Sabine
The observation lounge was quiet. A few shift workers scattered across the space, staring at nothing. We took our usual spot by the far window. The nebula outside pulsed blue and gold.
I wrapped my arms around myself. The station's air recyclers made everything cold after a certain hour.
“You eliminated a threat today,” I said.
“I clarified expectations.”
“With Kreeg. But before that, you broke that man’s wrist. Pamat.”
He turned from the window. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
I did. Had known since that first mathematical message at my table. But knowing and hearing were different calculations. “Say it anyway.”
“Because you're mine to protect.” He moved closer. Not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat off his skin. “Because watching predators circle you makes me want to tear this station apart.”
My pulse jumped. I pressed my hand flat against the window, needing the cold against my palm. “I survived five years here without protection.”
“You survived by making yourself invisible.” His voice was rougher now. “That's not the same as being safe.”
“And being visible to you is safer?”
“No.” He stepped closer. “It's more dangerous. For both of us.”
I should have stepped back. Should have maintained the careful distance I'd built between myself and everyone else on this station. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was.
“The way you look at me,” I said. My voice came out quieter than intended. “I can't tell if it's strategy or something else.”
“It was strategy.” He lifted one hand, moved it toward my face slowly enough that I could have pulled away. His fingers barely touched my cheek. “It stopped being strategy days ago.”
“When?”
“When you decoded my message and looked at me like I was a puzzle worth solving instead of a threat to avoid.”
His thumb traced along my jaw. I should have been cataloging this. Recording the data: pressure, temperature, the precise angle of his touch. Instead, my mind went quiet.
“This is a mistake,” I said.
“Probably.”
“We should maintain professional boundaries.”
“We should.”
Neither of us moved.
He leaned down. Gave me three full seconds to pull away, to say no, to retreat behind the walls I'd spent years building. I didn't move.
His lips were unexpectedly gentle against mine, a careful pressure that asked permission with every heartbeat. Heat spread through my chest—not calculation, but pure feeling.
I kissed him back and something in my chest unlocked.
Heat flooded through me. Not just physical, though that was there too. But feeling. Real, sharp, terrifying feeling. My hands found his chest, solid muscle under his shirt. He made a sound low in his throat and pulled me closer.
This was dangerous. This was what I'd been avoiding. This proof that I wasn't just a function but a person who could still want, still need, still break.
I pulled back. Stepped out of his reach. My lips felt swollen. My whole body felt too present, too alive.
“I can't.” The words came out rough. “I thought I could, but I can't.”
He didn't move closer. Just watched me, his chest rising and falling harder than normal. “Because you're scared.”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
That admission made me look at him properly. I saw it then, beneath the want. The same fear I felt. The same understanding that this was bigger than either of us had calculated for.
“I should go,” I said.
He nodded once. Didn't try to stop me.
I left without looking back. Took the service corridor to my quarters on autopilot. Inside, I locked the door and stood there, back pressed against the metal, touching my lips.
Vonni would have laughed. Would have grabbed my shoulders and shaken me. Told me to take the risk, that life was too short to choose loneliness over the possibility of pain.
Five years dead and I could still hear her voice. Still feel her disappointment that I'd turned myself into a function instead of a person.
I lay down on my narrow bed. Stared at the water-stained ceiling. Replayed every moment of that kiss. The shift-change warning never came. Hours passed. I couldn't sleep.
I gave up late in the third shift and headed for the observation deck on Level 7. Not the lounge where we'd just been. The public deck that stayed open all night. I needed space. Stars. Something bigger than the weight in my chest.
He was already there.
Standing at the far window, silhouetted against the nebula's glow. Of course. In a station of thirty thousand beings, we'd found the same quiet corner at the same sleepless hour.
“Couldn't sleep either?” I said, wrapping my arms around myself as I moved to stand beside him.
“Sleep is complicated when your mind won't stop calculating probabilities.”
“What equation keeps you awake?”
He turned slightly, red eyes catching the nebula's light. “The ones without clean solutions.”
We stood in silence, watching space drift by. The nebula outside pulsed blue and gold, stellar gases dancing in patterns that would take centuries to complete. Neither of us performed. No mathematical showing off, no careful deflections. Just two insomniacs watching the universe turn.
“Her name was Vonni,” I said. The words came without planning. “My sister. Three years younger, but you'd never know it. She was the one who took care of everyone. Made friends with strangers. Believed people were basically good even when all evidence suggested otherwise.”
He didn't interrupt, didn't offer platitudes. He just listened as the nebula's light shifted across his face.
“She got sick during a trade conference.
Some off-world virus that wasn't supposed to exist in our sector.
One in a million chance, the doctors said.
Like winning the universe's worst lottery.” I pressed my palm flat against the window, feeling the cold through the transparent aluminum.
“She stayed optimistic even when her lungs were failing. Kept telling me it would work out. Made me promise to live fully after she was gone.”
“Did you?”
“No.” The admission came out flat. “I turned myself into a function. Input: deal cards. Output: survive another day. Stopped feeling because feeling meant remembering how I'd failed her. Easier to be nothing than to be someone who'd lost everything.”
“You didn't fail her.”
“I sold everything. Took loans from anyone who'd lend. Promised things I couldn't deliver. She died anyway.”
He shifted closer. Not touching, just reducing the space between us. “Sometimes the universe takes what it wants regardless of what we do. That's not failure. That's probability.”
“Spoken like someone who's never lost anyone.”
“Spoken like someone who has.” His voice carried weight I hadn't heard before.
He took a half-step toward me, then stopped himself.
“You think you're the only one who's been betrayed by someone you trusted?
Who's watched everything they built get stolen by someone who was supposed to...” He stopped, jaw tightening.
“Sometimes the only way to survive is to become what they don't expect. You became a function. I became...”
“What?”
“Calculating. Cold. Someone who sees people as probabilities instead of...” He gestured at the space between us. “This.”
“What's 'this'?”
“Something I didn't calculate for.”
I moved closer without deciding to. My shoulder brushed his arm. He went still, not even breathing.
“Sabine.” My name in his mouth sounded like a question.
I turned to face him fully. His red eyes weren't cold at all. They burned with something that made my pulse skip. Want. Not just physical, though that was there too. Want for connection, for understanding, for something neither of us could name.
He lifted one hand, moved it toward my face so slowly I could have stepped back at any point. His fingers barely grazed my cheek. A question, not a claim.
I answered by not moving away.
He kissed me again, deeper this time, and my thoughts scattered. The careful walls I'd built began to crumble.
Heat flooded through me. Not just desire, a sudden jolt to nerves I'd thought were long-dead. But feeling. Real, dangerous, terrifying feeling. My hands found his chest, solid muscle under his shirt, hearts beating in alien rhythm. He made a sound, low and pleased, and pulled me closer.
This was what I'd been avoiding. This rawness. This want. This proof that I wasn't just a function but a person who could still—
I pulled back, stepping out of his reach. My lips felt swollen, sensitive. My whole body felt too alive, too present.
“This is a mistake,” I said.
“Probably.”
“We should stop.”
“Do you want to?”
The question hung between us. I couldn't answer. Saying yes would be a lie. Saying no would be admitting too much.
I left without answering, taking the service corridor back to my quarters. But we both knew something fundamental had shifted. The careful distance we'd maintained was gone. We'd tasted possibility, and there was no unknown to hide behind anymore.
Back in my quarters, I touched my lips and felt the echo of his. Vonni would have laughed. I could only wonder if she was right.