38. Every Almost Leads to You
THIRTY-EIGHT
EVERY ALMOST LEADS TO YOU
CHARLIE
Charlie had never been in Reyna's quarters. She'd pictured it wrong.
It was smaller than she'd thought, and warmer.
There was even a bookshelf in the corner, with actual paper books, worn at the spines, in scripts Charlie could read but not understand.
Her desk along a wall with just a set of data sheets on it.
There was a viewport on the back wall framing the same stars from a slightly different angle.
Charlie looked at everything. It was all Reyna. Even the parts she hadn't known. It felt like her just standing in this room.
Okay, Charlie, stop gawking and think.
There were options. There were always options. That was the whole thing about being an engineer. You found the options, laid them out and weighed them, and then you picked the one that failed the least catastrophically. Charlie had been doing this her whole life.
"Oh, who am I kidding?" Charlie said to no one.
She'd never once done it about something like this.
Maybe I just come right out and say it? Fast.
That would be the single most terrifying thing she'd ever considered doing.
Or maybe I let her go first.? Give her room to start the conversation. I mean, she's the one who sent the song! She can open her mouth first, that's only fair.
Except she had no idea if Reyna would go first. She had no idea about any of it. That was the whole problem.
Okay. So I say something.
"Oh, hell."
What do I say? Do I just blurt it out? "Hey, so, funny thing—"
"No. Nope. Absolutely not."
Charlie started to pace.
Okay. New plan.
Charlie walked by the viewport.
I apologize first. For disobeying her order. Yeah, start there, keep it simple, and let her take it wherever she wants.
That was good. That was solid. That was—
Why would you do that?
Because, she told herself, I don't actually know if she's going to say.
She sent you "Heroes."
I know she sent me "Heroes"—
You know what that song is. You told her what that song is. You sat on a floor and told her to her face.
I KNOW—
"Oh, good," Charlie said, out loud, to an empty room. "Now I'm arguing with myself."
She kept pacing.
On her third lap around Reyna's space, a new thought caught up with her.
And it was so much worse than the others.
Wait.
What if I actually am getting court-martialed?
Charlie stopped in the center of the room.
Kess sent me! I couldn’t possibly be court-martialed by a doctor.
Charlie gulped. Could she?
She didn't even know what that looked like on a Coalition ship.
Probably no jury, or lawyer. There'd be nobody in her corner. Human from a non-contact planet?
Charlie scoffed out loud.
There was definitely not going to be anyone to stand up and say in her defense, the building really was coming down. Probably just Reyna on the other side of a desk, reading out the list in a flat, even voice that was so much worse than yelling.
I disobeyed a direct order. Charlie thought. On an open channel, in front of the entire Bridge crew. I cut comms during an active crisis and decided to run a solo operation, unauthorized, in a structure that was actively coming down.
"Holy shit."
Maybe that's why Kess sent me here.
She heard footsteps in the corridor. Fast.
And then the door opened.
REYNA
Reyna walked through the door and closed it behind her.
Charlie started talking immediately.
"Before you say anything, I know I disobeyed a direct order and I know I cut comms and I know that's probably seventeen different violations of Coalition protocol, and I accept whatever consequences you—"
Reyna was crossing the room.
"—think are appropriate, and I understand if you need to file a formal report, I just want you to know that those people would have died if I hadn't stayed and I couldn't—"
Reyna was close now. Very close.
"—live with that, and I know you're angry, and I'm sorry for the way I did it but I'm not sorry that I did it, and—"
Reyna stopped. Right in front of her. Close enough that Charlie could probably see the individual patterns of her markings, gold and steady and right there.
"You stubborn, arrogant, pain in my ass."
CHARLIE
Charlie's mouth was still open. The ramble died in her throat.
Because these were not reprimand words. These were not Captain words.
These were the same words from the Niblet corridor, the same words that had preceded laughter and desire and the most alive Charlie had felt in months.
And Reyna was saying them with tears in her eyes and a smile breaking across her face.
"Wait... what?"
REYNA
Reyna laughed. Small and wet, almost surprised by itself.
The laugh of a woman looking at this impossible human who fell out of a PERS flash into a pile of cake batter and into Reyna's life and who just couldn't stop showing up, couldn't stop being brave, couldn't stop being so thoroughly and irreducibly Charlie that the walls Reyna built to survive her simply could not hold.
"I thought you were going to yell at me," Charlie said.
"I considered it," Reyna said. "I decided this was better."
Reyna reached up. Slow and deliberate with not particular urgency. Only absolute certainty.
She tucked a strand of hair behind Charlie's ear.
The same gesture Charlie had done it in the shaft after the cascade.
But Reyna didn't let her fingers stop like Charlie did.
Instead, she traced Charlie's cheek before cradling her in her palm while her thumb brushed the edge of Charlie's jaw.
She brought her other hand up to the other side, holding Charlie's face between her palms.
CHARLIE
Charlie's eyes fluttered closed while her breath caught in her throat. Her hands hung at her sides, useless, because her brain had stopped sending instructions to her limbs approximately three seconds ago.
"Charlie," Reyna whispered.
"Mm?" Charlie answered, trying her best to hold everything together.
"Please open your eyes."
It took everything in Charlie not to actually whimper at Reyna's request.
So, instead, she opened her eyes.
And Reyna was there, her face inches away from her own, the amber of her eyes reflecting back on Charlie.
"Hi," she said.
And then Reyna kissed her before Charlie could say it back.
And every loud thought in Charlie's head went quiet at once.
There was no working it out in her mind, no active thinking to analyze every angle.
For the first time she could remember, Charlie's brain stopped narrating. She was able to focus entirely on Reyna's mouth on hers, and on the astonishing, unfamiliar patience she felt pressed up against her.
Reyna kissed her like she had all the time in the universe and had just discovered, to her own quiet amazement, that she was allowed to spend it on something she chose.
And Charlie would let her choose her until the end of time if it meant this woman would keep kissing her like this.
Charlie's hands came up on their own. They brushed up Reyna's arms to her neck, where she wrapped her fingers around the back, holding her tight and pressing into the kiss.
Reyna made a sound against her mouth, roughened by something perilously close to pleading, and it caught low in Charlie. The fingers at her neck tightened as though Reyna had forgotten, for one breath, how carefully she had been holding her.
Her left hand slid farther around Charlie’s neck, fingers threading into her hair, while the hand against her cheek tightened gently and drew her closer, angling Charlie’s face until the kiss deepened between them.
Charlie kissed her back, a sound of need slipping out of Charlie before she could stop it, small and helpless against Reyna’s lips. Reyna shuddered, her fingers flexing against Charlie’s skin as the last fragile thread of her restraint came quietly undone.
Charlie had spent months telling herself she was reading it wrong.
That the warmth was ordinary. That a person like Reyna could not possibly mean it toward a person like her.
She'd built the whole careful argument because the alternative was hoping, and Charlie Wickett had learned a long time ago exactly what hoping cost.
She had been wrong.
She had been so fucking wrong.
Their mouths found a rhythm. Slow presses deepening, Reyna’s lower lip sliding between Charlie’s.
Charlie caught it softly before letting her go.
When Reyna’s tongue brushed hers, the first touch was careful, almost a question, and Charlie answered by opening to her, meeting her once, then again, until whatever caution remained between them gave way beneath the quiet insistence of wanting more.
They kissed through uneven breaths and quiet sounds Charlie could no longer tell apart, lips parting only long enough to find one another more surely, each return deeper, softer, and somehow more desperate than the last. When Reyna drew back the smallest fraction, Charlie followed without thinking, unwilling to let even that sliver of distance remain between them, and when their mouths met again, she could no longer tell which of them was trembling.
For once, nothing almost happened.
It finally did.
Eventually, they pulled apart, but neither of them went far. Reyna's hands stayed where they were against Charlie's skin, while Charlie moved one hand tight against Reyna's waist, the other resting against her neck. Charlie made no move to change any of it.
Charlie looked at Reyna. Her eyes were wet with tears. But she didn't wipe them away.
Charlie opened her mouth, and the only thing in it was the smallest word she had.
"Hi."
Charlie watched it all just surface. She watched everything Reyna felt come up onto her face without a single thing holding it back. It was all there, easy and unguarded.
Then Reyna smiled. "Hi."
Charlie's heart beat so fast she was pretty sure Reyna could feel it against her.
Against Reyna.
Reyna had just kissed her.
"What..." Charlie's hand lifted and motioned vaguely between them. "What was that?"
Reyna began to laugh softly.
"That," Reyna said, looking deep into Charlie's eyes, "was me telling you I love you, you idiot."
Charlie stared at her.