TO didn’t realize that DH had been waiting for them back in the main living quarters. As soon as the elevator door opened and TO rolled themself out, DH was there, taking TO’s hands and clasping them in their own.
“There was activity!” They said, their ears flick wildly, the beginnings of tears forming in the corners of DH’s eyes, “Finally, there was activity!”
“Activity?” TO had no idea what DH was talking about, but it almost didn’t matter in this moment. They hadn’t seen their mate this excited in a long time, probably not since they had gone on their date so long ago back on Arkane. Whatever it was, TO was happy about it.
“Activity!” they said again, their ears lifting up even further, “New brain activity in Avery!”
TO’s ears lifted then, their eyes widened as they tightened their grasp on DH’s hands, “Avery? Activity!? you mean, Avery is awake!?”
The sudden drop to DH’s ears made it clear that that wasn’t the case. “N-no, not yet.” They said, “But, there’s been new brain activity! that’s a good sign! It means they’re going to wake up, and hopefully soon!” There was another flick to their ears. “Well, relatively soon. Hopefully, before we get to Scraprock.”
TO squeezed DH’s hands and pulled their mate closer, wrapping an arm around DH, who knelt down to be closer. TO wished they could properly hold DH with their arms and wings without the chair in the way, but the best they could do like this was half cradle DH in their lap and hug them close.
A moment passed and DH started shaking. Their breathing became erratic, and they clutched at TO. With one hand, TO gently scratched the back of DH’s neck as they rested their head atop their mates. “What is it?” They asked, their ears twitching, “What’s wrong?”
“I.. I was so scared.” They whispered. “There wasn’t anything for a while, and Goretta said that happens sometimes, and that our equipment wouldn’t pick up everything, but we weren’t seeing anything new, and... and I was so worried that we wouldn’t...”
TO held them closer, “You never said you were worried...” They whispered as they nuzzled the top of DH’s head, “You never said anything-“
“I didn’t want to worry you.” They whispered between quiet sobs, “I didn’t want to worry you, not while you were recovering.”
TO held their mate, letting them cry in their lap. DH should have told them, should have shared their concerns so TO could help! But that wasn’t something they wanted to bring up right now. Right now, all they wanted was to hold DH until their mate calmed down.
A few moments passed, and TO heard an awkward cough from behind them. “I... I can come back later. Or tomorrow.” Tham said.
TO had forgotten anyone else was around them. They hadn’t been as relieved at the news as DH had been, obviously, but their relief and their attention to DH had taken precedence over anything else and they had forgotten that anyone else was in the room. They remembered that Vik was also still there, but when they looked over at him, they saw that Vik was still entirely focused on his work.
“S-sorry.” DH said, their ears flushed as they pulled away from TO, “I.. I didn’t even realize you brought Tham here-“
“It’s fine.” TO said, pulling DH back in for a quick hug despite their own burning ears. In their head, they kept reminding themself that this was fine, that they could in fact show affection to their mate here and there would be no punishment to follow. Still, how quickly they had allowed that to happen in front of someone else, and how quickly they had forgotten about Tham’s presence when they themself have brought him there scared TO. What if something like that had happened back when they were in training? What if, in the future, they were in a situation where they had to hide their feelings once more, but simply forgot?
They fought the panic for a few more moments before they finally allowed DH to pull away from them. DH stood upright and rubbed their eyes quickly before turning to Tham. “Sorry.” They said quickly, “I didn’t-“ Whatever DH was going to say faded on their tongue as they looked over the Nagarajin, “W-what happened?” They asked, “Are you ok?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I’m fine!” Tham said quickly, turning away and making his way suddenly to the washroom. As the door closed and locked behind him, DH turned back to TO.
“What happened?” DH asked. “Is he alright?”
“He’s been though a lot,” TO said after a moment of consideration. They gave a quick glance to Vik to make sure the small hacker was still preoccupied before they added, “He’s not been coping well. That’s why Pearla wants me to spend time with him, I think.”
DH nodded. “He looked awful.” They said, “But why bring them here?”
“I’m going to show him some of the simulations.” TO said, “We don’t have the actual simulation pods, so we can’t do anything immersive, but we can still connect and run some non-immersive programs.” TO paused, their body tensing for a moment as they realize they had overlooked an important flaw in their plan. With wide eyes and low ears, they looked up to DH. “DH,” they said, “Tham doesn’t have a chip.”
A slight lift came to DH’s ears, followed by the slightest of amused twitches. “No, he doesn’t.” DH said, “But we had to give him some access to the ship, remember?” They gestured to Vik, “We figured the best way to do that was to use his communicator and trick the ship into accepting it as an authorized chip.”
“But it’s not a chip.” TO said, “He won’t be able to control any aspects of the simulations!”
“Not unless you use the manual override.” DH said. “You’d be limited in what simulations you can run, but it’s better than nothing.” They took another deep, uneasy breath as they raised their hand and rubbed their eyes. “We’re nearly done with Flit’s leg, so if you want, we could take some time to design some kind of interface for Tham-“
TO reached out and took DH’s hand in their own. “You’ve done more than enough.” TO said, “You don’t have to push yourself this hard.”
DH shook their head, “I’m not pushing myself.” They said, “I enjoy this kind of thing. It’s a problem to solve and... it takes my mind off everything.”
TO understood that entirely. “Alright.” They said, “If you want to.” They glanced back at the washroom, and could hear noise coming from behind the door. “But you don’t have to. Only if you want to.”
DH nodded, then bent down to kiss TO quickly before standing up and heading back to their workspace. Just as DH settled back into their work, the washroom door opened and Tham came out. TO could tell that he had just washed his face–or scrubbed it viciously if a deeper red color on his skin was any indication–and while he still didn’t look himself, he looked better than he had before.
“I can go.” He said as soon as he saw TO, “If you wanted to spend time with DH and Avery...”
“I always want to spend time with my family.” TO said as they wheeled towards the back area, “Come on, let’s see what simulations we can find.”
======
The manual override for non-immersive simulations were clunky, just as DH had said, and their selection was limited. Tham had to view the simulation through the screen of his communicator, which meant that they had to find some graphically simple simulation to run. They ended up finding a resource management simulation which they could comfortably run for hours. While there was a competitive mode, TO insisted that they work together in team mode. If they had been in competition, TO feared that their familiarity with these kinds of simulations and their previous training would create such a mismatch that there’d be no enjoyment in it for either of them.
“I haven’t played anything like this in years.” Tham said after an hour into the game. “Lost access once I turned 22, and didn’t have tech decent enough to run it even if I got unauthorized access.” he tapped at his communicator, “This thing can’t run anything more than the basics on its own. Even though it’s connected to your ship, I’m still surprised it doesn’t implode.”
“What do you mean, you lost access?” TO asked. Before Tham answered, TO remembered that the legal age of the majority in Arkane was 22. Before that age, children had access to educational resources. “Did you have access to these kinds of games through the educational programs of Arkane?”
“Yeah.” Tham said, “Honestly, most of the time they’d rather let us play educational games and call it a day. So long as we passed our evaluations, they didn’t care. Honestly, even if we failed the evaluations, they’d just put us in remedial for a bit until we passed. They had no interest in keeping us in the education system until we aged out.”
“Well... that’s not ideal.” TO said, “But, it’s better than I thought it was. I thought kids in the Outer Ring didn’t get the basic education.” Their ears flicked down as they recalled all the ways that people who lived out there slipped through the cracks of the systems put in place to help them. “At least the kids were still taken care of.”
Tham stopped playing and stared at TO for a while in silence, their brow furrowed. TO worried at first that they had done something to make Tham angry, but after a moment all he said was, “I figured GiDi would have told you.”
“Told me what?” TO asked, now entirely confused. “Pearla, Petra, and Lendulin told me about the state of the Outer Ring. GiDi didn’t tell me anything about it.”
“Not that.” Tham said, frowning. “Pearla and I didn’t grow up in the Outer Ring.” he paused, “Well, I mean, we did for a couple of years, but that’s it.”
“Ah, I’m sorry.” TO said as their ears dropped, “I shouldn’t have assumed. I just didn’t think you grew up in the Residential section.”
Tham chuckled and shook his head. “I never spent a second in the Residential section legally.” He said, “Pearla and I both grew up in the system.”