3. Good Shot #3
His jaw does something complicated. His tail, locked rigid against his calf, gives a single involuntary twitch — toward me, definitely toward me, the last six inches angling left before he kills it — and his nostrils flare on a breath he didn’t mean to take.
Something about the way I said lovey. Or the way I’m leaning.
Or the way my braid is falling apart and I haven’t fixed it and he keeps not looking at it with enormous effort.
“Acceptable,” he says. The word sounds like it costs him a filling.
“Lovely.” I smile. Full wattage. The one Morrison calls a health hazard. “Tea?”
“You fight well,” he says, instead of answering. The gold eyes hold mine. Steady, evaluative, carrying the full weight of nine years of Tier 1 operations and whatever filing system he uses to rank the galaxy’s threats. “For a courier.”
The condescension is layered so thick I could spread it on toast. For a courier.
As if the twelve years and the Morrison training and the three interplanetary conflicts are a quaint little hobby that happen to include marksmanship.
He delivers it without a flicker of irony, standing shipless in my corridor, alive because of my shield harmonics and my aim, and the sheer arrogance of it is so towering it’s almost beautiful.
Almost. He hasn’t earned beautiful.
“You hold back,” I say. “For a monster.”
I don’t mean it. I know that the second it leaves my mouth — the word is wrong, shaped wrong, aimed wrong.
But I don’t take it back, because taking it back would mean acknowledging what I meant by it, and I don’t know what I meant.
Only that I watched him move to shield me from those mercs before his brain caught up with his body.
Tail first. Claws second. Thought third.
That kind of reflex doesn’t come from a monster.
That kind of reflex comes from something the word monster was built to cover up.
He doesn’t flinch.
That’s the thing. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink, doesn’t give me the satisfaction of a reaction.
His face stays exactly where it was — composed, dismissive, gold eyes flat — and the absence of response tells me more than flinching would have.
The word is old for him. Worn smooth from use, the way a stone gets smooth in a riverbed.
Whatever sharp edge it used to carry, it landed on scar tissue long ago.
Something climbs my throat and it’s not words.
Not yet. It’s the feeling I get when I write in the notebook — when I find a pattern nobody’s tracking, a loss nobody filed, a person-shaped gap in a system that was designed not to notice.
The feeling with teeth. The one Morrison calls crusader in a tone that isn’t entirely a compliment.
My hand goes to my sternum before I can stop it.
Pressing flat against the bone through the cardigan, through the tactical vest underneath.
Not because of him. Because of whatever machine takes a child and makes him into this — seven feet of discipline and contempt and a tail that reaches for people against orders — and then hands him the word monster like it’s a name he should answer to.
The anger sits behind my ribs like a coal, formless, too hot to hold.
I drop my hand.
“He has been called that before.” Sprout’s voice is quiet. Not sharp, not tactical, not smug. The orb has drifted down from the ceiling to hover near my shoulder, glowing a muted gold-green. “Many times. By people who meant it.” A pause. “You did not mean it.”
I didn’t. Sprout’s right. I didn’t mean it.
I’m not sure what I meant.
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t parse — something behind the gold that might be surprise, or might be the absence of it, or might be the careful blank a person wears when they’ve been handed something unexpected and haven’t decided whether it’s a weapon.
Then he turns away, adjusting the torn shoulder of his tactical suit with his combat hand, claws clicking faintly against the fabric.
The movement exposes more skin. Crimson, geometric lines, the dark fuzz catching light. He doesn’t notice. I notice. My fingers flex against my own ribs and stay there.
“That tear’s going to chafe if you sleep in it.” Practical. Not soft, not sorry. Morrison’s voice in my bones: Feel later. Fix now. “I’ve got a kit in the galley. Needle and thermal thread. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll hold.”
He stops walking. Doesn’t turn around. The line of his back is rigid — the military posture of a man whose body doesn’t know how to receive an offer that isn’t a transaction.
Broad shoulders, tapered waist, the torn fabric hanging open to show the dark geometric lines running down alongside his spine, and I am cataloguing his back like it’s a route map and I need to stop.
“I do not require repairs.”
“You require not bleeding on my sheets, which is the same thing from where I’m standing.” I fold my arms again. The folding is becoming a habit. A containment strategy. “It’s a torn shoulder, not a marriage proposal. Sit down and I’ll patch it in five minutes.”
Something shifts in the line of his back.
Not softening — I’m not foolish enough to call it that.
A recalculation. The same one I watched him make in the cockpit when I shot over his shoulder, when his filing system ran out of categories.
He doesn’t know what to do with someone who offers to fix things without keeping score.
Good. Let him recalculate.
“The cargo bunk,” he says. Not a question. Not a thank you.
“Down the corridor, second left. The door sticks.”
He walks away without thanking me, without acknowledging the arrangement, without confirming the truce. Arrogant. Dismissive. Utterly certain that his framework is intact despite standing shipless in a corridor decorated with fairy lights.
His tail, which has been locked against his leg since the fight ended, reaches toward me as he passes — not a twitch this time.
A slow, deliberate uncurl of the last six inches, extending into the space between us, and I can feel the heat of it before it reaches me, five degrees above mine, radiating through the air like a hand held close to a candle.
He catches it. Drags it back against his calf with a rigidity that looks like it costs him something.
His shoulders tighten. His stride doesn’t falter. He rounds the corner and is gone.
I watch the empty corridor. The air holds his warmth after he’s passed through it — dense and specific, the ghost of him lingering in the narrow space like a handprint on glass.
The fairy lights blink their stupid cheerful blink and I stand there with my arms folded and my fingers locked down and his heat fading from my skin where the tail had been, and whatever this is it’s specific and absurd and has no business being here.
The cargo bunk door sticks. I hear him force it. Then silence.
I walk to the cockpit. Sit in my chair — my chair, worn to the shape of me, the only seat on this ship that holds anyone’s impression — and pull the notebook from the pocket of the fox cardigan.
The pen hovers.
SRS operative. Arrogant. Condescending. Called my fighting adequate — for a courier. Has a tail that keeps reaching for me and he keeps pulling it back.
I stare at the last line. Underline it.
Keeps pulling it back.
The kettle takes ninety seconds. Peppermint.
I wrap both hands around the mug and lean back in the chair and look at the cargo bunk door.
Closed. He’s behind it, in the narrow bunk that wasn’t built for someone his size, in a ship that smells like peppermint and wool and everything he probably files under operational dysfunction, and I am not making him tea.
I am making me tea. Strong, milk, half-spoon of honey. If there happens to be a second mug, it’s because the kettle boils enough for two and always has, and I’ve never had anyone to pour the second one for, and that’s not what this is.
“Sprout, what’s the longest I’ve been stuck in close quarters with someone I actively dislike?”
“Seven days, during the Tessaro customs dispute. You were miserable.” A beat. The orb bobs once, thoughtful. “You made friends on day three.”
“I am not making friends with the SRS agent in my cargo bunk.”
Sprout dims. Says nothing. The green-gold glow fades to something barely visible, which is worse than a retort because Sprout’s silences are always louder than its opinions.
The tea is too hot. The cargo bunk door is closed.
The notebook lies open on my knee, the underlined words staring back at me in my own round handwriting.
The kettle has enough water left for a second mug, and my collarbones are still warm from the way he said shot, and the air in the corridor hasn’t cooled yet, and my arms are still folded because if I unfold them my fingers are going to do something I’ll have to think about later.
I close the notebook.
“I’m not.”