Chapter 84: Late Night Fun With Aoi

Leo looked down at the small sleeping weight on his chest.

Chloe hadn’t stirred.

Her belly was full of warm blood and her breathing had sunk deep and slow with her fist still knotted in his shirt.

He eased her fingers loose one at a time, lifted her as carefully as he’d ever lifted anything and laid her down under the heavy thermal blanket, and she curled into a contented ball in the warm hollow he’d left behind.

He tucked the covers over her shoulders, waited by the edge of the mattress until her soft snores settled into a steady rhythm, then slipped out into the hallway with the comm-link in his palm.

The living corridor was dim and quiet.

He walked past Harper’s quarters, where the metallic scent of gun oil seeped through the vent seam, past Elena’s locked hatch, and stopped in front of Cabin Three.

TAP-TAP!

The latch disengaged with a muted pneumatic sigh, and the panel slid back into the bulkhead.

He stepped across the threshold, and the warm unfamiliar air of Aoi’s private quarters washed over him.

In all the time they’d been aboard, he’d never once stood in her room alone, let alone in the dead of the night cycle with everyone else asleep behind locked doors.

The cabin was immaculate, every line in it as clean and disciplined as she was.

The locker was shut with its latches aligned, the desk wiped clear except for a single ceramic cup and a dark data pad, and the bunk made with hospital corners.

The air held a fragrance that was her own like pressed tea leaves and the clean musk of freshly washed skin.

Aoi stood at the foot of her bunk.

She’d shed the navy tunic and boots... In their place she wore a loose robe of soft charcoal cotton, cut like a kimono and tied loosely at her narrow waist with a wide sash.

It fell to her ankles, but the relaxed collar had slipped open along her throat and bared the pale elegant slope of her collarbones.

Her long black hair was completely untied and spilled down her back and over her shoulders in heavy glossy silk.

She wasn’t wearing her glasses.

Without them, her dark eyes looked strikingly large and soft in the amber glow of the bedside lamp, and much younger than he was used to.

The moment their eyes met, a faint nervous pink dusted her cheeks and her fingers tightened in the sleeves of her robe.

"Leo," she murmured. "Thank you for coming... I know it’s late, and you must be exhausted."

Leo cleared his throat, suddenly very aware of how quiet the room was, how small it was and how much of the doorway his shoulders filled.

"I’m awake," he said quietly, and let the hatch seal behind him.

PSSH!

The locking pins clicked home and sealed the two of them into the amber silence.

He leaned back against the door with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his eyes moved over her loose hair and the bare curve of her neck before he could stop them.

"What’s going on, Aoi? Everything alright?"

Aoi held his gaze for a long second and smoothed the cotton over her thighs then she took half a step forward, and the composed posture of the lecture hall settled across her shoulders, though her voice trembled.

"I needed to speak with you," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "In the medbay, I apologized as your tactical officer for bringing a threat onto this ship... That apology was for the crew. I asked you here tonight because I needed to apologize to you... To Leo, the boy who carried us... From Aoi, the woman who failed to protect him."

She bowed her head, and her black hair slid forward over her collarbones.

"I let my grief for my brother blind me, Leo... I should have stood between you and that airlock... I should have trusted your instincts over my own blood, and I’ll spend every breath I have on this ship making sure you never face the dark alone again... I’m truly sorry."

It was short and clean, and she delivered it with the quiet finality of a seal pressed into wax.

Leo looked at her bowed head and the pale nape of her neck where her hair had parted, and he let the full weight of her words settle in the room before he moved then he pushed off the door, crossed the cabin in two slow strides and hooked his fingers gently under her chin.

His calloused thumb rested along her jaw as he lifted her face until her eyes met his.

"I heard you, Aoi," he said softly, his thumb tracing one slow line along her cheek. "I accepted it in the medbay, and I accept it here... It’s done... You don’t have to carry it around me ever again. Okay?"

Aoi’s breath hitched.

The heat of his hand seemed to sink straight through her skin, and her pulse jumped visibly in the hollow of her throat.

She swallowed and nodded with her lashes fluttering.

"Okay," she whispered.

She stepped back with a soft flustered exhale, her cheeks burning, and turned to the desk.

When she faced him again she was holding a small rectangular box of polished dark composite in both hands, offering it with the formal two-handed care of a traditional gift.

"I... I made something for you," she said, looking down at the box to steady herself. "While you were in the cylinder. Camila helped me pick the stone out of the ore bins from the asteroid belt, and Harper let me use the micro-laser on her secondary bench..."

Leo took the box, and his fingers brushed hers.

A tiny spark of static jumped between their skin, and Aoi’s breath caught all over again.

He flipped the brass clasp and lifted the lid.

Resting on a bed of dark sponge was a necklace.

The cord was slender braided carbon thread with a seamless magnetic clasp, and hanging from it was a teardrop pendant of dense crystalline mineral, polished by hand to a mirror finish.

Its facets caught the lamplight, and deep in its core a soft golden glow pulsed with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat.

He lifted it by the cord.

The stone was cool and heavier than it looked, and the moment it touched his palm a faint warmth bloomed from it and thrummed gently in time with the blood in his veins.

"There was a note about them in the Kite’s charts," Aoi explained softly, watching his fingers close around it. "The deep-belt miners in the core systems wear them... They call them sun-stones... They’re said to hold the warmth of newborn stars, to guide travelers through blind fog and keep their spirits whole when the void feels endless."

She hesitated.

"I polished the facets myself... I wanted you to have something solid over your heart so you’d remember that you aren’t drifting alone."

Leo looked at the glowing stone for a long moment, and a deep tender warmth spread behind his ribs.

"It’s beautiful, Aoi," he said, his voice low and rough with feeling. "Thank you."

He reached behind his neck, fastened the clasp, and the pendant dropped against his chest right over his healed sternum with its gold light glowing softly through the black fabric.

Aoi let out a long trembling breath, and a radiant smile broke across her face that made her look younger and impossibly beautiful in the quiet cabin.

"It looks... very handsome on you," she whispered, smoothing her sash with nervous fingers.

Leo looked down at the stone, then back up at her, standing in front of him in a loose robe with her hair down and her eyes shining... and a slow wicked smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

He folded his arms and leaned forward a little, and his voice dropped into a low rumble.

"You know, Aoi... when you whispered over my comm in the middle of the night and asked me to come to your room alone while the whole ship was asleep..."

He tilted his head.

"I thought you’d called me here for something else honestly."

The words landed in the quiet room like a dropped flare as Aoi froze.

Her eyes went impossibly wide and her lips parted on a soundless gasp as her brain finally caught up with what she’d done.

FLASH!

A scalding crimson blush detonated across her face.

It swept up from the hollow of her collarbones, climbed the slender column of her throat, washed over her jaw and swallowed her face whole, until even the tips of her ears glowed bright enough to set the cedar shavings alight.

"L-Leo!" she gasped, pressing both hands to her burning cheeks, her voice jumping into a horrified squeak. "That was... I didn’t mean... how could you possibly...!"

"Can you blame a guy?" Leo laughed, thoroughly enjoying the total collapse of her composure. "You locked the door, dimmed the lights, let your hair down and put on a robe... What else was I supposed to think?"

"I was preparing for sleep!" Aoi stammered, backing away until her knees bumped the edge of the mattress. "The robe is standard leisure wear! I only wanted to give you the gift without the entire bridge watching like spectators at a festival... It was tactical decorum!"

"Tactical decorum," Leo repeated, his grin widening as he took one slow step closer. "Right... Very tactical..."

Aoi groaned and dropped her face into her hands.

"I’ve never... I’ve never done anything like that," she mumbled through her fingers, her voice small and muffled with mortification. "I spent my whole youth in lecture halls and observatories then I spent six years teaching in them... My schedule was too much so I have never had a... a nighttime meeting with a young man."

She peeked through the gaps between her fingers, and a strange hesitant curiosity battled with the blush in her eyes.

She swallowed, lowered her hands just enough to uncover her mouth and asked in a tiny breathless whisper...

"...have you?"

Leo blinked, caught off guard. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck, and he felt the heat creeping across his own cheekbones.

"Uh..." His eyes darted to the ceiling vent and back. "Once... Back on Earth... A little while before the white light."

Aoi’s jaw dropped. The crimson on her face somehow climbed even higher.

"Once?!" she gasped, clutching her robe at her chest. "You were a university student! You were supposed to be studying!"

"I was a twenty-year-old guy with a car and a leather jacket," Leo laughed defensively, rubbing his ear. "It happens, Aoi! Don’t look at me like I committed high treason!"

"I am thirty years old," Aoi whispered, staring at nothing as the full horror of it dawned. "I’m thirty... I have a doctorate... I lectured three hundred students at a time... and my twenty-one-year-old captain has more romantic experience than I do."

She sank down onto the edge of the mattress and buried her face in her knees with a long muffled groan.

"I am completely disgraced."

Leo couldn’t hold back the laugh that broke out of his chest.

He crossed to the bed and stood over her, looking down at the proud brilliant cartographer crumpled into a flustered little heap of shyness, and something warm and dangerous lit in his eyes.

"Come on, Aoi. There’s no disgrace in that. You spent your life mastering the stars..."

She lifted her head slowly, her face still blazing, her dark eyes shimmering with self-conscious misery.

"It isn’t impressive... It’s pathetic really. I don’t even know how to speak to a man properly without a chart between us."

Leo’s smile shifted into something soft and playful and breathtakingly bold.

"Well..." he said. "I could teach you."

Before she could answer, he leaned down, set one hand lightly against her shoulder and pushed.

Aoi fell back onto the mattress with a startled little gasp, her black hair fanning out across the pillow like spilled ink.

Leo followed her down.

He planted one hand on either side of her head, sinking into the bedding beside her ears, and suddenly her whole world was the shape of him above her... his broad shoulders blocking out the lamp, his long dark hair falling forward around both their faces like a curtain, the sun-stone swinging gently from its cord and glowing gold between them.

Her face was caged between his arms.

She could feel the heat coming off his chest, close enough that her robe’s loose collar stirred with every breath he took.

Her heart was slamming so hard she was certain he could hear it, and she couldn’t remember how to move her hands.

They lay open on the pillow on either side of her face, a few centimeters from his wrists, and her fingers curled slowly into the sheet as if it might hold her down.

Leo looked down into her wide dark eyes, and his voice dropped to a low unhurried murmur.

"Lesson one," he said.