Tia
His room smells like him.
That's the first thing I notice when the door closes behind us.
Leather and something darker underneath it, gun oil maybe, and the faint salt that seems to live in every corner of this compound.
It's not a soft smell. It doesn't try to be.
It just is what it is, the same way he is what he is.
I feel something in my chest settle that I wasn't expecting.
The room is sparse in the way that tells you everything about a person.
A large bed with dark sheets pulled tight, military corners.
A heavy dresser. A desk buried under papers and what looks like three different versions of the same map.
No pictures. No color. Nothing on the walls except a single hook where his cut hangs when he takes it off, which I realize he hasn't done yet.
He's still in full armor in his own room and I'm not sure he notices.
"I should change," I say.
"Bathroom's through there." He nods toward a door I hadn't seen. "I'll wait out here."
I take my backpack and go. The bathroom is small and plain and has exactly one concession to comfort, a bar of soap that smells like cedar.
I change into my sleep shirt, the thin cotton one with the tiny pineapples, and my soft shorts, and I look at myself in the mirror for a moment.
Smudged. Tired. Still a little wired from the noise and the locked room and the way he said good work like it cost him something.
I look like someone the night happened to.
I also look, and this is embarrassing to notice, like someone who’s about to sleep in Reef Ryder's bed.
I go back out. He's sitting on the edge of the desk with his arms crossed, still in the cut, and he looks up when I come in and something moves across his face and then doesn't.
"Bed," he says. He pushes off the desk and reaches up to pull the cut from his shoulders, hanging it on the hook in one practiced motion.
Then the jeans. He doesn't make anything of it, just strips down to a black t-shirt and dark boxers the way you do when you've shared space with people your whole life and stopped thinking about it.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
I get into bed. The sheets are cool and tight and smell like the rest of the room, like him, and I pull them up to my chest and look at the ceiling while he turns off the overhead light and leaves the small lamp on the desk burning low.
He stretches out on top of the covers beside me. His body takes up most of the bed and all of my awareness. Heat comes off him in waves.
We lie there. The compound settles around us. Distant voices. An engine somewhere. The creak of the building doing what old buildings do at night.
I stare at the ceiling and try to make my brain slow down and fail completely.
"Hey," I say quietly.
"Yeah."
"I'm not going to be able to sleep."
"You will."
"You don't know that."
"You've been running on adrenaline. Your body knows what it needs."
I consider that. He's probably right, which is annoying. "Can I ask you something?"
A pause. "Depends."
"The prospect who signed the maintenance log. Finn." I keep my voice careful. "You texted Ghost and he left. What does that mean? What happens to him?”
The silence that follows is a different kind than the ones before it. He's not deciding whether to answer. He's deciding how much of the answer is mine to have.
"It means we find him," Kraken says finally. "And we get what he knows."
"And then?”
"And then it's handled."
I absorb that. The ceiling has a crack running from the light fixture toward the window, branching twice before it reaches the wall.
I trace it with my eyes. "Okay," I say. Same word I used when he said Finn wasn't going to be okay.
Meaning: I understand, and I'm not going to pretend I don't, and I'm also not going to make you explain what you are to me.
He shifts beside me. Not closer, just shifting, and then his hand finds my hip through the covers. Not gripping. Just resting there. The weight of it is steady and deliberate and I feel it everywhere.
"The data work tonight," he says. "The maintenance logs. That was good thinking."
"You already said that."
"I'm saying it again."
I turn my head to look at him. He's looking at the ceiling too, jaw set, the lamp catching the edge of his profile.
The kraken tattoo peeks out of the collar of his shirt and I think about how the whole thing wraps around his ribs and what it would be like to trace it with one finger and then I think about something else aggressively.
"You dismissed me twice before you listened," I say. "I just want that on the record."
"It's on the record."
"And the coffee. That was a very indirect apology."
"It was coffee."
"It was an apology in coffee form and we both know it."
Something happens at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The ghost of the idea of one. "Go to sleep, Tia."
I look back at the ceiling. His hand is still on my hip. The warmth of it has spread up through my whole side. My brain is finally starting to blur at the edges the way it does when sleep is actually coming.
"I know you want to," I say quietly. Not a come-on. Just honest. The dark makes it easier. "I'm not trying to make it weird. I just. I know. And you know I know. And I think we're both pretending very hard and I don't totally understand why."
The room goes still.
He doesn't move his hand.
"Because you're here for protection," he says. His voice is level. Controlled. "Because the situation is dangerous and your judgment and mine can't afford to be compromised right now."
"Those are real reasons."
"Yeah.”
"Okay." I close my eyes. "I just didn't want to keep pretending I don't notice."
Another silence. Long enough that I think he's not going to answer, that I've pushed past the edge of what he's willing to do.
Then his hand moves. Just slightly. His thumb traces one slow circle on my hip, once, through the fabric. Like he's answering a question he doesn't have words for.
I don't say anything. I don't push it. I let it be what it is, which is the closest thing to an admission either of us has made out loud.
“I should have grabbed Kevin," I say finally, because I need to say something lighter or I'm not going to be able to breathe.
I hear the exhale from his side of the bed. Not quite a laugh. But something that would be, from a different man in a different life. “Who the fuck is Kevin?”
“The spider plant. He’s my friend.”
"Go to sleep," he says.
"Okay." I pull the covers a little higher. His hand stays where it is, steady and warm. "Kraken?"
"What?”
"Thank you. For listening tonight. Eventually."
He doesn't answer with words. His hand shifts up slightly, settles at my waist, and holds there. Solid and deliberate.
I close my eyes and focus on that weight and let it push everything else back. The fear. The noise. The images from the fence line. The question of what happens to Finn. All of it goes quiet under the pressure of one steady hand.
I fall asleep faster than I expect to.
The last thing I'm aware of is him, still on top of the covers, still in the same position, like he plans to stay awake all night and maybe he does.
I feel anchored. And for the first time since this started, I feel like something other than the thing being protected.