Chapter 18
Quick Detour
Finally, fresh eggs. From an actual bird. Without a freakishly neon yolk substitute.
How Davik’s friend kept her pair of chickens happy enough to lay eggs in her tiny apartment was a mystery, but he was grateful for the gift. On their last station-hop, he had helped fix her water purifier, and he walked out suitably compensated for his time with half a dozen of the precious things.
He had cobbled together a delightful egg-in-a-hole toast topped with some onion greens and thinly sliced semi-cheese. Thinly sliced, thanks to the knife that Fia had gifted him.
It was his new favorite tool, and he planned to cherish it until the end of time. He chowed down in the cockpit as he waited for Carissa to wake and inevitably kick him out to take over. Without her at the helm, they were cruising at about half their top speed.
There was a nuance to being able to recognize certain regions that might have high debris, keeping atop the chatter to spot the ever-changing patrol routes of the local law, and that finicky matter of sizing up how much you can really burn the engines without risking being stuck cold and dead and too far from a station to coast in for repairs. And that was a nuance he did not grasp.
Rather than risk it, he always kept things at a respectable and not-at-all suspicious pace.
At his speed, they would arrive at their next station within a day or two.
It was a hub owned by a cartel of Terran traditionalists.
Staunch human-supremacist assholes that, unfortunately, had a strong foothold in the sector.
That meant there was no chance he could take Fia out for another off-ship adventure between her dives while they traveled here.
He had hoped by now he could have shown her something that would make her feel safe, make her feel like she didn’t need to run off towards some fringe TCIP supporters to find community. That, maybe he could show her an example of a comfortable life here. A life with him.
Fuck, I’m smitten. Smote. Smoten? Christ.
Instead of showing her a glorious night out on the town, he had led her into a tourist trap and nearly gotten arrested. Sure, it also led to him learning more about her, but ever since, she had seemed even more distant. He had his chance, and he messed it up.
“Such an idiot…” he muttered to himself.
“Well, yeah. What about it?” Carissa called from behind him, closing the door to the cockpit as she came in.
“Ah, shit. Morning, C.” Davik popped up and swiveled the chair for her to sidle into. She wasn’t quite at full waddle yet, but she was well into her second trimester and wasn’t rebuffing his attempts to help her get comfortable anymore.
“Mmm-hm. What are you brooding about in here?” she asked, flicking a few controls in the chair’s arm and settling in as her preferred readouts took over the interface in front of them.
“Hey, I wasn’t brooding,” he protested, finishing up his meal by swiping the remnants of the egg and chomping on the toast defiantly. At least as defiantly as one can, without spilling crumbs everywhere.
“You’re a horrible liar, Dav.” She kept her eyes locked on the interfaces as she talked, effortlessly swinging the pitch and yaw controls in her hands to correct the auto-path onto the trajectory she preferred. “C’mon. I’ve been away from my gossip circle. Spill your drama, or I will make drama.”
“I wasn’t lying. I’m not moping.” He watched her ratchet the speed of the vessel up to her blisteringly rapid pace, and he winced.
Fuck it. Full honesty.
“I just worry we’ll be saying goodbye to Fi after this job.”
Carissa looked away from her readouts to give Davik a once-over, her eyes rolling back as she let out a long, tired sigh.
“I take it your date went sideways?”
“No,” he answered before he even realized what was coming out of his mouth. “I mean, it wasn’t even a date. I was going to take her somewhere nice, but things went a bit off the rails, and—”
“You lost your nerve,” she answered for him, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. “You and your brother, I swear to gods above and below, Dav. You two could not talk your way out of a paper bag if there was a woman involved.”
“No, I didn’t lose my nerve!” he protested. “I didn’t have time to. I almost got thrown into the brig, remember?” He paused, pointing back at her with a furrowed brow. “Wait. I thought you would yell at me for getting sidetracked with her when we have work to do.”
“Oh, I’m incredibly annoyed by that too.
” She held a finger up in preemptive protest. “I’m allowed to be crotchety at you two making doe eyes at each other, and I am allowed to be disappointed that you didn’t shoot your shot.
There is a watermelon pressing on my lungs, and the person who put said watermelon in me is on the other side of stasis.
I get free hypocrisies for the next six months. ”
He opened his mouth, but no retort came to mind. He instead sank into the co-pilot seat even deeper, his eyes locked on one clear readout on the screen in front of them. The ETA to the next station: seventeen hours.
“So, dish. What did you do?”
“Hey! Why are you implying I messed something up? Maybe it just wasn’t the right time, you know?”
“Because I know you. Every time you cross paths with a sad girl, you try to fix her life. And then shit falls apart because, shocker, you burn yourself out and can’t handle that the sad girl is not magically un-sad because you got her a pet cat, or something.”
“Christ, C. Been holding onto that for a while?” Davik let out a low huff of frustration.
It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but it stung.
“Well, I haven’t gotten Fi a cat, and— And!
” He punctuated his words with an exaggerated finger wag.
“She’s also not a sad girl. She is a reasonably traumatized woman. ”
Carissa nodded. “Exactly. You’re out of your element. Can’t follow your usual route. You actually have to talk to her and be sincere. And you probably weaseled your way out of being sincere by deflecting, or doing arts and crafts, or making jokes.”
He melted further into the chair. His shoulders were up around his ears, and he was doing his best to be entombed by the seat to avoid this onslaught. “I didn’t make jokes, I just—”
“Lost. Your. Nerve,” she repeated, jabbing a finger at him for every syllable. “Does she know that you’re so lovesick that you’ve been skipping your sleep meds just to stay up and talk to her?”
His evasive sliding was getting ridiculous. He was halfway off the chair with his head barely peeking out above the armrests.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Oh, Dav … You didn’t even tell her you want her to stay, did you?”
He searched his mind. The moment was a weird blur from adrenaline and his own nerves.
“I mean, I said something like that, yeah? I said it was really nice having her around and that we’d be sad to see her go— Ow!” He felt a sharp pain in his temple. Carissa had chucked a slipper at him, and her aim was spot-on. “What was that for?!”
“You said we would miss her? You big, stupid idiot,” she huffed, holding her hand out. He grumbled, but obliged, standing up from his chair to fetch her slipper and return it to her outstretched hand.
“Well, yeah! What was I supposed to say?” he asked, dragging his fingers back through his curls with a touch of frustration.
“I don’t know, Dav. But definitely not we!”
Silence stretched out between them as Carissa angrily scrolled through the itinerary menu. Davik set his eyes on the sky stretching out before them, taking a few slow breaths to bring his heart rate back down. He hadn’t realized how loudly it had been thumping in his chest.
Carissa’s words were accurate, and he knew it.
He had a knack for falling for someone who was down on their luck, where he could slot himself into their life as some sort of support.
It was how he felt useful and relevant. But that backfired every time.
It always made everything lopsided. He would run out of “fixables”, and the relationship would fizzle without a crisis to bond over.
Somehow, with Fia, it felt less like a crisis he was leaping to fix. She was fixing it herself with his help. And she was helping with his own crisis. There was a push and pull, an ebb and flow. He felt useful, and he also felt supported. She could lean on him, and he could awkwardly lean on her.
Leaning on her, instead of just fucking kissing her like you’ve wanted to for almost three months now.
“You realize she’s an Icthian, right?” Carissa finally asked, cracking the solid silence.
“No, C. Hadn’t noticed. Thought maybe she just had a skin condition. No, of course I realized. What the hell does that have to do with this?”
With a sigh, Carissa made a few more adjustments on the console.
“You know what happens if you make it official with an Icthian, an unbound one especially. And so does she.”
“What, getting smacked with a PPR? I don’t think I’ll ever touch the ground to begin with. What do I care?”
“It’s more than clipped wings. Have you sat down and really considered it?”
The question was less pointed and embarrassing than her earlier jabs, but somehow that question was the one that made him shrink away and dodge her eyes.
Heat flared on his face, and he set his focus to intently fixing the zipper on his jumpsuit.
It was something he had thought about. The idea should make him worry, but something in his brain was wired backward. It just seemed thrilling.
It was an absurd daydream, but he imagined the risk of breaking a stricture would make her realize he was head over heels.
He had grown up in med-sec, worked mainly in low-sec, and only ever veered near Fed space if something went really, really wrong.
Getting clapped with a PPR wouldn’t change much in his day-to-day.
“C’mon, Dav. Talk to me.”
“I’ve considered it. In detail. And I think it’s worth it, so just … God damnit, just drop it. Please.”
“And does she know that you’re willing to risk it?”
Another stretch of silence yawned between them, and Davik could feel her eyes burning into the side of his temple. Then the silence was interrupted with notifications, the screen flickering with a sudden influx of warnings and messages.
Their heading and trajectory had changed drastically.
“What is going on?” he asked, looking over at Carissa. She was stone-faced and staring straight ahead.
“You’re an idiot, Dav. But I love you. So don’t make me regret this.”
The flurry of notifications showed that their itinerary had been updated. Their route took a diversion from where they were scheduled to deliver their cargo. A two-day detour, venturing far away from the hostile-to-Icthians sector, with one very important stop along the way.
What she had done finally clicked. Words failed him, so he just scooped his sister-in-law into his arms and buried his face in her short crop of hair.
“Thank you, C.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, squeezing him in return before continuing her shooing. “Go on, get. You’d better make this worth messing with my schedule. Komelli is gonna kick my ass for delaying this shipment.”