HMS Valediction

Chapter 37.2

Moon sits on the edge of my bed. "Let me see it."

I roll my eyes and extract myself from Nuna's embrace. She leans back into the pillow, her impatience heavy in her brow.

Sitting up and scooting toward where Moon occupies my bed, I lift the black strands of my wild bed-hair, twisting it and exposing the shaved sides of my scalp to the chilled room. He inspects the healing scar.

"Does it hurt?" He taps it.

I flinch. "Ow! Holy shit. Does this hurt, asshole?" I backhand him in the neck right in his own healing scar.

He doesn't move, but glowers with his single eye.

"Teeno's. Now. Or you'll both have brig duty." Moon pivots and evacuates, his long coat flipping dramatically behind him.

I grope around the floor for the boot that I remember kicking off near my pillow when Nuna and I tumbled home last night. I grab it by the heel and chuck it after him, barely missing his head. It thuds against the opposite bulkhead of the corridor before the door closes and we're once again wrapped in darkness.

The bright stars outside my enormous window provide just enough illumination to make out Nuna's deep frown in the dark.

"You both must stop that."

"He started it. No one invited him in here. He can't just go into any room he wants whenever he wants to irritate people."

"He's the captain."

"It's an abuse of power."

She wraps her arms around my waist. "Let's try to cheer each other up."

"I need a shower." I shove off, Moon's mood putting me in my own snit. The blanket drops to the bed. I redirect the sensors in my scales to shut off, numbing myself to all sensory perceptions. What was once alive with the million sensations of the room deadens. I feel nothing, experience nothing as if my body is encapsulated by a forcefield protecting me from my environment.

She leans back on her elbows and huffs. "Why do you let him affect you like that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." I step into my bathroom, the door snapping shut behind me.

Part of me wants to invite Nuna in with me, to keep up our fleshy feast. But after Moon's invasion, all I want to do is violently scrub the scab off so I can go back to ignoring the growing pattern on my neck.

This was supposed to be our morning together. We were going to spend it getting reacquainted with each other's bodies. I was going to kiss her, feed her berries sent up from the kitchen. I'd lick the tart juice off her neck if they popped before they reached her mouth.

We were going to sleep, our limbs entwined until we couldn't untangle them.

Before stepping under the stream of water, I sigh. I miss her hands already.

In these nearly two-thousand clyks aboard the HMS Valediction, I still haven't built up a resistance to Moon's idiocy.

I need to make amends. This isn't how I wanted my homecoming to be.

When I pop my head back into my room to invite her in, the bed is empty. Her clothes are gone. Mine still lie in piles around the floor.

Fuck it.

After my shower, I stand naked in the middle of my cabin, water dripping off my hair as I twist it into a single, soaked braid from the top of my head all the way to the middle of my back. The shaved sides are slick with moisture. I rub them with a towel, avoiding the pattern of circles, lines, and half-moon scars that reach from behind my right ear down to my shoulder. My criminal record grows more and more prevalent on my skin.