20. Don’t Get Me Wrong #4
It wasn't the dimmed light programmed into the Emberkind's cycle system.
It was pure starlight, pouring through a viewport that stretched nearly floor to ceiling and east to west, filling a small room with the slow-moving onyx of deep space.
Benches of varying size sat facing the viewport, angled directly toward the glass.
But it was the sight on the bench near the end of the room, by the corner of the viewport, that stopped Charlie.
Reyna.
She was sitting with her legs drawn up and her arms around her.
Her face was lying against the top of her knees, turned toward the stars.
Charlie observed as the Captain of the Emberkind simply sat in a silence that seemed to be a part of her skeletal structure, as though it had been practiced for a very long time.
Charlie stopped in the doorway. She recognized how Reyna was sitting. The posture and the stillness. This was the embodiment of what they'd discussed just last night, how the quiet was either a comfort or a punishment, and how some nights it was hard to tell the difference.
"Is this seat taken?" Charlie asked softly.
Reyna looked up, the starlight catching her markings, that strong gold against the soft sage-green. For a moment, Charlie almost forgot she'd asked a question.
"It hasn't been," Reyna said quietly. "In a very long time."
Charlie sat down next to Reyna, a distance she hoped Reyna would recognize as simply I'm here.
The viewport filled her vision with stars she didn't recognize that moved slowly past as the Emberkind traveled.
The room was quiet in a way that the atrium hadn't been.
The atrium hummed with the life support for the Aetherfin, it echoed with the sounds throughout the ship as it connected in the very center, and it spoke through stories of events that occurred every day within its confines.
This room was just silence, and stars.
"How long have you been coming here?" Charlie asked.
"A while," Reyna said. "Long enough."
The answer was careful, measured. Something about the response made Charlie wonder if Reyna wasn't ready to tell this story to someone she'd known for only two months. She could understand that.
"It's beautiful," Charlie said, changing the dialogue.
She heard Reyna's contented sigh. "It is, actually." And then she smiled at Charlie, which Charlie took as a sign that she was welcome to stay.
So she did.
They sat together and watched the stars. They didn't speak, and there was no attention put upon by either of them. They just sat on the bench that held them without expectation. All Charlie hoped for was that the room had made space for one more.
So, she tested the theory.
Charlie came back the next night. And the next. And the next.
It was on the seventh night, when Charlie was already on her way to the Observation Room, taking the path she knew by heart, that she began to realize she was noticing.
Noticing she was tracking the number of times she saw Reyna in a single day.
Noticing that she was finding reasons to wander the corridors closest to the areas Reyna would frequent on her captain's duties.
Noticing that she even was noticing Reyna in ways she really, truly, absolutely should not be.
And so her brain kicked into gear and did the thing it always did.
It inventoried.
Charlie realized she was rerouting her pathways through the ship, especially on Deck Four because it passed the bridge, for the chance that she could engage Reyna in conversation. It had worked. Three times in fact.
She noticed that she tended to track Reyna's whereabouts during staff briefings, crew meetings, and Reyna's rounds in Engineering. At first she wasn't even aware she was doing it. Now, she didn't know how to stop.
And she realized that she'd resorted to eyeballing certain measurements that had no business being measured.
Such as the height difference between her and Reyna (Charlie was 1.
06 inches taller), or the distance between where Reyna's shoulder stopped and Charlie's started while they leaned against the bench in the Observation Room last night (it had decreased from fourteen inches to twelve in three nights).
But the one piece that was absolutely the most damning was her heart rate. The thing about living on a spaceship with advanced technology, her health was monitored all the time, even from her very own datapad. And her datapad told a story she couldn't argue with.
Anytime Reyna said Charlie's name, her heart rate would spike. And there was evidence all over the damn ship.
Engineer brain. Diagnostic complete. Results conclusive.
"Well, shit," Charlie muttered to herself on that seventh night, making her stop in the corridor just before she reached the Observation Room.
It had been a long time since Charlie had felt things like this. With Katie moving to California and then Helen's sickness, Charlie had been preoccupied with life's turmoil to even consider thinking about anything regarding feelings for someone else, or any action upon them.
So you pick an alien spacecraft forty lightyears from Earth with someone who’s forbidden by her big boss to contact you after you go home?! Smart, Wickett.
Charlie raised a hand to her forehead and pulled it down across her nose and lips as she let out a low groan.
Well, we're going to nip this in the bud right here, right now, aren't we?
Charlie thought to herself, speaking the way she did sometimes to a stubborn engine.
You're not going down there tonight. So just turn around, make like a tree, and leave.
And Charlie was about to do just that.
Until she looked up, and saw Reyna sitting on the bench, looking out at the stars through the viewport. Charlie watched as the illumination from a passing shooting star sparkled across Reyna's features. But it was what she was doing, and the look on her face, that stopped Charlie cold.
"She's waiting for me," Charlie whispered to herself, saying the realization out loud as she witnessed Reyna look over her shoulder for the second time since Charlie had been watching her, her sightline clearly directed straight at the corridor Charlie would have emerged from if she had continued around the corner.
Charlie blew out a puff of air. "I am in so much trouble."
And then she walked around the corner, stepped into the Observation Room, and saw Reyna's face light up when she spotted her.
Big, big trouble.
But trouble was not permission. Reyna was the Captain.
Charlie was a provisional crew member with a six-month clock that was already ticking.
The Coalition was ensuring that Charlie would get home.
Anything with Reyna, no matter her status as the leader of this vessel or the fact that she quite literally lived forty lightyears away from Earth at any given time, would be completely unprofessional, totally presumptuous, and potentially devastating for both of them, let alone the very precarious contact rules between Earth and the Coalition they Charlie's mere presence on the Emberkind was already violating.
So, there. That settled it. It was stupid, dumb, and foolish. All of those things. Oh, and ludicrous.
Charlie joined Reyna at the viewport railing, standing next to her, watching the stars like they had every night since they'd started this.
They didn't speak. But Charlie could feel the warmth of Reyna's closeness emanating off her skin.
It seemed to envelop Charlie in a way she'd never taken note of before.
But this time, holy hell, she took note.
Wanting to remove herself from that specific warmth without pulling attention on herself, Charlie pushed off the railing without a word and moved to the bench behind them. She sat down, still facing the viewport, the stars still moving past in their slow, quiet drift.
When she looked up, Reyna was moving, leaving the railing, coming to sit down next to Charlie.
Reyna sat close, closer than she'd ever sat to Charlie before, for anything.
Why do I know that? Charlie thought to herself. You know damn well why, you numskull.
And because Charlie was dead serious about numeric details, she knew it was more than a foot closer than it had ever been.
She registered that directly in her spine.
"Charlie?" Reyna asked, looking over.
"Hmm?" Charlie responded, about two octaves higher than her normal vocal register.
Smooth, Wickett. Real smooth.
"Is everything okay?"
"Fine!" Charlie screeched.
Reyna raised her eyebrows.
Charlie's face didn't move for almost three whole seconds. But she finally just relaxed, looked over at Reyna directly, and told her the truth. Or, at least a version of it.
"I've just got a lot on my mind," she said, the honesty of the statement showcasing her sincerity.
Reyna's face softened. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Charlie wanted to tell her 'yes,' but then she wouldn't know what to say.
She wanted to talk about her discovery over Reyna with Reyna, because this was what they did.
They talked about things, or they stayed quiet, but it was always easy, and it was always based on what each of them needed at 0300 in a room full of stars.
"I do," Charlie said, wanting to stay as honest as possible. "But, I don't know if I even know what to say." Charlie laughed softly and saw Reyna do the same.
"I understand."
"You do?"
Reyna nodded. "Sometimes the thoughts that we want to share and figure out are the ones we don't know how to explain."
Charlie stared at her. "Yeah, that's it exactly," she said, a little bewildered.
"Kaelari have that a lot," Reyna added, accentuating the last words. "Especially in relationships."
Charlie froze, but it didn't seem as though Reyna caught her sudden change in demeanor.
"Relationships overall are a mystery to everyone, even those in them. But trying to talk about something you don't really understand yourself with someone who has the same shortcomings?" Reyna shook her head as she smiled. "Recipe for utter disaster."