20. Don’t Get Me Wrong #6
Charlie's throat tightened. Because Reyna had caught it. The part Charlie hadn't meant to say out loud. Not just that her parents rejected her, but that she had been so accustomed to the possibility of rejection that her own sister's loyalty came as a surprise.
Of course Reyna had caught it.
"No," Charlie said quietly. "I didn't."
Reyna looked at her for a long moment. Then she spoke, and her voice carried a steadiness that was doing a very poor job of concealing the fury underneath.
"I'm sorry." She paused. "Not for asking. Not for learning a truth about humans that I will carry with considerable displeasure. But for the fact that it needed to be difficult at all."
Charlie looked at her. This woman who had just laughed at the word "fornicate" and was now looking at Charlie with the quiet fury of someone who would fight a planet's worth of prejudice if she could figure out where to aim.
"It's okay," Charlie said. "It made me who I am."
"That doesn't make it okay," Reyna said, and the fire under the words was real.
"No," Charlie agreed. "No, I know it doesn't."
Then she did something different, something she'd never done before, and she wasn't entirely sure what possessed her to do it.
She leaned over and bumped Reyna with her shoulder. "But it got me here." And then Charlie smiled.
She didn't say what she meant by "here." But somehow, for the first time, she felt she didn't need to, because Reyna looked at her in a way she hadn't yet before.
She held Charlie's gaze while the stars and the quiet surrounded them.
Then a small smile formed on Reyna's lips before she leaned over and bumped her shoulder against Charlie's.
And, in that move, Charlie clocked that Reyna now sat another two inches closer on the bench.
She didn't move away. She didn't adjust, didn't create the distance that a reasonable, professional, temporary crew member should absolutely be creating.
She just sat there, aware of the exact measurement between her right shoulder and Reyna's left, aware that the distance had changed, and fully aware that her body had noticed the change the exact same night her mind decided it mattered.
"It's good having you here, Earthling," Reyna said, catching Charlie with a smirk before turning back to the viewport to watch a cluster of stars drift past the glass.
Charlie stared at Reyna's profile. The sage-green skin lit by starlight.
The gold markings, steady and warm. And then Charlie's chest constricted the way it had earlier.
But this time, her breathing went shallow, and suddenly the whole speech she'd given herself about how this was stupid and dumb and foolish, oh and ludicrous, collapsed under the weight of a two-inch difference on a bench.
Because Charlie Wickett was in very big trouble.
Charlie returned to her quarters that night feeling truly whole for the first time since Helen's death had rocked her and Katie's world.
Something about her nights spent in quiet conversation with someone she was starting to feel was becoming a genuine and valued friend, despite what else may be happening, gave Charlie a sense of belonging she'd only felt with her sister.
That surprised her, seeing as she'd only been on the Emberkind for a little over two months.
How was she able to feel so close, comforted, and connected to people like Tavi, Selowen, and, maybe most especially, Reyna, in such a similar way she did with Katie?
She pondered this until she got into bed and laid her head on her pillow.
After a few minutes, she leaned over and grabbed her datapad, opening the music program Tavi had built.
She scrolled through the library of her music that Tavi had put together, not looking for anything specific, but trying to find the feeling coursing through her by the pull of any song that called to her.
And soon, one in particular caught her eye.
"Don't Get Me Wrong." The Pretenders. 1986.
She tapped it, and it started playing softly in her room. A catchy beat with the smooth vocals of Chrissie Hynde. She tapped the button that added it to her Favorites, because the song matched something she couldn't name and she wanted to be able to find it again.
Don't get me wrong, if I'm looking kind of dazzled...
She set the datapad down and stared at the ceiling.
The melody played softly in the dark, and she thought about the Observation Room, and the bench, and the captain who sat closer tonight than she'd ever sat before, the same captain who made Charlie believe she would take on prejudice for LGBTQ+ people on Earth as a personal affront.
And that made Charlie happier than she wanted to admit.
She fell asleep with the song still playing.
The next morning, as Charlie was walking through the corridor to Engineering, she heard it. Faint and low, coming from someone's quarters as she passed. Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" with Lindsey Buckingham's guitar and that unmistakable opening.
Oh, I want to be with you everywhere...
Charlie stopped walking and stood in the corridor, letting the song reach her through the wall.
She suddenly thought of Reyna's face in the Observation Room last night, and Reyna's shoulder bumping hers when Charlie said she'd ended up on the Emberkind, and Reyna looking over her shoulder to a corridor, waiting for Charlie to walk through it.
Everywhere.
She pulled out her datapad, found the song in Tavi's library, and added it to her Favorites, before she just kept walking.
When she walked into Engineering, Tavi was already at his console. He looked up at her when she arrived, and something by the way he studied her stopped her in her tracks.
"What?"
But Tavi just smiled. "Strike three."
"Tav, what are these 'strikes'?"
"You'll figure it out when you're ready, Spark Plug. I have faith in you." He smiled at her and gave her the smallest nod.
Charlie wasn't sure what to do about it, but she had the lingering suspicion it meant everything.