Chapter Twenty Aaron

When Britney shows up in the morning, Aaron and Arma have laid down a considerable amount of the electrical bus network. Not only have all of the harnesses, conduit, and tracks been mounted, but they’ve even labeled every wire end with an identification tag. While Arma is busy carefully unpacking the two flight seats with her big knife, he is reading her the build procedure for the third setup. She’s getting all of the parts lined up the entire next stage.

Absolutely everything in the ship will in one way or another be connected to the seat’s displays, so it’s an important part of the project. The two largest wiring harness hubs will be positioned directly under them. After his and Arma’s close call last night, they’ve put a lot more concentration into their work so they don’t get distracted again. It clearly shows in their work.

Britney looks over everything they’ve done with a curious face, sometimes running her hands along the wiring. “Oh my god you guys. This looks incredible. It looks like it was done by a machine.”

Without looking up, Arma sarcastically says “it was.”

Britney’s hand covers her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t mean… it’s just that you laid everything down so perfectly flat.”

He grins while scrolling down the list for Arma’s next item. “Ha, don’t worry about it. She’d love nothing more than for you to say that.”

Arma mutters to herself. “How else would you get perfect work?”

Britney almost regrets letting them do two stages at once. She’s got twice as much work to check over now. It’ll take her most all day. She goes back over to the toolbox to finish off her apple fritter and cup of coffee. While she munches on her breakfast, she watches Arma carry one of the huge flight seats across the floor all by herself. She shakes her head as Arma hands it off to Aaron like it were merely groceries. While he patiently holds the thing in position, she carefully hand-starts the first bolts that secure it in place. The last time she saw a seat being installed, it took three men to do it, and there was plenty of cussing while they did it.

Being too early in the morning for her to really feel like socializing, she quietly meanders about the ship, looking for any marks on the wire sheathing from being bent or pulled across something too hard. Everything looks really good. As she listens to them, she starts to get a little annoyed. She can’t understand how Arma can handle him explaining every damn little thing to her, but it’s none of her business. It seems to be their thing, and she’s apparently really into it. It’s clear she idolizes him.

While Arma could probably keep going for days, he finds himself burning out a little. It’s been a straight twenty four hours now. He’s not tired or anything, but it seems he still has the natural tendency to want to take a break every now and then. He sits down on the edge of the shuttle frame and puts his elbows on his knees. At this point, he just wants to get the job done more than anything else, but that’ll still be weeks, even at this pace. As long as Arma wants to keep going though, he will. All he wants to do is be around her now.

After working straight through for so many hours, his thoughts start to drift off, and he finds himself focusing on her more than the ship. His mind is starting to go into overdrive again, and he can’t stop thinking about where the two of them are headed. He wants her in every way, but it also feels like he’s letting his judgement slip.

It’s hardly been over a day since his world with Valerie burnt to the ground, and it’s making him feel sleazy. He doesn’t believe Arma is naïve, or too young-minded to know any better, but he can’t help but worry about it. He wonders that if he becomes intimate with her, he might somehow be taking advantage of her. He knows she loves him, but she’s got a hell of a lot of desire driving her right now.

He wonders what she was like as a human, before her life was taken from her, if she was still six foot two, or completely different. Valerie told him that she and Five’s willful personalities are surely the same as they were before. When she got her job, she was able to tell right away that they were true individuals. He imagines what it would be like if Arma’s original self could have seen the future, where she is now, with him. He wonders if she’d be at peace with what happened, if in the end, he would be there for her. He could never wrong her.

He wonders if he should simply ask her if she is ready for any of this, but then he suddenly drops all of his doubts. She and Five may have been lied to the whole time they were developing, but they were never sheltered. Arma is probably more of a veteran to fear, love, sadness, and hate than he is himself. She was wrought from the cold hammer of raw emotion while he skated through most of his life. She and Five have earned their trust and love the hard way. They paid for it with their lives.

When he looks over at her, he remembers that she’s actually been around longer than himself, by a couple of years, if he wants to get technical. For all he knows, she could’ve been older than him when she died too. He can mentor her on space stuff till he’s blue in the face, but outside of that, she often makes him feels small.

His life has been a walk in the park compared to hers. She handles her life with more certainty than he does, and yet here he is trying to think he knows better than her. While he bogs down in apprehension, she’s probably been waiting for him to quit being such a lily and buck up already. It makes him smirk at the thought of it. When he notices she’s looking back at him, he sees the pleasant loving smile on her face. It really reaches him.

Britney puts her hands on her hips and puffs her cheeks out when she looks at what’s ahead of her. “Um, why don’t you take the rest of the day off. My shift ends at four, so maybe come back ten or fifteen till? I won’t be able to keep up if you guys get too far ahead.”

Arma cocks her head at him, ready to drop what she’s doing on the spot. He knows Five is going to be in the lab all day, and things are going to get intense. He can already imagine the look on Valerie’s face as they pass by her in the hallway. He stands there, thinking of hitting that hornet’s nest with a stick about two dozen times. At the sound of his name again, he looks up at Arma, who is now almost face to face with him. She has a little bit worried of an expression.

“Man, maybe you do need a break. C’mon, lets go.” She reaches a hand out and helps him up.

Since it’s still pretty early in the morning, they don’t run into many people in the halls. She’s not as exuberant about heading off to her apartment as he was expecting. She’s relaxed a lot since earlier. While they walk, he watches her feet, and the way they step on the polished concrete floor. It’s different than anyone else. She hardly uses her heels at all. Maybe because she goes barefoot more often than not, or simply because the floor is cold.

In her apartment, he goes straight for her bed, takes his jumpsuit off, plops down on it, and stares up at the ceiling. While he settles down, she disappears into the back room again. When she comes back out, he sees that she’s definitely made herself more comfortable. She’s not wearing anything at all. Apprehensively, he kind of hopes she’s just being herself. As much as he wants her right now, it still feels a bit soon for him. He knows it’s been forever for her though. When she comes over to the edge of the bed, he can clearly see that her crotch is wet again.

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He was kind of expecting her to pounce on top of him, but she doesn’t. She gently sits on the edge of the bed, swings her legs around, and rolls over onto her side next to him. There’s a tightness in the core of his chest as he watches her move as smoothly as silk. She lays her hand on the middle of his chest and props herself up a little bit, so she can look at him.

“What’s going on Aaron, you look wrung out again. Is everything ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just been kind of a week, you know.”

She slides her hand up along his neck to his jaw, and holds him there, as if he might for some reason look away. “Yeah, I know.” She looks down at his chest and then up to his eyes again. “Hey, I’m here for you, in every way, you know that.”

She lays her chest across his and then places her lips on his. It’s all she needed to do to snap him out of his little moment.

He wraps his arm around her waist, spreading his hand out over the small of her back, and grasps at her body. He runs his other hand up the side of her ribs while she reaches down and starts pushing his shorts down as far as she can get them. She presses her mouth into his even harder, wrapping her tongue around his as deep as she can get it. It’s not as strong or slippery as the real thing, but is smooth, soft, and wet. While she slowly pushes her knee over across the top of him she slides the length of her calf and foot, down his leg. The feel of her glossy skin on his is incredible, like there’s some kind of flux sharing or something going on.

When she shifts over on top of him, she wraps both of her hands around the tops of his shoulders and curls her body, pulling herself up along the entire length of his shaft. She lets out a breathy gasp with the feel of it. She’s slippery all over him and all he can say is “Oh fuck” as his core tightens up. Her head flings back as she abruptly arches backwards pushing him all the way inside of her at once. His eyes roll with the sudden overwhelming feeling as she lets out a loud hearty moan. Surprised by it, both of them dart their eyes toward the door and then back at one another, almost laughing.

Trying to keep it down, she covers her mouth and lets out another long slow breath as she does the same thing again. It’s about all she can take, but she keeps doing it over and over. He grabs ahold of her hips, pulling her tight against himself. The back of his head presses into the bed hard, almost unable to handle it. Every time she forces him deep inside of her, it builds up until she can’t hold on any longer. She dumps herself all the way forward with her last thrust, buries her face in the pillow next to his, and unleashes the loudest moan she can.

He holds onto her as hard as he can while she clamps down on him like he wouldn’t have imagined being possible. The aftershocks of her shuddering on top of him are intense. The rush of his own orgasm has him reeling like never before. Finally, there’s an upside to his overly powerful brain stimulant. He damn near yells like she did, but manages to keep his teeth clenched shut.

When Arma is coherent again, she slowly sits back up and holds herself there with her hands on his chest. The weight of her tall body still bearing down on him is keeping him hard as hell, and it feels like he’s all the way up to her ribs. When she starts to get up, she lets out another little wail and drops right back down on him. Her eyes are wide open and she’s looking right at him. It’s not even close to being over yet.

She takes in another deep breath, pulls her knees forward, tightly against his sides, and leans back this time. She grabs his hands, puts them on her big breasts, and starts riding back and forth on him. Instead of trying to hold her breath like before, she pants, and closes her eyes in concentration. If she wants to use him for the next six hours, he doesn’t care. He’ll let her do it.

He didn’t expect that she could ever tire, but after a couple go-arounds, she does finally appear to tucker herself out. The two of them are baking hot and have to guzzle some water when they’re done. After they return to the bed, they lay down and snuggle up on one another. He gently rubs her back and neck until she actually ends up falling asleep. He can’t get enough of the small satisfied smile she makes while she’s conked out.

After an hour of watching her sleep, he notices her face has turned from that little smile, to what looks more like fretting. She’s wrapped her arms around one of his and is starting to curl herself up. When he watches closely, he can hear and see her making short, fast little exhales while she breathes.

When Arma walks out through a dark doorway, into the dark backyard of Ray’s house, she finds Aaron lying there dead in the dirt. His grey T-shirt is running with dark red blood. All the skin on her body feels like its being peeled off again, but not so carefully this time. The world around the house is so dark, it might as well not be there. It’s so dark, she’s afraid of it.

When she hears yelling back inside the house, she flings the door open and rushes inside, ready to lash out on anyone and anything inside. It’s not Ray’s house anymore though. She has no idea where she is. As if she had swam up to the surface out of dark water, the blurry room becomes brighter. Everything is formed of raw emotion. She can not only see, but she can feel what’s around her.

The loud shouting starts again, coming out of nowhere, and everywhere. It’s all around her and angry. Her fists ball up as so much hate and shame well up inside of her. She tries to shout back, but it’s like she can’t get anything out. It’s so bad, she can’t take it. It makes her feel so alone and unwanted, it absolutely crushes her. As soon as she bolts, to get away, something hits her real hard, hard enough to break her.

In a big jolt, she wakes up next to Aaron. It takes her a second to realize she was asleep, and dreaming, but then she looks up at him with relief. “Mmm… man” she stretches her long body out like a cat and yawns. “Holy crap.”

He paws at her back as she rolls over off the edge of the bed. “Hey, you alright?”

She hides a little embarrassed smile from him. “Yeah, fine. You do that too you know.”

“Yeah? I’ve just never seen you do it.” He looks around for his underwear and climbs off her side of the bed where she had flung them. He holds them up, about to put a leg through them, but stops. He looks at his combat com, for the time. They’ve been asleep for a little while. “Well shit, we’ve only got about a half hour before we should head down.”

He wasn’t really meaning it the way she took it, but he doesn’t waffle. When she goes back over to the bed, she bends over the side of it and spreads her feet out. When he stands behind her, and pressed against her backside, she takes a corner of the blanket and bites down on it. He puts a forearm across her back, pushes her down on the bed, and wraps his other hand around the front of her hip. She’s letting out a muffled heavy groan from between her teeth as he slowly pushes all the way inside of her.

When they finally end up making it all the way back down to the bay where they’re building their ship, they end up being late, past Britney’s shift. She isn’t there, but she’s left them some sticky notes on the computer console. It looks like they did everything right, and she never even found one thing to comment on. When he looks through the documents, every single item has her initials on it.

Throughout the night, they integrate all of the control and display equipment in the cab and seats. Some fun pillow talk starts to seep into their work here and there, and eventually leads to them getting a little handsy with one another a few times. They have to cut it out cold before it gets them into any trouble though. The third stage work they’re doing is more advanced, and they can’t afford to be distracted. To stay on task, they work as quick and diligently as they can. It doesn’t stop them from talking about their relationship on a more serious note though. She doesn’t want him to think that she was simply ravenous and needed someone to have sex with. He is her forever.

She smiles at him shyly at him from across the other side of the chassis. “The sex was incredible, and everything I needed. I know it was a little abrupt, but I absolutely couldn’t hold back any longer.”

“It’s ok, I’m pretty happy we didn’t wait right now.”

She laughs and puts her hand over her forehead. “But you know it wasn’t just about the sex right? It’s been you from the start.”

He finds it hard to explain what she’s done to him too. “The only way I can describe how I feel about you is like, the whole living world was nothing but piece of glass placed between us. I’m on the other side with you now, where I’m supposed to be.”

“I feel like part of me, something, I don’t know, the part of me that makes me who I am, is bonded to you.”

He knows exactly what she’s talking about. “I feel it too. When I was struggling the most, when I didn’t think I could keep going, you were what kept me from collapsing into a darkness where I was never going to come back from.”

She keeps her smirk hidden from him, behind the frame of the shuttle, and only lets him see her eyes. “I swear I was gonna tackle you and make you mine if you hadn’t come to your damn senses already. Right there in the hallway if I had to.” That gets him to grin and laugh. “I’m serious. You were pushing it.” She is smiling as big as ever now too. She’s really kidding, and he knows it.