10. Compromised
Compromised
Flossie
Something is wrong with him and he won’t tell me what it is.
I have been running pre-flight checks for two hours.
He has been sitting in the pilot’s chair — my chair, the one he moved to after the planning session — running tactical projections with the focused efficiency of a male who is very good at his job and very bad at hiding things from people who read bodies for a living.
I fed him an hour ago — actual food, a ration tray balanced on the console edge, which he emptied one-handed without once pausing the tactical display. Sprout logged the calorie intake with the quiet satisfaction of a vindicated parent.
Watching him work is not helping the other problem — the one that has been humming under my skin since the bunk. I press my thighs together under the console and bite the inside of my cheek. Not now. Not when something is clearly eating at him.
The routes he’s running are excellent. His analysis of SRS patrol rotations is surgical. The corridor timing is tight but viable, and his cross-referencing of traffic density in the Reach is the kind of work that would have Morrison nodding with grudging approval. He is doing everything right.
His tail has not uncurled from his left calf in two hours.
He is in my chair. I registered this the moment he moved to it and I have not un-registered it in two hours.
My pilot’s chair — the one worn to the shape of me after twelve years, the one that has held exactly one person’s impression until today — now holds his much larger frame like it was waiting for him.
He settled into it the way you settle into a space that already knows you, and the sight of it does dangerous things to my chest.
This is not the arsehole reboot. I know that pattern — I watched him rebuild the weapon casing after the first touch, after the purr, after I called him beautiful. That was performative distance. A male shoving himself back into the SRS box because the alternative terrified him.
This is different. Quieter. Heavier. Like he’s carrying something he doesn’t know how to set down.
This is a male who is not performing distance.
He is radiating it. The difference is the shaking.
His hands haven’t stopped since the notebook — I saw the tremor when I came back with the tea, saw him ball his fists on his thighs, and that tremor is still running beneath the tactical proficiency like a fault line under a road.
He’s professional and productive and his hands are vibrating, and his tail is wrapped so tightly around his own leg that the fuzz is compressed flat against the muscle.
And his body is still reaching for me.
That’s the tell. That’s the thing that confirms this isn’t retreat.
His nostrils flare every time I walk past — the deep inhale, tracking my scent, the involuntary lean of his torso toward my warmth before he catches it and corrects.
His eyes track my hands when I check the fuel gauges, and when I reach across the console to adjust the scanner calibration, his pupils dilate.
I can see the gold deepen from three feet away.
He looks away. Swallows. Returns to the tactical display.
There is other evidence. Not the tail, not the eyes — the other kind, the kind I spent six hours pressed against in the dark and do not need a manual to identify at three feet.
I know what I’m looking at. I know what the tension in his lap is and what he’s been managing since the bunk and what the shift in how he holds himself means when I cross the cockpit.
He’s holding very still in my chair, which is either operational composure or the specific stillness of a male who is not going to stand up right now, and I would bet Betsy on the latter.
I look at the scanner array. The scanner array needs calibrating.
I am also not unaffected. This is relevant information that I am choosing not to examine in great detail right now, because we have a four-hour departure window and my hands are already less steady than I’d like, and the wanting has been running low and persistent in my belly since the bunk and I don’t need it sitting in my chest where I can’t think around it.
But it’s there. It has been there since he came through the airlock and has been getting worse and better in equal measure ever since.
His body is saying come here. His behavior is saying stay away.
I know what this looks like. Twelve years of courier work, reading clients and customs officers and the specific silence of someone who owes you money and can’t make the payment. The body wants one thing. The secret demands another. The gap between them is where the lie lives.
“Scanner array’s calibrated,” I say, keeping my voice even. “We’re tight on the port-side bandwidth, but Sprout can compensate once we’re in the corridor.”
“Acknowledged.” He doesn’t look up.
“The fuel mix is running lean. I’ll need to recalibrate at the Meridian junction, or we’ll burn through reserves before the fifth marker.”
“I have adjusted the route timeline to account for a recalibration stop.”
“You know,” I say, still not looking at him, making a small unnecessary adjustment to a dial that does not need adjusting, “for a male running covert tactical analysis, you’re remarkably visible from the co-pilot’s station.”
A pause. “I am not aware of any visibility error in my —“
“That’s not what I meant, lovey.” I do look at him then. Just for a second. Let him see that I’ve clocked everything — the tail, the jaw, all of it — and look back at the dial. “Back to your route planning.”
The marking along his jaw floods dark. I keep my face completely neutral and log the reaction for later.
“You haven’t looked at me in two hours.”
His fingers stop on the display.
“I am conducting tactical analysis. Visual contact with —“
“Xor.”
His name. Not lovey. Not pet. The blade version, the one I used in the bunk when my fingers were at the base of his horn and his body was pressed against mine and the word came out like a key turning in a lock. I use it now with the same precision and different intent.
He looks at me.
The gold eyes are wrong. Not flat — that’s the mask. These are open and underneath the tactical composure is something I haven’t seen before. Not anger. Not arrogance. Not the contempt of a male who thinks he’s better than the room.
Fear.
Raw, unprocessed, animal fear in the eyes of a male who has walked into combat with a 98% compliance rate and never flinched.
My sternum contracts. The thing behind my ribs that has been expanding since the dust belt, since his arms around me, since I have stopped trying to kill it — it goes tight and cold.
“What happened.”
Not a question. Morrison’s voice coming out of my mouth — the flat, certain register that says I already know something is wrong, give me the shape of it so I can fix it.
“Nothing has —“
“Your tail is telling me something your mouth won’t.”
He looks down. The tail is wrapped around his calf so tightly the tip is white — the fuzz compressed bloodless — but the last three inches are trembling against the inside of his knee. A fine, involuntary vibration. Reaching. Toward me. Despite every inch of discipline telling it to hold.
He stares at his own tail like it has committed treason.
“The tactical analysis is comprehensive. The route is —“
“I don’t care about the route right now.
” I turn my chair to face him full on. Legs planted.
Hands on my knees. The posture Morrison drilled into me for interrogations — not aggressive, not soft, present.
Immovable. “Something changed between the tea and now. Something you’re not telling me.
And you are the worst liar I have ever met when your tail is involved, so you can either tell me or I can sit here and wait for it to tell me itself. ”
“I am not —“ He stops. His jaw locks. The marking along the hinge floods dark — the heat response, the one that means his body is doing things his brain hasn’t sanctioned.
His claws drive into his thighs, ten points denting the fabric of his trousers, and I watch the crescent shapes form beneath the cloth and my fingers twitch with the reach I have been folding behind my sternum for days.
“Xor.” Softer this time. Not the blade. The other version — the one I used when I said you’re very warm and pressed my body back against his and let him feel my pulse.
“Whatever it is, I need to know. Not because I want to. Because I fly this ship and I make the calls about my own life, and you don’t get to take that from me by deciding what I can handle. ”
The silence holds for six seconds. I count them against the pulse in my wrist.
“The Merik transmission.” His voice is stripped. Not clinical. Not operational. The register underneath, the one that has no training and no architecture. “There was a secondary channel. Encrypted. Routed simultaneously.”
“From Merik?”
“From Trell.”
The name lands. Not Merik — the mid-tier handler with limited analytical capacity.
Trell. The director. The male Xor talks about the way former soldiers talk about commanding officers who shaped them: with respect that has roots growing through it, the kind you can’t pull out without tearing up the foundation.
“Show me.”
He doesn’t want to show me.
Every line of his body is broadcasting refusal.
The rigid spine. The locked jaw. The claws cycling — extend, retract, extend — the metronome of a male whose conditioning and choices are fighting in real time.
His tail has unwound from his calf but it’s not reaching.
It’s hanging. Limp. The discipline gone but nothing replacing it.
“I deleted the notification indicator. Archived the channel.” His voice is careful, each word placed like ordnance on a table. “The message is not on the primary display.”
“Then pull it from the archive.”