Chapter 48: Learning A Bit About Aoi

Down in the quiet stretch of corridor by the air scrubbers, Ms. Tachibana stood alone at the observation port, looking out at the dark silhouette of the Black Kite hanging in the void.

Leo walked up quietly with his boots barely making a sound on the deck.

"...Sensei."

She didn’t turn around right away.

Her hands were folded gracefully over the sill, her dark hair catching the amber twilight of the night-cycle runners.

"Leo," she answered softly, with a fragile faraway quality to her voice.

He leaned his forearm against the frame beside her and looked at her profile.

The neat line of her nose, the slight curve of her lips. And the heavy exhaustion that had been crushing her shoulders since the sky burned... lifted, for the first time.

It made her look like someone he’d never been allowed to see.

"Sensei, we need to talk about him," he said gently, keeping his voice low, not letting a single drop of anger creep in. "About Ren and about his ship."

She turned her head slowly.

Through her glasses, her dark eyes looked up at him... not with the fury from hours ago, but with a deep aching vulnerability that made his chest go tight.

"Leo," she whispered with her fingers touching his sleeve. "When our father died, Ren was twelve... Our mother was sick and bedridden for three years before the end."

She looked down at her shoes and her voice wobbled.

"I was at the university... I was ambitious... I was chasing my doctorate and publishing papers on orbital mechanics, sixteen hours a day in lecture halls in Tokyo, while Ren stayed home in Kyoto... He quit his vocational training, he washed dishes and he hauled freight at the rail yards just to buy Mother’s oxygen canisters."

A bitter tear broke over her lashes.

"I was never there for him, Leo. I was the brilliant older sister who left him behind to carry the world by himself."

She looked back up at him, her eyes wide and drowning in a lifetime of things she’d never said.

"When Earth died... the only thing that hurt more than dying was knowing I’d left him alone again." Her voice was barely a breath. "And now, by some impossible miracle... he’s here. He survived, Leo... He grew up, he found a ship, and he came looking for me."

She reached up.

Her small trembling fingers came to rest against the side of his jaw, warm and desperate and full of a raw agonizing hope.

She had never touched his face before, not in three years of hallways and simulator halls and office hours.

"Please, Leo," she whispered with her lower lip quivering. "Just let me have this. Just let me have my brother... Please don’t take him away from me."

Leo stood very still.

Her palm was warm against his skin.

Her eyes were looking into his with a naked desperate plea that tore through his ribs like a rusted blade, and she was close... close enough that he could smell the clean soap in her hair, close enough that if he leaned down even a little...

’Fuck.’

He wanted to tell her Ren’s smile was too neat... He wanted to tell her the men wearing Sterling patches moved like mercenaries, not dockworkers and he wanted to scream that her brother had looked at Chloe like a side of beef, however the words wouldn’t come.

Looking into her wet hopeful face, he understood that he was completely powerless.

If he fought Ren now, he wouldn’t be fighting an intruder... He’d be ripping the beating heart out of a woman he respected and subsequently the trust of the rest of his crew.

’Why does being a Captain have to be so complicated...?’

Slowly, he reached up and covered her hand on his cheek with his own calloused fingers then he gave it a soft squeeze and let go.

"Get some rest, Sensei," he said, and his voice came out hollow. "It’s late."

She gave him a small tearful grateful smile, nodded once and walked quietly away down the corridor to her room.

He watched her until her door closed.

Then he stood there a while longer, looking out at the black shape of the Kite hanging in the stars with its running lights blinking slow and steady, like something breathing in its sleep.

’It’s so weird...’

...

An hour later the ship was dark.

Leo sat on the edge of his bunk with his elbows on his knees, staring at the cold floor between his socks... The cheek she’d touched still felt warm, and he hated that it did.

PSSH.

The door slid open with a whisper and Chloe slipped inside.

She was wearing an oversized dark sleep shirt that hung off one pale shoulder and stopped high on her bare thighs with her feet making no sound on the deck.

Her hair was down and loose with her dark bangs falling across her brow, and her skin still carried that soft healthy peach glow from the night before.

She padded slowly to the side of the bed without looking at his face, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of the shirt.

"Leo..." she whispered. "Is it... is it okay?"

"Yeah," Leo said with a sigh. "Sit down, Chloe."

She didn’t sit beside him.

She climbed up onto the mattress on her knees and crawled right into his lap, settling her small weight across his thighs facing him with her bare knees sinking into the blanket on either side of his hips like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Leo’s breath stopped dead in his chest.

The shirt had ridden up... He could feel the cool smooth skin of her thighs through his trousers, the soft warm weight of her settling down on him, and her face was suddenly very close with her loose hair brushing his cheek.

"Chloe..." he started.

"Shh~" she breathed.

She reached up and her cool delicate fingers slid under the collar of his flight suit, slowly drawing the zipper down a few centimeters and parting the fabric to bare the side of his neck, where last night’s marks had already healed to smooth skin.

She traced the spot with one fingertip... slowly... around and around then she paused.

’Eh?’

Chloe didn’t lean in just yet... Her green eyes lifted to his through her lashes, wide and full of a quiet troubled hesitation.

"You’re sad," she murmured, her fingertip resting right on his pulse. "Your heart is slow tonight. Your blood... it tastes different when your heart is heavy... It tastes cold."

"I’m fine," Leo muttered, staring past her shoulder at the wall. She shook her head slowly with her bangs swaying against his jaw.

"I believe you, Leo," she whispered. "I know you’re trying to keep us safe... You always keep us safe."

He glanced at her.

"Then why didn’t you say anything in the hall?"

Her lower lip trembled.

She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his collarbone, her small hands bunching in the front of his suit.

"Because..." It came out as a tiny miserable sound against his chest. "I don’t want everyone to fight. When Elena was screaming and Sensei was crying, it felt like the ship was breaking in half... I just want us to be together, I just want everyone to smile like we did when we ate the potatoes."

Chloe didn’t pick a side... because she couldn’t.

She’d spent her whole life hiding from the world, and the women in those rooms were the first family she’d ever had.

She couldn’t choose between the Captain who fed her and the sisters who laughed with her, however she just wanted the nightmare to stop.

Leo let out a long heavy breath and tipped his head back against the wall.

"Drink, Chloe," he said softly, with no anger left in him at all. "Before you get weak again..."

She lifted her head and looked at him and slowly, something in her eyes changed.

A thin ring of scarlet crept in around the green as her lips parted.

Her breathing went shallow and quick with little puffs of cool air against his throat, and she shifted forward in his lap until there was no space between them at all... her chest soft against his, her hips settling down heavier, her knees squeezing his sides.

"You’re cold," she whispered. "I really don’t like it when you’re cold."

She wrapped both arms around his neck and pressed her whole small body flush against him like she could warm him up from the outside.

"Let me fix it," she breathed into his ear. "I’ll make you warm again, Leo..."

Her lips found his throat.

They were soft and cool, kissing the skin over his pulse once, then again before dragging open-mouthed along the side of his neck while her fingers curled into the short hair at the back of his head and held him exactly where she wanted him.

"Mmm~ You taste amazing~"

Leo’s hands came up on their own and caught her waist as he meant to hold her still.

His fingers found the thin fabric of the shirt and the warm narrow curve of her underneath it, and she let out a tiny shivering sigh against his skin and arched into his hands while his heart kicked hard against his ribs.

THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP!

She felt it and he knew she felt it as Chloe smiled against his neck.

"There it is," she purred. "There you are..."

Then the fangs sank in creating that dull familiar pinch as the heat followed.

The warm tug pulled at his vein, and that heavy drugging euphoria rolled through his body right behind it, pooling low in his stomach and spreading out to his fingertips until the cold hollow ache that had been sitting in his chest since the bridge just melted.

GULP... gulp...

She drank slowly.

Small soft swallows with her throat working against his jaw and a hum vibrating out of her with every one.

"Mmmmh~"

Her hips rocked once in his lap and his fingers tightened on her waist hard enough that she whimpered around the bite... and pressed down harder.

His head fell back against the wall as his eyes slid shut.

’This feels good.’

For thirty seconds there was no Ren, no Black Kite, no Sensei’s hand on his cheek.

There was only the warm weight of her and the pull at his throat and the slow syrupy heat filling him up, Chloe took only what she needed to keep her cells steady then she pulled back with a soft quiet gasp.

SLIP!

She licked the two little wounds closed with one slow flat stroke of her tongue, and then she stayed there with her lips pressed against the healed spot while breathing.

"So sweet..." Chloe blinked then sniffed.

Her nose brushed slowly along his jaw toward his cheek, right where Sensei’s hand had been.

Her whole body went very still in his lap.

"You smell like her," She whispered. "Here, did you touch Sensei...?"

She pressed her own cool cheek against that exact spot and rubbed it there like a cat marking a doorframe.

"Better," she murmured. "Warmer... See and it doesn’t have the weird smell again."

She sat back in his lap.

Her lips were stained red.

Her eyes were glowing a faint peaceful green again, but her cheeks were flushed dark and she was breathing just as hard as he was.

She looked down at his hands that were still locked on her waist then she looked at his face and for a second neither of them moved.

Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, gave him a small flustered apologetic nod and slid off his lap.

"Sorry... see you later."

She slipped out into the corridor, and the hatch sealed silently behind her.

Leo sat alone in the dark with his heart still pounding.

He could still feel the shape of her waist in his palms... He could still feel Sensei’s fingers on his cheek.

Two women in two hours?

’Ah, that’ll be a record for me... Didn’t know I had that much game.’

Leo then swallowed again.

’Get it together,’ he told himself, scrubbing both hands down his face. ’There’s a ninety-meter raider parked off your starboard side. Get it together, Leo...’

The room was dead quiet.

The heat drained slowly out of his body, and the cold knot in the small of his back came creeping right back in to take its place.

He lifted his head and looked up at the speaker grille over his desk.

"AI," he whispered.

CHIME!

The speaker crackled softly as its volume dropped to a whisper.

[This unit is operational, Master Captain.]

Leo stared at the ceiling with his jaw tightening into iron.

"Keep an eye on him," he said quietly. "Every corridor... Every terminal... Every breath he takes on this ship."

The AI didn’t make a joke as he expected, instead, its voice dropped into a dark chilling monotone that sent a shiver straight through his ribs.

[...This unit has been watching him since the moment he stepped aboard.]