Chapter 6
Constitution versus Charisma
The briefing room came back first with a gasp, then everything in it.
Levi was sitting down. The crew around him was mid-conversation, Owen was explaining something to Jasper, who was leaning back in his chair with a studied calm that meant he’d taken something and was hoping nobody would ask. Levi hated these kind of mid-moment resets.
His wrist hurt.
Asher sat beside him, and his fingers were wrapped around Levi’s wrist under the table with a pressure that had clearly been there for however long this reset ran before Levi woke up. He’d been holding a dead man’s wrist, waiting for it to become Levi’s.
Levi looked down at the grip, at the white of his skin where the fingers pressed, then at Asher. Whatever pain Levi saw on his face through the cracked viewport was gone, and what had returned with the reset was harder, stiller, and settled in a way that had nothing soft left in it.
“You’re back,” Asher said quietly. “We’re going.”
He stood, his grip shifting from squeezing to pulling, and Levi was halfway out of his chair before his brain caught up.
“The briefing…” Levi began, his heart leaping into his throat.
Asher walked toward the door and Levi went with him, because the alternative was being dragged visibly, and everyone was already watching. Jasper’s chair scraped behind him. “What the hell, man? Briefing’s about to start.”
Elliot was on his feet. “Kane. Whatever this is, it can wait.”
Asher stopped walking. He turned his head, looked at Levi, and said one word: “Choose.”
Levi felt the room’s tension rising. Jasper standing, Maddie’s hand halfway to her scanner, Zoe doing fast math behind her eyes. The alarm hadn’t gone off yet. Bay Seven hadn’t happened yet.
We have time…I just need to calm him down.
“Everything’s fine,” he told the room. “I just need a word with Chief Kane. Start without us if Reynolds gets here first.”
Jasper didn’t sit back down. Maddie’s eyes went to Levi’s wrist, then to Asher’s hand, and stayed there. Asher didn’t wait. He walked and Levi walked with him in silence through the ship, because talking hadn’t worked before to calm him down.
Asher didn’t let go until the door to his quarters closed behind them.
The room smelled the same. The blanket was still on the floor near the locker soaked in blood, almost nothing had changed in this reset, except there was now a clock ticking on the desk.
The room had to qualify as some sort of early save point, which was about as helpful as a lit match near a can of gas right now given the quality of Asher’s silence.
Nothing has happened yet, so the creatures breaking out must be like the sanitarium: either an event or a certain time can trigger it. The briefing triggered them last time. If we don’t attend the briefing…how long do we have? Is it long enough to get Asher to—
His head snapped sideways, the sting arriving half a beat late, followed by the copper taste of his lip catching his teeth.
Levi stood there with his cheek burning and his mouth agape, all of his thoughts scattered into the burning of his skin.
Levi touched his cheek, feeling the hot flesh as he tried to process what just happened.
Say something. Say anything.
“He was hurt and I—”
He saw the hand coming this time and tried to block Asher, but he was too slow and the impact whipped his face in the other direction.
Levi shook his head, tears already making their way down his cheeks, and shoved Asher with both palms flat against his chest, knowing how little it would move him, but doing it anyway. “Don’t fucking hit me!”
Asher snatched one of his wrists and squeezed; Levi let out a cry and tried to pull his arm back, but the hold tightened.
“Did that hurt?” Asher asked, his eyes wide as he pressed his thumb in the joint between Levi’s hand and wrist.
“Yes,” Levi hissed between his teeth. “Stop it.”
“You left me.” His thumb pressed harder and Levi’s knees threatened to buckle as he felt the joint strain. “My hands broke and the door didn’t open...I watched you cook in there with the pothead. So this is what that feels like. I want you to understand what that felt like.”
“Asher—”
“Give me your other hand.”
“No!” Levi gasped as he tried to pry Asher’s fingers away from his wrist.
Asher grabbed his other wrist and yanked him close. Levi balled his fist against Asher’s chest, blinking away his tears, trying to draw enough breath so he could say more than one word, but his mind could barely keep up with what was happening.
He looked down at Levi’s hand and his eyes narrowed as his palms closed around Levi’s fist. The pressure built — slowly and steadily, the bones of Levi’s hand grinding into each other.
The pain started deep, below the skin, the spaces between his knuckles compressing and bowing under a force they weren’t built for.
“You shouldn’t have gone after him. You should have stayed with me. ”
“He was dying—”
“You left me. Again. You heard him and you left me for him.”
“He was dying—ow, Asher! Please stop!” Levi’s breath broke through his teeth and his knees nearly buckled as his body tried to fold away from the pain, to pull his hand down and away, but Asher held it between them.
“You can’t make me fall in love with you and then treat me like this,” Asher said, quiet now. “I was right there. I’m always right there for you, and you keep choosing everyone except me. It’s not fair, Levi.”
He released his fist.
Levi’s hand dropped to his side, throbbing, the bones aching with the deep echo of almost-breaking. His fingers shook when he tried to straighten them. “I’m sorry—”
“The way we’ve been doing this,” Asher cut him off. “The timers. The rules. You deciding when and how? That’s done…it’s my turn, Levi. I get what I want, the way I want it.” His fingers went to his belt buckle. “Now.”
Levi stepped back and hit the desk, maneuvering around it as Asher removed his belt.
The desk was narrow but it was something, a boundary Asher would have to cross, and sometimes those few seconds were all he needed to redirect Asher onto something that might help them find a way out. He pauses when he’s caught off guard.
“Wait,” Levi said as Asher took a step toward him. “I have questions.”
Asher tilted his head.
“I’ve been too busy being scared since this all started to ask you more than a few questions at a time,” Levi said, and he could hear himself calibrating the pitch. It wasn’t convincing. “We have time. For the first time since we got here, we actually have time and I want answers.”
Asher looked at the distance Levi had put between them, the furniture, the negotiation.
“I’ll answer anything you want, Levi. Honestly.
But what I want right now is you. I need proof you still care about me,” he said, beginning to unzip his uniform.
“You can wait until we’re done to ask, or you can ask while I’m inside you.
It doesn’t matter to me. But I want you now. ”
Levi scoffed. “I don’t get a choice?”
“I…what? You said you were mine…you already gave yourself to me.” Asher furrowed his brow, looking confused again, his hand stilling on his shirt.
“I need you to listen to me,” Levi began, taking a step back from the desk to give himself a little more distance. This line of thought might work... “You don’t get one yes for everything forever. Every time, I get to choose.”
“Choose.” Asher said it like a word in a language he was sounding out.
“Yes. Choose. I’m allowed to change my mind—”
“About loving me?” Asher stepped forward, his eyes wide as his face shifted from confusion to devastation. He placed his hands on the desk, hanging his head as a visible shudder ran through him. “You changed your mind about loving me?”
No. God dammit.
“Asher, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about sex, okay?
Just sex,” Levi said quickly, ignoring the burning in his cheeks as he did.
This was a fucking mortifying conversation to have while he was on an unknown countdown for an alien massacre in a spaceship with the only person he had ever slept with.
Asher’s hands curled into fists on the desk. “No. If you love someone, you don’t keep making them ask. You’d want them all the time.”
“That’s not how—”
“You’re supposed to say yes.” The crease between his eyebrows deepened with the earnest focus of someone trying to learn the rules of a game he’s never played. “Every time.”
“Asher, listen—”
“You said you were mine,” Asher reminded him, his eyes wide. “You said you were mine, and even if you don’t have enough practice saying it, I know you love me. People who love each other say yes.”
“That’s not how it works.” Levi felt his heel hit the wall behind him and dropped his hand to his side, feeling for the gun he’d placed in his pocket. It was still there.
The room was still. Levi looked at Asher— at the confusion and the pout on his face that was somehow making him feel worse than the slaps did. Asher shook his head, looking at the desk, then at Levi, then back at the desk.
Oh no.
Asher flattened his fists on it and vaulted over.
Levi’s hand went to his pocket, his fingers finding the grip of the gun, and he had it out in the space between them by the time Asher’s boots hit the floor.
It wasn’t aimed right, Levi knew, and he hadn’t gotten his finger on the trigger or checked for a safety…
but Asher was too out of control. They couldn’t play the game like this.
Asher barely even glanced at the gun, his eyes locked on Levi’s face as he closed his hand over the barrel and pulled. Levi’s grip opened. His fingers gave up the gun like they’d been waiting to, and the letting go was its own kind of answer.
Why did I let go? I didn’t even try. What the fuck is wrong with me?