Chapter 29 #2
"—-and I put the cedarwood at the back of the shelf with the label turned away and that was supposed to help and it DIDN'T because I could still smell it and I kept thinking about your scars and whether Curtis was using the right pressure on your lower back because he goes too deep too fast, he doesn't warm the tissue first, and I was lying in my bunk at three AM worried about your SCAR TISSUE while you were—-while I was—-"
She's spiralling. The planner-brain has come back online and it's misfiring in every direction and she's crying and talking about Curtis's pressure technique and the cedarwood label and her filing system and she can't stop, the words are pouring out of her like they always pour out of her when she's feeling too much, in these long breathless cascades that build and build, and I'm standing here with my shaking hands on her wet face and she's holding my wrists and she's worried about my scar tissue.
She was lying in her bunk at three AM worried about my scar tissue.
I'm done. Whatever was left of the wall, whatever composure I was holding, it's gone.
My forehead drops to hers and my eyes burn and my throat closes and I'm pressing my face against hers and I can feel her tears and mine mixing on the skin between us and I can't speak.
For the first time in this corridor I can't speak, because she was worried about my scars, she was lying in the dark wondering if another therapist was being careful enough with the burns on my lower back, and she's telling me this while crying and I can't—-
"I love you," she chokes. Small and broken and almost inaudible. "I love you and I'm so angry at you and I love you and I don't know how to be both of those things at the same time and my planner doesn't COVER this—-"
I kiss her.
Nothing commanding about it. Nothing alpha.
None of the gallery kiss or the private deck kiss or any of the kisses where I knew what I was doing.
This is blind and desperate and my hands are shaking on her face and her tears are on my mouth and I'm kissing a girl who tastes like salt and coffee and two weeks of standing at empty counters and I can feel her sob against my lips, a sound that comes from somewhere so deep it vibrates through her whole body and into mine, and I pull her against me and hold on.
Her fists. My shirt. Both hands, twisted in the fabric the way they were in the gallery except there's no lace between us this time, nothing delicate, nothing four hundred years old and breakable.
Just her fists and my shirt and the desperate, graceless, shaking grip of two people who have run out of walls.
"You left me," she cries into my mouth, between kisses, between breaths. "You LEFT—-"
"I know—-"
"I knocked on your door and you told me REASSIGNED—-"
"I know, I know—-"
"I stopped humming, Artem. I stopped humming in the supply closet and Curtis noticed and he didn't say anything and I ate bread rolls standing up and I was FINE, I kept telling everyone I was fine, and I wasn't—-"
"I know you weren't. I saw. I was on the mezzanine above the staff mess and I saw your face and it broke me—-"
"You were WATCHING me?"
"I've been watching you since the corridor. I've never stopped watching you. There is nowhere on this ship I can go where you aren't and I tried, Star, I tried every deck and every room and you're in all of them—-"
She pulls back. Enough to see my face. Her eyes are swollen and her cheeks are soaked and her nose is running and she's looking at me with an expression that has fury and love and devastation and bewilderment all happening at the same time, and her mouth is open and she's breathing hard and her fists are still in my shirt and she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I'm not going to survive this girl.
"You spied on me from a mezzanine." Her voice is thick and wet and there's something under the tears, something that in any other context would be the beginning of a laugh. "Like a... like a creepy surveillance..."
"Yes."
"That's INSANE."
"Yes."
"That's the most insane thing anyone has ever—-" A hiccup.
A sound that's half sob and half something else, something lighter, something cracking through the grief like a green shoot through concrete.
"You could have just TALKED to me. You could have come down from the mezzanine and walked to my table and SAT DOWN—-"
"I know."
"Instead you LURKED on a WALKWAY—-"
"I know."
"—-like some kind of enormous sad GARGOYLE—-"
A sound comes out of me. Nothing almost about it.
No architecture. An actual sound, raw and cracked and wrenched out of me against my will, and it shocks us both, because I'm crying and laughing at the same time and I didn't know that was possible and apparently it is, apparently that's what happens when a girl who's falling apart calls you a gargoyle and she's right.
"I'm not a gargoyle," I manage, and my voice is destroyed.
"You LURKED. You lurked on a GRATE and observed me eat CHICKEN—-"
"I was making a decision—-"
"You were being a GARGOYLE. There's no dignified version of watching someone through a floor grate, Artem, that's just lurking, that's textbook lurking—-"
I kiss her again because she's calling me a gargoyle and she's crying and laughing and her fists are still in my shirt and her nose is still running and she is the most alive thing on this ship, more alive than the engines, more alive than the sixty-two hertz, more alive than anything I've touched in thirty-four years, and I kiss her and she kisses me back and she's still crying and I'm still crying and the kiss is a mess, wet and graceless and tasting like salt and coffee and the specific flavour of two people who have been shattered and are trying to find the pieces in each other's mouths.
She pulls back. Presses her face into my chest. I wrap my arms around her and hold on and I can feel her shaking against me, the sobs coming in waves now, big shuddering things that move through her whole body.
"You don't get to do that again," she tells my chest, muffled and raw. "The door. You don't ever get to do the door again."
"No."
"If your world is dangerous you tell me. If you're scared you tell me. You don't just—-you don't cancel a recurring appointment and call it PROTECTION—-"
"I won't."
"And you tell Mila—-" Her voice catches. A fresh wave. "You tell Mila that I'm not fragile. You tell her I'm not a child. You tell her I walked six decks at eleven at night and knocked on your door and ASKED and that's not fragile, that's not—-"
"That's the bravest thing anyone has ever done for me."
She makes a sound against my chest. Small and wet and broken and it cracks my ribs from the inside.
"Say it again," she whispers.
"You're the bravest person I know."
"Not that." She tilts her face up. Swollen eyes. Wet cheeks. Running nose. The face of a girl who counted forty-two euros and ate standing up and applied to fourteen ships and she's looking at me with everything she has and everything she is and her mouth is trembling. "The other thing."
"I love you."
Her eyes close. Her whole face crumples.
Not with sadness. With the specific overwhelm of hearing something you needed so badly you forgot you needed it, and her hands release my shirt and slide up my chest and wrap around my neck and she pulls herself up and presses her face into the side of my throat and holds on with the grip of a girl who's been trained to hold things carefully and is choosing, right now, to hold me with everything she's got.
"I love you," she whispers into my neck. Small and muffled and raw. "And I'm still angry at you."
"I know."
"And I'm going to be angry at you for a while."
"I know."
"And you owe me so many coffees. SO many. An insane number. An operationally significant number of coffees."
"I'll start tomorrow."
"You'll start tonight." Her arms tighten around my neck. "And you'll use the good mugs."
"The guest mugs."
"The GOOD mugs."
I hold her. The ship hums at sixty-two hertz beneath us.
The corridor is amber and thin-carpeted and completely empty and she's in my arms and she's crying and she's angry and she loves me and she called me a gargoyle and I'm going to hear that word in her voice for the rest of my life and I'm going to deserve it every time.
Her body stills against my throat. Her grip doesn't loosen.
"Artem?"
"Yes."
"Was Curtis using the right pressure on your lower back?"
A crack runs through my chest. Not pain. Something warmer. Something that feels like the first time she put her hands on my scars and didn't flinch and my body decided to let her in.
"No," I admit. "He goes too deep too fast."
"I KNEW it." She pulls back enough to glare at me through swollen, tear-soaked eyes, and the glare is so fierce and so ridiculous and so perfectly, completely Star that the sound comes out of me again, the raw cracked thing that's almost a laugh, and her face does something extraordinary.
She smiles.
Small. Wobbly. Still wet. The smile of a girl who's been broken and is choosing to start putting herself back together right here, right now, in a corridor on Deck 2 with her arms around the man who broke her.
I press my mouth to her forehead. Hold it there. Feel her breathe.
We stand in the corridor. We don't move. We don't need to be anywhere else.