Chapter Six
Thanh
S omething died in my mouth.
That’s the only explanation for why my tongue was dry and currently tasting roadkill.
And then I tried to move and realized that I was the one that had died because the way my head felt, I was definitely in hell as a corpse.
I groaned, not daring to open my eyes or lift up my head. Instead I curled up on myself and tried to find a position that would relieve the incessant pounding in my ears.
“Damn it, Thanh! Wake up!”
“Not in your ears…well, yes in your ears but coming from outside of you.”
You were supposed to keep this from happening.
“I tried. You told me to eat a bag of dicks and let you get drunk.”
I laughed and immediately regretted it.
“How would someone eat a bag of dicks?”
“Thanh, we are thirty minutes from approaching Narrou and I need you up and dressed!”
“I mean I get the mechanics but…why would you? From what I’ve gotten of your mating customs, you don’t use your teeth on the organ. So why would you eat a bag of them, when you only seem to enjoy sucking on them?”
Oh my god, it’s a saying…I was telling you off.
“Oh…it still doesn’t make sense.”
“Thanh!”
“What?!” I snapped, then groaned and delicately touched my head.
“Are you awake?”
I grunted but he didn’t hear me because he kept pounding on the damn door.
“He’ll keep doing it until you talk to him.”
I groaned again and managed to get to my hands and knees. The room swayed and spun, my guts churned, and I knew I had to get this done before I barfed all over the room. But then I tried to move and jagged agony raced across my low back and down my legs. I opened my mouth on a silent scream and snapped it shut as vomit tried to work its way up.
I couldn’t crawl.
I couldn’t stand.
I was barely able to turn my head toward the bed to see a hypo laying on top of the covers. There might be some meds left from yesterday, at least enough to get me on my feet.
“Thanh, I am about to break down the damn door!”
“Just…a second.”
Biting back whimpers, I pulled myself up so that my top half was on the foot of the bed, grateful for the small space and then crawled over the bed to get the hypo. There was no way I was going to be able to get it above my hip, so I settled for in my ass cheek instead. There was a bit left, enough to make the fiery pins and needles lessen in my legs. I didn’t try to stand quite yet, stretching out my hips and legs on the soft surface of the bed.
When I thought I could move without screaming, I pushed myself to standing and brushed the wisps of hair that had broken free of my braids back from my face. With great effort, I held myself upright with scowl as I opened the door.
“Oh my god,” Jax hissed, staring at me and then the room. “You’re hungover.”
“No, I’m not,” I managed, pressing my lips together and swallowing hard.
He crossed his arms.
“Oh really?”
“Yep. I’m fine…great, actually.”
“Feeling rested, are we?”
“Yep.”
“How was the bed?”
I almost turned to see if the covers were rumpled and thought better of it. The room was spinning as it was, I didn’t need to help it out by moving my head.
“It’s…great. Really comfy,” I pressed my fist to my mouth as I swallowed a burp that I was pretty sure was about to erupt.
“Good, good,” he smirked. “Would you like some breakfast?”
My stomach heaved and I swallowed, resolute on my refusal to be sick in front of Jax.
“No thank you, I’m not…hungry.”
That was suspicious on its own because I always had a huge breakfast on the Intrepid.
“Oh, that’s too bad, I have some reconstituted eggs and made an omelet,” he leaned in close, “with bacon…and cheese…and onions.”
Acid burned up my throat and I tried to close my throat.
“I’ve also got some kefir if that doesn’t sound good.”
I’d had the stuff once and the mere mention of it always made me gag.
This time was, unfortunately, no different.
I clapped a hand over my mouth and bolted for the bathroom, grateful for how small this space was that it wasn’t all that far away.
It was a blessedly short bout and by the end, the vise that had been squeezing my head was gone. The aches and pains in the rest of my body were not. I turned on the water in the shower stall, opting for as scalding hot as I could get it, got undressed and stood under the spray for as long as possible. Which only ended up being about five minutes before the water started to cool. It was enough to help me be able to move a bit more normally.
I found a small bag of toiletries stashed in a cubby in the bathroom, probably provided by Zephyr. I brushed my teeth, feeling a bit less corpse-like by the end of it. By now my head was at a minimal ache and I ran a brush very carefully through my hair, and rebraided it, instinctively reaching for my bag of meds after. That’s when it hit me that I was about to go on a mission for who knew how long without the pain medications that made it possible for me to function.
“Shit,” I braced myself against the cracked sink and closed my eyes as I thought of what to do.
I refused to be in excruciating pain the entire time. I wouldn’t be able to function for one, and for another, I didn’t want Jax to see me like that. I felt vulnerable enough on a daily basis without the person I hated seeing me doubled over in agony.
Though apparently he already saw me passed out from it. And he got the hypo from somewhere so…
I cringed and distracted myself by checking last nights clothes for stains and mercifully found none before putting them back on, and left the bathroom to find Jax.
The rest of the shuttle had a lingering scent of last night’s dinner combined with something that really did smell like eggs and it nearly made me turn tail back around to the bathroom. But I took some breaths through my mouth, drank a swig of water and walked slowly to the cockpit.
“Jax,” I said, doing my best to ignore the rasp of my voice post vomiting, “we need to talk about…Oh my god, is that what I think it is?”
Jax turned to me from where he was sitting at the pilot’s seat and gave me a smile that nearly took my breath away. It was real in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen from him before. As if he’d been wearing masks upon masks this whole time and I was glimpsing the real him for the very first time. Once again, my mind wasn’t sure what to do with this and I tore my eyes away from him to look back out at the wonder in front of us.
The ship we were approaching had a tear shaped, bronze colored body, with golden patterns in swirls and symbols that I was sure was some kind of language, but I didn’t understand it. The symbols were glowing in waves or in random patterns. The wings were like orange silk fluttering through space, with spines of darker orange dividing the flowing membrane into sections that ended in scalloped edges.
I’d heard about Celestial Dragons in stories and whispers around school when I was younger. Sentient ships that soared through space, able to house other life inside of it. I’d memorized drawings from the few who had seen them, devoured every detail I could get my hands on, which was sparse. Not much was known about these creatures. No one quite knew how they flew, if they had a pilot or were self-determined. And as hard as I looked, I could never find any information about the interior of them, or how they sustained life.
And now, here I was, gazing at the object of my childhood dreams.
“That’s a Celestial Dragon? They’re real?” I asked, unable to make myself remain distant from him, or this once in a life time sight.
“They very much are real, though they tend to stay closer to the unknown reaches of the galaxy. This is Narrou, the ship I was raised on.”
I giggled in absolute awe, still unable to quite believe what I was seeing.
“But…how? These creatures were said to be extinct or not real at all, just legend. How does it even work to have beings living inside of it? I just can’t wrap my head around it.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Jax whispered, looking over at me with a smile.
I tore my gaze away from the Celestial Dragon/sentient ship and stared at Jax now in utter surprise. His smile wasn’t his usual smirk; he wasn’t trying to get under my skin.
This was new and unsettling.
“You read Hamlet?” I asked, trying to push sarcasm into my voice and failing miserably.
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t in the class syllabus.”
“Nope.”
“Why would you do that then? I mean, you hated ancient Earth lit.”
“I didn’t hate it, I just had a hard time with it. But I heard from this very opinionated woman in the class that Hamlet was the ultimate Shakespeare play and that I couldn’t possibly understand the immortal Bard without reading it.”
I flushed and crossed my arms over my chest in an attempt to create a shield against him. Jax was being far too charming for my comfort.
“Well,” I said after a moment, “she was smart. And right.”
“Yes she was, on both accounts.”
He peered at me, eyes soft, mouth still set into that relaxed grin that would look entirely too good in the morning light with his head on a pillow next to me. It was such a startling picture that I swung my head back around too fast and had to swallow down bile. But it was worth it because there was no way I was going to let Jax work his seduction magic on me, I knew his reputation. So I kept my eyes resolutely on Narrou and studied the gorgeous sentient ship like my life depended on it.
“We should probably agree on a few rules,” Jax said.
Good, switching to logistics. This will help.
I turned to him and Jax stood up at the same moment. He was absurdly big in the tight space and when I tried to step back, my foot collided with the bolted down leg of the copilot chair and I wobbled to the side. His hand darted out and clamped down on my hip to steady me.
“You are really clumsy lately,” he smirked. “Do I make you nervous?”
I snorted and shoved his hand off.
“You make me nauseous, maybe that’s the problem,” I said with a tilt of my head and a sarcastic grin.
I expected our usual tête - à - tête , for him to lob the insult back at me and then I’d return it in a way he didn’t expect. It was our thing, it kept things simple. I liked our thing.
I didn’t like the way he suddenly leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms as he looked at me, shaking his head.
“We gotta get along.”
He was right, we were never going to convince anyone we were a couple if we were constantly sniping at one another. But the alternative was about as appealing as waltzing through a field of land mines.
But I want to complete this mission and get back to my life. So if I have to play nice with Jax, I’ll do it. At least while we’re in front of people.
“And when you say ‘get along’, what do you mean exactly?” I asked, also crossing my arms and grateful for the space between us.
“We can’t be constantly fighting one another in front of my family. If we act like we usually do, they’ll see right through it.”
“And why can’t they know? I mean, the rest of the Federation I get, but your family can be trusted right?”
Jax sighed and ran his hand over his horns.
“Yes and no. My mother can be cutthroat, and while she doesn’t participate in the flesh trade, if you weren’t a member of the family and posed a threat to us, to her Federation? She’d give you up in a heartbeat.”
“Charming,” I muttered. “But being part of her family, aka mated to you…?”
“Means she’ll do anything to protect you.”
I glanced at the ship that was getting closer. The wings were now folded on top of it, creating a beautiful bronze colored solar sail. We were closer than before, and I could see some of the more subtle striations on the ship’s body were actually from their Seahdohn, it’s tendrils snaking out like small spines.
Do you have those?
I’d never seen my back without the metal casing enclosing Tohm-Tohm’s delicate body, but if he did have those…
“Yes but…it’s not the same…something…something happened.”
I swallowed and turned back to Jax. Tohm-Tohm and I didn’t talk about the missing month in our memories at all, it was too uncomfortable for both of us.
“Alright,” I said, straightening my shoulders, “we need to convince them. What does that look like?”
“Well…um…I guess we should discuss what you’re comfortable with. Physically, I mean.”
My tummy did an odd flip that I was determined to believe was not having breakfast, and I nodded.
“No kissing, no holding hands, no touching. There, how’s that?”
“Thanh, be serious.”
“I am!”
“They’re gonna think it’s weird if we never touch!”
“Some couples don’t. My parents went years without touching in public.”
“They didn’t live in the same city, it was easy for them to do that.”
The words didn’t hurt nearly as much as they would have even yesterday because Jax delivered them without an ounce of venom. Still, my instinct was to lash out and I just barely managed to stop myself.
“Well then, what do you propose?” I said instead.
“How about no kissing, but we can hold hands? Maybe sometimes…hug?”
My palms started to turn sweaty and my stomach kept twisting as we talked about this.
“Fine,” I said, anxious to get this over with.
Jax came toward me and reached out. I jerked back.
“What are you doing?”
“We should practice at least once so that isn’t your reaction when I reach for you.”
“Ugh, fine!”
I held my hand out and he wound his thick fingers between mine. Our clasped hands sat between us at my eye level, the size difference ridiculous, both of us clammy and awkward. Yet, as I looked at it, there was a feeling underneath it all that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. In fact, it was kind of…nice. Especially when he slowly brushed his thumb across one of my knuckles.
“There, that wasn’t so bad was it?” he smirked.
And my body started hum. I knew what that was. That was very, very bad.
I jerked my hand free.
“What else?”
Without preamble, Jax pulled me against him, and for the dozenth time, I was pressed against his hard, stupidly attractive body.
Seriously, how is he this toned? Does he spend all of his free time in the gym on Intrepid?
“Good, you didn’t hit me this time,” he said, his voice hoarser than I’d heard before.
“I was expecting it this time,” I said, keeping my own voice steady, even as my hands started to slide from his pecs to the hardened planes of his stomach.
He was warm and smelled of leather and caramel of all things. His horns had intricate designs on them, and there was a small gold ring at the end of one. I wanted to ask about it, to run my fingers across the markings and find out if they were carved or if they grew like that. Then I saw his face and I nearly stepped back.
It was close, too close. And there were gold flecks in his bright purple eyes, giving them a gorgeous, jeweled tone. His mouth was full, and it looked soft. I wondered if he liked to be bit when someone kissed him, if he’d be dominant or would let me be the one to take control.
These thoughts were insane, out of bounds, and dangerous. I knew that, and tried to reign them in, but it was as if all the curiosity I’d never allowed myself before because it would compromise my determination to hate Jax had suddenly found a way to take over.
And Jax saw it.
“You have pretty eyes,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” I whispered back, feeling as if I were having an out of body experience as I fought with myself.
“And…your hair has red in it?”
“I put highlights in last week.”
“I like it.”
His hands tightened on my hips, his fingers long enough to almost touch the metal on my back. He did, however, touch the rash and that particular spot was raw this morning. I winced and he released me fast.
“What? What did I do?”
“Nothing,” I started to step away.
“No, not nothing. I need to know.”
“You really don’t.”
“Thanh — ”
“We’re pretending, Jax! That’s all. It doesn’t mean you get the right to know what is going on with my body.”
“I would know places not to touch, or where you hurt if we — !”
“Were really together, yeah I know!” I snapped.
I slipped my hand under the shirt and hissed as I came in contact with broken skin.
“Whether we like it or not, we’re in this together. Let me help you,” Jax said, his voice more gentle now.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the logic of what he was saying and turned my back to him. I hadn’t been this conflicted since right after the shuttle crash. My stomach was now curling in on itself while my heart thrummed inside my chest as if it could run away from the confusing soup of emotions that were making it impossible to think clearly.
I wanted to hit him.
I wanted to hide.
I wanted to find a way to do this stupid mission without giving him an inch.
And I was terrified there was no way I could do that.
“I don’t want to be your friend,” I said, my voice thick with discomfort.
“I know.”
I chose to ignore the pain in his voice and steeled myself, hiding the stinging of the broken skin behind a hard set of my mouth. When I turned around, I caught a glimpse of regret on his face before he hid it.
Good. If he keeps his defenses up too this shouldn’t get messy.
“I have skin problems on my back from the procedure. It’s very sensitive and I don’t want you touching me back there. So if you have to put your arm around me try to keep it to the top of my shoulders.”
“Do you need anything for it? What about pain medication?”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“How do you know that I take meds?”
“C’mon, Thanh, I’m not stupid or blind.”
“I do have medication I take but I didn’t think I’d be gone so long so it’s back on the Intrepid.”
“Well, my father is the healer on Narrou, I can have him take a look if you’d like.”
Tohm-Tohm’s panic lanced through me and I shook my head.
“No, no doctors.”
“He’s not a doctor, and you see Eddie and Chloe all the time.”
“I trust them. I don’t know your father.”
I hadn’t meant to show so much but the stress of the last twenty-four hours, Tohm-Tohm’s emotions and now the ever increasing ache in my low back were all making me unable to hide.
“You know me,” he said, “and you may not like me, but you can trust me not to hurt you.”
Rage, lightning fast and powerful careened through me and Tohm-Tohm had to stop me from punching him. But whatever Jax saw on my face was enough to tell him that I couldn’t believe he said that.
“What…? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Seriously?” I hissed.
He gaped at me, at a loss for words and I stood there, shaking. It was impossible that he’d forgotten what he’d done, it was here with me every damn day, it was the reason I had Tohm-Tohm! He couldn’t be that thick!
I had never confronted him about it, never brought it up directly, but had let him know how I felt in every single interaction for years and he had the gall to stand there tell me that I could trust him?
“You are a piece of work, Jax Vabaris,” I spat at him. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’ll smile, and I’ll let you hold my hand. I’ll call you pet names and pretend that I like you. But the moment we are alone, you will stay away from me. You won’t touch me, you won’t speak to me, you won’t even look at me. Are we clear?”
His eyes glittered and there was a flush to his blue skin, turning it almost purple.
“No, not even close to clear, but we’re out of time so I’ll take it. And some day, you snotty little princess, you’re going to tell me what the fuck I did to make you hate me so much.”
The coms beeped, likely his family sending us docking directions. We were moments away from having to pretend to be in love, and all I wanted to do was shove him out of an airlock. Did he really need me to tell him? Was his part in the shuttle accident that had broken my spine, burned parts of my body and destroyed my future so fucking forgettable?
Well, he wasn’t there when I crashed, was he?
My father had seen him messing with the ship and thrown him out. But when I’d demanded something be done, my father had refused, and focused on getting me into the symbiote program instead.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I lobbed at him.