I was gone and how you were probably thinking how much easier it would be without Melissa to mess everything up.”
“No, I was wondering how you were doing. How much better things would be with you involved. We even talked about making things official after we had a talk with your parents, but that really depends if that’s what you still want? I don’t love that you were spying on us though.”
“You talked about marrying us?”
“Kind of, yeah. I still want you in my life, love, but manipulative stuff like getting drunk with Francesca to see how I’ll react can’t continue. Moreover, your and Katie’s situations will never be equal. We’ve had different interactions as people, and we’ve hurt each other in different ways. Does that mean I love either of you less? No. But we do have to talk about it, all three of us.
“There will be times when you or Kay will want alone time with me, or other times you’ll be fed up with me and you and she decide to fuck out your frustrations on each other. Maybe your relationship with Kay develops more favorably over time. I don’t know how this works Mel. The last time I tried I was pushed out of the relationship, so I know how you might be feeling. But I don’t want to push you away Melissa. I want you to be a part of this thing you started.”
She starts crying, big crocodile tears. “I felt like I ruined everything we had, and I just wanted to get it back.” I walk up and start rubbing her back.
“We can’t go back there honey, we have to find a new place where all three of us fit.”
She nods, “but then I thought you were going to abandon me for Katie and I couldn’t face it, you know?”
“I do. I did something very similar. Except the person I loved didn’t try to stop me from leaving.” I pull up her chin to look at me, “this is me saying I don’t want you to leave us. I’m still a little mad at the both of you, but that’s not the important thing. What’s important is what you saw when you were spying on us, I want to focus on what we’re going to be in the future. Laughing, giggling, productive, sloppy, satisfied messes.”
“I do like those kinds of messes.” She grabs my face for a kiss and I try and inject as much compassion as I possibly can. “Mmm, how did I think avoiding that was a good idea.”
I grin at the turnaround and peck her lips. “No idea, kisses are pretty great.” I pop up and walk for another mug of coffee. “Thanks for making time to talk to me.”
She chuckles and sniffs and wipes her face on her sleeve. “Thanks for not giving up on me.”
“You betcha. Now how about we spy on some people and read their minds?”
She looks at me as though I just asked her to recite the Gettysburg Address. And bursts out laughing as she realizes I respect her talents just not when they’re used against me.