Chapter 12 #5
How could I do anything but love him? I watched him and thought, a little dazed, that loving him was inevitable. I couldn't help myself. More importantly, I didn't want to.
Yes, he'd fucked up. He'd hurt me. He'd made a fucking mess of my life and hadn't thought twice about it, because before he met me, I hadn't been a real person, not really.
I was certainly real to him now.
Who could we have been, if none of this had happened? If we’d just found each other somewhere the cosmos? And I guess the more important question was, who could we be now?
But we couldn't rush things, not this time. I thought, then, that we probably deserved a real chance, and if we were going to take a real chance, then we needed to do it right. And it felt like we were laying the foundation. That we were choosing this labour a little more every day.
We drifted into the last airlock before the moon gardens, meant to replicate the dark forests and formal gardens on Honnos in the central abayan system of Xitera. The seat of its empire. "How quickly do your eyes adjust to varying light levels?" Araxis asked, his hand on the final door.
"I don't know." It wasn't like I had a database of average eye adjustment times that I could reference. I knew humans weren't great at seeing in the dark, but a lot of other species weren't either. "But I did work in a den for a decade, so I'm used to dark spaces."
Araxis nodded, pushed open the door, and we walked into darkness.
This dome was cool and crisp, the air sweet.
The path before us was barely illuminated by tiny lights, which cast a cool white glow on the stones.
But I hardly noticed, instead struck by the rest of the landscape around us: the dome overhead was painted in deep purple, streaks of light oscillating gently across the polymer panes overhead to mimic the natural phenomenon on Honnos.
Dark shapes loomed out of the gloaming: evergreen trees, their spartan branches allowing slivers of the rest of the forest and the sky beyond to peek through; clusters of bushes softening the edges of the pathway; low-growing plants with gently arching limbs lined with pinpricks of colour – tiny flowers, each one like a fairy's lantern.
Everywhere I looked, there were pulses of dim light glowing throughout the forest, so that it was as if we had slipped from Sozamia Station and into some otherworldly realm.
"Oh," I breathed. The longer I looked, the more I could see that those little lights – the bobbing blossoms along the ground, the striations of luminescence in the bark of the evergreen trees, the shape of what looked like a cluster of mushrooms on a fallen log that pulsed slowly with a barely-there glow – were in an array of subtle colours.
I bet they could look wildly different to aliens with more nuanced eyesight.
What would this place look like in ultraviolet?
I forcibly wrenched my stare away from the layers and layers of shadow and diffuse light to look at Araxis who, instead of taking in the gardens beyond, was watching me, his features soft, his expression gentle – his bright eyes reflecting the thousands of points of light in the forest beyond, but lit most brightly by what felt like yearning.
As though I were the most beautiful and perfect thing he could look on here in these gardens.
My heart stuttered in my chest. A shiver caught me, racing up my spine in an unexpected surge. "Araxis," I started, my voice low and hoarse –
I wanted to wait. To go slow. To see what could happen if we took our time in building the foundation. But when he looked at me like that –
Araxis smiled gently and tipped his head toward the path.
"There is tea waiting for us, Sashen." And then he turned and left, and I followed the shape of his back along the barely-lit path, the gardens like a dream realm around us.
The path twisted onward, the jagged forest tapering off to reveal more formal gardens which were designed in such a way that the broad array of plants painted shapes and colours across the landscape.
The air in here was hushed, like a held breath, and I could barely make out the little bench and table sitting on a pebbled area just off the pathway.
Araxis gestured, and I sat down while he poured me a cup of tea from the tray set to the side.
The familiar smell – floral, herbaceous – took me to a sense memory of that first night we'd sat in the kitchen together on the creche ship, when he'd apologized to me in a way I'd never heard before.
My chest throbbed as I took the cup from him, and Araxis settled in next to me, leaving a hand's span between us. All at once, I wanted to close that distance, to press my thigh against his, to lean against his shoulder, to have him slide his hand across the expanse of my back.
So I did just that, and Araxis exhaled, soft and surprised when I tipped myself against him.
For a moment, it was if he didn't know what to do with himself, stiff and uncertain – maybe he wasn't sure what was allowed.
But then he slid his arm to the back of the bench, his hand rising to stroke the nape of my neck, long fingers threading through my hair.
A contented sound hummed in my throat, unbidden, as he scratched his nails gently against the skin of my scalp.
"I would like to go to Honnos someday," he murmured after a long silence, during which we drank tea and stared into the gently undulating lights of the moon gardens beyond. "I – would like to take you, if you wish to go. If you wish to go then. And with me."
He was being so careful, I thought, my mind hazy with contentment, with the rightness of being here with him.
It was as if my body knew well before my mind did what it needed – intimacy, touch, the certainty of another person's body.
But not just another person's, not just anyone's.
It had to be him. Maybe our jagged pieces could hurt each other, but they also meant we fit together in a way that others couldn't, like we were two halves of a geode split down the middle.
Only together could we hold so many sharp angles and broken pieces and make them whole again.
"I'd like to go," I said. "I'd like to go with you," and I turned my head and buried my face against his shoulder, sliding so that I could tuck myself more firmly against him.
As he plucked my empty cup from my hands and set it aside, set his aside, and pulled me into his arms, I thought I could stay there forever with him.
I moved again, and said, "Don't get any ideas.
I just want to be closer," and then I pushed myself so that I could straddle his lap, sinking on to him and wrapping my arms around his neck, burying my face against his pale skin, draping my chest against his so that our hearts might beat next to each other.
And while I knew, distantly, that our different anatomy meant that our hearts weren't pressed together, I felt, in that moment and in every pulse of my heartbeat, perfectly aligned.
Araxis's hands settled against my lower back, holding me tight. His mouth hovered against the juncture of my neck and shoulder, breath cool. His chest rumbled against me, steady, content. And then he asked, so low I could barely hear him, "Could I kiss you? Or is that – too much?"
It wasn't too much. It probably wasn't enough.
I leaned back, looking down into his eyes which were a perfect glossy black, the kindest and gentlest abyss in which I could lose myself. And I nodded.
I expected him to kiss me hard, to grab my face in his strong hands and pin me there, like I had the other week when I'd kissed him to prove a point.
But that wasn't Araxis. Instead, he touched the side of my face, traced his fingers down from my temple and along my cheekbone, following the line of my jaw to my chin before he slid his thumb along the swell of my lower lip.
Like he was memorizing my face by touch alone; like if he was slow enough, thoughtful enough, he could map every corner of who I was beneath his fingertips.
My chest rose and fell in shallow breaths as he touched me, my hips nestled against him, the points of contact between our bodies so full of energy that I wondered, distantly, if we might be glowing too.
He slid his hand around to the back of my head, slipping his fingers through my hair, and then, finally, he tipped me forward, just slightly, and pressed his mouth to mine.
The touch of his lips was gentle, almost cautious, and my skin was suddenly taut and alive – brimming with light and desire.
He kissed me again and again, careful but certain, as if now he was mapping not the lines of my face, but the sounds I made, the way I shifted, the way my pulse stuttered when he breathed the same air as I did, as his mouth moved gently, softly against mine.
My body was on fire. I rocked myself against him, lips parting, needing more, demanding more.
His mouth slid against mine, his angular tongue slipping into my mouth as his hand held my head, the splay of his fingers cradling my skull.
My breath was uneven, surprised, as still he kissed me gently, tenderly, lovingly – not like I was something to be devoured, but something to be savoured.
A soft whine escaped my throat, needy, as Araxis pulled back and I chased him, catching his mouth with mine, biting the plush swell of his lower lip.
His fingertips pressed harder against my scalp; I could feel his other hand against my lower back, could feel the promise of a more serious touch.
He could slip it down to the curve of my ass; he could encourage the small movements I was making, unintentional, against him as my cock began to swell.
I wanted that. I wanted him. I wanted – everything.