Space for Growth (Spire Station #3)

Chapter 17

17

W e don’t find much in our initial sweep of the ship. The med bay is bare, the rations and supplies have molded over, and the personal quarters only have old clothes and a datapad filled with vuloi porn. Paul found that last one, and I had to fight not to laugh at his shock when the image of a two-dicked behemoth appeared.

This is the point when most salvagers would give up, but I have enough experience to know that it’s worth another look.

As we pass the sleeping quarters for the second time, I notice a slightly askew panel on the interior wall. It’s possible that something is behind it. Though when I try to pry it off, it doesn’t want to budge, proving that theory wrong.

Paul furrows his brow. “I noticed that before and thought maybe it was a false panel, but didn’t say anything because that felt too far-fetched. Guess I was right not to bring it up.”

I step back and look between the human and the wall panel. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” he asks, his plush lips slanting into a slight frown.

“Doubt yourself,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. He’s so quick to judge himself before anyone else can. “If you see something, tell me. Missing out on finding something is worse than feeling silly because you were wrong.”

He sighs and nods. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s a bad habit.”

“One we can work on breaking,” I say with a gentle smile, trying to reassure him. I know all about breaking those kinds of mental patterns. I had to in order to survive. “Now, did you notice anything else?”

Paul hesitates briefly and nods again. “Maybe?”

“Show me.” I gesture for him to lead me.

He takes me back to the med bay, pausing for a moment at the doorway before stepping inside. Shit, I forgot he hates med bays. “You can stay in the hall and point it out if you need to,” I offer.

“Oh.” His brows raise as if he didn’t expect me to remember his issue with med bays. “No, I’m okay. But thank you.” His gentle, pleased smile makes me feel as good as I did when the chocolate melted on my tongue.

He goes over to one of the exam tables and points at the small grate on the floor on the wall next to it. “There.”

My ocular implant focuses on the grate, trying to look for any imperfections or unusual features. It’s small, barely big enough to fit a hand through and blends in with the wall. There’s nothing notable about it all. It looks like every other ventilation grate on the ship.

Paul notices my confusion. “If they’re set up right, med bays have a specific configuration to optimize air filtration and prevent circulation beyond a specific zone. In a space like this, where they can’t put patients into separate rooms, those filtration configurations are even more important. That grate there is in the wrong spot. It should be up higher on the wall.”

I blink at him, mouth falling open as he speaks. “I never would’ve even considered that. You’re amazing.”

He flushes and looks away. “No, just spent a lot of time staring at walls in med bays. Eventually, you get so bored that you notice things most people wouldn’t think about. No matter what hospital or ship med bay I went to, they always had the same grates on the same walls.”

“Why were you in so many different medical facilities? Were your parents medics?”

Paul snorts. “Far from it. I don’t think I can remember a time when either of them stayed in a facility longer than the time it took to drop me off and pick me up. And the whole time, they looked like they’d rather be anywhere else.” He sighs, clearly falling back into memories for a moment, then clears his throat. “Anyway, uh, I had a rare blood condition as a kid that required me to get treatments once a week to filter out the toxins that my body was producing. It was that way for the first fourteen years of my life.”

He gives his explanation in a rush of words, like he wants to hurry past it and move on. But I can’t help getting stuck on the thought that he spent fourteen years—almost his entire childhood—subjected to that kind of treatment over and over.

I had my fair share of medical procedures as an adolescent between my top surgery and hormonal implant, but there was never any question that my family would be there to support me. That Paul went through things alone…

“ Vash-ka , Paul. That’s horrible .”

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m fine. They eventually figured out an implant that made the treatments unnecessary. Now I only have to get my blood checked once or twice a year to make sure it’s still functioning. I've had no issues yet, and it’s been over eighteen years. Doctors say the chance of it failing after a successful implantation is less than 0.01%. Even with my anxiety, those are good enough odds for me to not worry.”

I’m relieved to hear it won’t be a problem, though that wasn’t what upset me. I’ve been around Paul enough to know that if he thought he was in any danger, he would’ve already told me about it.

“You spent the first fourteen years of your life alone in med bays. Without your parents.” The words taste like ash as I grit them out.

“Uh, yes. Sometimes, the medics would talk to me for a bit, but they were busy. Sometimes we had to travel for mom’s job and the ships weren’t big enough to have a dedicated med bay, so then I’d get to stay in my room and have a medic treat me there. But that wasn’t really any better.” He gives me a feeble shrug. “Then I started associating my bedroom with pain, so I had a hard time sleeping even when it wasn’t a cycle I had a treatment on.”

I stare at him, aghast and unable to think of anything to say that won’t be threats of violence against his fa-shar neglectful parents. A surge of guilt hits me as I realize I’ve been forcing him to sit in this med bay longer than necessary while I ask him questions about his trauma.

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling,” Paul says, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away. “Go ahead. Let’s see if my obscure knowledge pays off.”

“I want to know these things, Paul. I asked. It’s not babbling.” I have the desperate urge to scoop him up in my arms and carry him out of this med bay immediately, but it’s not my place to decide what he can and can’t handle.

Paul makes a noncommittal sound in response to my assertion, then gestures to the grate.

I bend down next to it and slide a finger around the edges, looking for a weak point. My talon catches on a hidden latch, and I flick it, causing it to swing open on a hinge.

Crouching down so it’s at eye level, I look inside and find a long metallic canister embedded in a hidden hold in the wall. When I go to pull it out, it’s a lot heavier than it looks, and something in my back screams at me in protest. I wince and almost drop the canister.

Paul is at my side in an instant. “Are you alright? Did it hurt you? Oh fuck, I’m so sorry!”

I grimace as I stand with the canister and set it down with a heavy clank on the exam table. “I think I pulled something. I’ll be fine.” When I reach back to massage the painful spot, it spasms again. Esh’et . I glare down at the canister, which is welded shut so I can’t even check to see if it was worth the pain. With a heavy sigh, I reach down to grab it, but Paul smacks my hands away.

“Don’t pick it up again! I can carry it.”

“I’ve got it. I don’t want you to strain anything.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “One of the few things I got from going to the gym so much is the ability to pick up and put down heavy objects.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s the only thing. Your muscles are also aesthetically pleasing.” I gesture at his bicep, which stands out against the fabric of his tight-fitted shirt.

Paul quirks a brow at me. “So seladin like muscles? I got all kinds of conflicting information from Mezli on what parts of me would or wouldn’t be desirable to various aliens. Body hair seemed to be a real turnoff for a lot of them, and given Rema’s reaction to mine, at least that seems accurate.”

A low heat thrums inside me at his casual mention of that time in the showers. “I have eclectic taste, so I’m not the best indicator of what other seladin like. For me, it’s the combination of a person’s energy and wit and how it blends with their outward appearance. I like shy and soft, beckoning me to explore them with tender adoration. I like petite and energetic, daring me to see if I can handle their effervescent presence.”

“Ah. Right.” Paul’s reply is curt, not realizing that I only said the other two to not make my attraction to him so blatant. But if he wants that from me, I’m more than happy to give it to him.

I let my eyes drag down Paul’s body, then back up to his face. “I think my favorite, though, is strong, yet happy to yield. Someone eager to let me show them how powerful they are.”

Paul looks away, fidgeting with his sleeve, then clears his throat. “Okay, enough flirting. It won’t convince me to let you carry the canister.”

He looks adorably flustered, and I chuckle at his words. “Are you sure? I’m quite persuasive. Just earlier this cycle, I convinced a human to do a space walk.”

He scoffs and shakes his head at me, bending down to pick up the metal canister. My back gives a sympathetic twinge when I watch the muscles in his arms flex, but he lifts it into his arms with no outward signs of discomfort.

“Alright, ready to go?” Paul asks, striding toward the corridor. I follow him out to the cargo hatch we entered through, stifling a groan whenever the muscles in my back decide to make themselves known. It’s nothing a hot shower and a bit of rest won’t take care of, and I don’t want Paul to worry about me. He needs to know I can keep him safe, and whining every couple of steps because my back hurts won’t exactly instill confidence in my capabilities.

When we get to the airlock and I see the tethered ladder waiting for us, reality sets in.

Vash-ka , how in the void am I going to lift Paul? It won’t just be his weight, it’ll also be that blasted canister. Once we’re out of the artificial gravity, it will only be a matter of guiding us up back to our ship, which I might manage. But while we’re waiting for the decompression cycle to finish?

My stomach churns. It’s going to hurt. I’ll have to bear it, though. What other option is there?

I give Paul a shaky smile and push off from where I’m leaning against the wall, sucking in a sharp breath as my back seizes. “This will be trickier with the canister. We can leave it here while I carry you back to the ship, and then come back for it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Paul asks, scowling.

His reaction confuses me. “It’ll be fine here. No one else is going to swoop in and steal it away.”

He huffs in disbelief. “That’s not what I meant! You’re not carrying me. You can barely walk right now. I’m not going to make it worse.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m fine. I can handle it.”

“You’re the one being ridiculous!” Paul shouts, looking like he wants to throw the canister at me in frustration. It’d be cute if I wasn’t so worried about him.

He squats and sets the canister down carefully, leaning it against the wall. “Come here,” he says, stepping closer to me.

Confused, I take a half step back. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” Paul says drolly, but I truly don’t know what he’s trying to say. When I look at him blankly, he sighs. “Come here and wrap your arms around my neck. ”

“I don’t know if right now is the best time for kissing, Paul,” I joke.

“Who said anything about kissing?” A flush creeps up his neck, but he moves closer until there’s only a small gap between our bodies.

“This isn’t necessary.” My pulse spikes at his proximity. “You’re terrified of going out into space. You don’t have to?—”

“Put your goddamn arms around my neck unless you want me to carry you like a baby,” Paul growls, looking up at me with fire in his dark eyes. “I’ve already proven to you I can handle the weight.”

“It’s not that, it’s…” I trail off as I see his jaw flex in agitation. There’s no way I can tell him he can’t do this, after everything I said to him about embracing delusion and his bravery. I would be the biggest hypocrite in the galaxy

I swallow down what I was going to say and hook my arms around his neck. He grabs under my hips and hoists me up as gently as possible, though wrapping my legs around his waist makes my back ache.

“ Esh’et , you’re pretty strong, human,” I say in surprise as he carries me into the airlock. I’ve got at least a few heads of height on him, but he doesn’t struggle at all with my weight.

He huffs out a small laugh and lets go with one hand to reattach the tethers to the anchors on our hips. The slight tremble of his fingers against my skin as he checks mine for the third time is the only outward sign of his fear.

I still hate it. I don’t want him to do this. When I try to let go, he adjusts his grip on me and hits the switch for the airlock depressurization.

“Paul, I?—”

“If you want, you can close your eyes,” he says with a strained laugh.

I let out a weak chuckle. “I don’t think this will work if we both have our eyes closed.”

I watch Paul’s throat work with a heavy swallow. “No. It won’t.”

The outer door opens with a hiss and my stomach lurches as Paul’s pupils go so wide they almost blot out his chocolate brown irises. Despite it being a joke, I do almost shut my eyes. Not for fear of being out in space, but for my brave, terrified human.

Instead, I press my cheek to his and send as much calm and confidence as I can wherever our bodies connect. “You’re amazing,” I murmur. I know he can’t hear me, so I pray he can feel it.

A long moment passes before he floats us out to the ladder, grabbing on with both hands. We hover there for even longer and I worry that I’ll need to haul him back onto the ship mid-panic attack, but then we’re moving as he releases one hand to pull us up to the next rung. Then the next.

My heart leaps with awe, and the urge to bury my face into his chest and cry or grab his face and kiss him hard is almost too much to resist. I have to, though, because there’s no way I can distract him now. I stare into his face as he looks up with grim determination and I realize his lips are moving.

Whether it’s curses or prayers, or him vowing to never let me take him anywhere again, I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter, because he’s doing this. We get to the airlock on our ship and he uses the tether to guide us inside, reaching out and slapping his palm on the control panel to shut the door.

As soon as it shuts and the artificial gravity kicks on, he sets me down on my feet. There’s a throbbing pain in my back, but it doesn’t matter now. All that matters is the feat of bravery Paul displayed.

He gives me a tremulous smile and I reach up, grabbing both sides of his face. “ Vash-ka , you’re incredible. You did that. You… ”

The urge to kiss him takes hold again and I bend to bring my lips to his as affection and admiration swell within me until I could burst. My eyes shut as I feel his breath fan across my face right before?—

Paul shoves me backward.

Horror slams into me at his rejection. “ Esh’et , I’m sorry, I thought?—”

He shakes his head, stumbles a few steps away, and doubles over as he heaves and regurgitates his breakfast onto the airlock floor right as the repressurization chime sounds and the interior door opens.