by S M Matthews
Because it’s not enough, I think. Not with them. I actually want them to love me back.
I check my messages, just in case Maisy’s been in touch. Then shower and change straight into a tunic. Acer’s out there pottering in the kitchen. If I’ve got it right, I think Micka will be home shortly.
I should ask them where my apprentice wage has actually been going so I can finally buy myself some clothes. They had offered again to do it for me, but I’d wanted to do it for myself. Earn a thing that I wanted. So they had let it go.
Only wearing the, now quite worn in, uniforms or the sleeping tunics all the time was getting quite depressing.
I go out into the main room and find I was right, Micka and Acer are there eating dinner. I go over and Acer pops a plate in front of me without breaking conversation with Micka. I’m only half listening, they talk about the water being off in hydroponics at some point and putting it to ‘sleep’ for a shift. Then something about energy rates from a solar sail. I’m not really following.
There’s a lull in conversation and Acer asks how I am.
I’ve been stewing on it for the majority of the day, and I’ve been round the thought merry-go-round so many times that I feel a bit numb to it now. It just falls out my mouth before I can even think about it.
“I think I should move out.”
They both freeze, open mouthed.
Finally, Micka says, horrified, “But you can’t.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because...because...” Acers foundering for an actual reason. Because you don’t want me to go, I will the thought at him. Please just say that.
“We’re registered as your keepers,” Micka says, finally. “You legally can’t unless you have someone who will take you.”
My mouth drops open. I think I actually feel my heart crack a little bit in my chest. It hurts.
It hurts more than I could have imagined.
I flee to my room before they can see me crying. I can’t slam the door on them. I nest myself in the blankets on the bed. What a horrible, heartless thing to say. They really don’t care at all.
ACER
Micka’s got his elbows resting on the worktop. His head in his hands.
“Well...” I start.
“Don’t!” He says loudly. Then, dejectedly, “Just don’t.”
Right then.
I tidy up. I don’t think anyone will be eating much more after that.
The silence of us standing there is oppressive. Hopefully Titus will be home soon, he’s been gone a while already. His team don’t usually last this long.
Actually, they don’t normally last anywhere near this long.
A message pings up at the shared desk. My communicator pings, so does another on the table. I suddenly, instinctively know somethings wrong with Titus. Micka looks up at me and I know he feels it too. It just makes me even more sure and I frown. I retrieve a communicator.
“On his way to medical, not serious.” I read out to Micka. He sighs, relieved. It wouldn’t be Titus’s first sports related injury and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last. Hopefully nothing’s actually broken this time.
“We should still go check,” I say. If nothing else, it might be funny. I fondly remember when he landed awkwardly and dislocated his top tail. And then I cringe a bit, it’s absolutely cripplingly, vomit-inducingly painful. But it is funny when it happens to someone else.
Micka nods and then looks at Poppy’s room. “I’ll tell her we’ll be out for a short while.” And then he grimaces at the prospect of facing her again so soon.
I volunteer to go but he shakes his head.
I follow him over regardless and stand in the doorway with him. She turns in her blanket cocoon to look at us. Her face is red, the room smells of salt and distress. Her eyes look sore.
Micka speaks, “We need to go out for a short while, Titus is in medical. We won’t be long.”
She’s moving though, climbing out of bed, “Is he hurt? Is he okay?” She’s pulling a uniform up her legs and then pulls the tunic off over her head.
We are both trapped in the doorway, ogling her. She’s naked to the thighs; and although we’ve both seen pretty much all of her before. We’ve not seen her like this. Her smooth skin, rounded bottom as she bends. Her ribs leading up to proud, naked breasts. She pulls the uniform up, all practical. Clearly her priority is not us. The boots are on in a matter of seconds and she’s rubbing at her face.
“So, are we going?” She’s shooing us along. I debate telling her that he’s fine but...she’s so concerned about him. Clearly concerned. It makes me feel warm inside. Also selfish that I could clear this up for her now...but I don’t want to. Micka doesn’t say anything either. She really cares about us, even though we’ve just been really successful at hurting her feelings.
We all leave together and she’s trotting along, she keeps looking back to get us moving quicker. This is new...a completely different side to her. She thinks one of us is in danger, and she’s become, well, almost commanding in her concern. Her worrying about Titus has made her completely confident as she practically orders us along.
It’s very attractive. I think I’d probably follow her anywhere.
POPPY
We finally get to medical. Titus is laid out on a bed, and for a horrible second I think that he’s unconscious, but he turns to looks at me. I jog over to him, he’s grinning.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just a bad tackle. Landed really awkwardly. It really hurt in the moment and I panicked, I thought I’d broken my leg, just really badly twisted it though. They’re giving me a thing to take the swelling away. Is food done? I’m starving.”
I smack his shoulder, “I thought you were hurt!”
“And you rushed straight to my side.” He’s got a big, shit eating grin on his face and it breaks my heart all over again. They are just fucking playing with me!
I punch his shoulder again as hard as I can. I can feel myself tearing up. Again. I know the other two are stood behind me and I want desperately to go back to my cocoon. Whatever else has happened I still care about them. I wouldn’t ever want to see any of them hurt. But he doesn’t really seem hurt at all; they could have said so, but they didn’t.
This is so stupid! They must have known full well that he was fine!
It makes me so...angry! And frustrated!
And how does a space alien on a space station get something as dumb as a sports injury anyway!
Titus tries to comfort me, but I step out the way, I’m not having any of that.
“Hey,” he sits up and tries to reach for me again, “what’s happened?” I watch him look at his brothers. They both have the good grace to look sheepish.
“I’m done. I want to go back. He’s fine.” I can feel the resting bitch face come back into play and all of Titus wilts. He looks so confused and hurt. That’s not my problem though. I try and use the anger to brace myself.
We head back. I’m in front again, marching along. Acer’s come back with me. Micka’s stayed with Titus.
Acer sits at the table and sighs, rubbing at his face.
“Poppy, he didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
That stokes my anger right back up. I’d been on my way to my room, he could have just left this alone. But no, he has to poke it.
“Then how did he mean it, exactly?” I snap back.
“None of us want to...influence your decision. We don’t want to muddle what you want by pressuring you with what we want.”
“What I want? Don’t you dare! Influence me? This is a two-way street!” All of my mentally stewing over this comes to the for again, “It’s not just about what I want, it’s as much about you as it is about me. You don’t get to put all of this on me. What have you been doing? Biding your time, writing a list of pros and cons of Poppy ownership? Trying to decide if I’m worth committing to or not?”
His ears go down, I scored a point, I think.
Then he looks down, everything
goes a bit floppy. “It’s not about worth. We know you’re worth it. You’re the best thing that happened to us since...” He stalls. He can’t say it out loud. “But it’s terrifying for us. If anything were to ever happen to you. We can’t go through it again. We just can’t. We barely survived it before. Well, we didn’t really, not completely. We certainly wouldn’t a second time.”
Oh. I pace around a minute, thinking. It’s completely knocked the wind out of my sails, that’s for sure.
They’re scared.
That completely changes how I’ve been viewing all of this. And it’s so...obvious. All most ridiculous how obvious it is. I’ve been feeling halfway, not sure if they want me back when...they’ve been too scared to open themselves up to that same pain.
I can’t even imagine what they must have been through.
I feel the anger fading away, it leaves me feeling terribly guilty. Again. I go over to Acer and nudge him, he pulls me into his lap with no qualms at all.
He snuffles at me, my hair and in the crook of my neck before he settles and just holds me.
“I started to think...well I assumed...because you and Micka had...you know, left. You didn’t want me.”
“Left?”
“You know...to, you know. Rather than stay with me.”
He sighs. “All that doesn’t help you know. If you are so uncomfortable that you can’t even talk about sex then you shouldn’t be doing it. What if something happens you don’t like? We will know, but if you won’t…or can’t...talk to us, then where does that leave it?”
I guess he’s right. “You guys must talk about me a lot.” He snorts.
“You and the station, that's all we ever talk about. And we don’t talk about the station much.”
I laugh, “you need to get out more. You never have days off, not like, days off when we’re all together properly for the day.” Something beeps on him; he awkwardly pulls his little beeper doodad out without letting me off his lap.
“Well, we’ve not had anything else but the station for so long, it’s a hard habit to break. And when you lose your mate, you just think your life is over. So, it was either let the work absorb everything...or die. They are making their way back home.”
“Can we make Titus something sweet? I…I feel bad...And could you start having some time off? I feel like you’re all always tired. We never spend any...well, time together. I feel like we are all caught half way to anything real.” He sighs deeply. I feel like he knows exactly what I mean.
He hugs me tightly for a minute, “You want to try this? Properly?”
I nod. I think I do. But then I sigh. And then gulp, because I need to be brave for a second and ask. “Do you?”
He nods, and then grins.
I have no idea what I’m doing with any of their foods, so Acer has me on chopping and then stirring duty. It’s not long until they limp in through the door. It looks like Titus insisted on walking.
Acer dishes everyone up a bowl and we all sit around the kitchen island together. It’s quiet, and awkward. I feel like I’ve fixed it a little with Acer, but without leaving so they can talk about it I don’t know what to do about the other two.
“This is really good, thank you.” Titus says, really politely. And quietly. And sadly. And not at all like himself.
Micka sighs and shakes out his mane, “I’m sorry, for what I said Poppy.”
Titus grimaces at his pudding, I guess that Micka’s filled him in.
“It’s okay, really, I get it now, I think” Micka and Acer share a glance, “and I’d just already convinced myself that none of you wanted me around so...yeah. Sorry.”
I just sit poking at my pudding, feeling too embarrassed and far too guilty to look at anyone.
Titus leans forward, “I realise this is a really serious moment, but are you going to eat that? I’ve got a hurt leg.” He’s already reaching for my bowl and I push it to him.
I laugh at him though, “And what difference does your hurt leg make?”
“Well,” he speaks around his spoon, “I probably need more dessert, to get better.”
POPPY
The next couple of days are the same...but not. In some ways I feel like we've gone back ten steps, and had to start again. Again. Do a little tentative rebuilding. But then sometimes I think they whole thing feels more...permanent. Like we've had our first proper argument. Or something like that. And it’s all still here anyway. Nothing crumbled, or got irrevocably destroyed. I was monumentally stupid...but I feel like that’s because they’ve all been epically holding back.
But the world hasn’t crumbled.
I go to work as normal, Titus doesn’t. Acer and Micka seem to be taking up his slack, and I don’t see as much of them. I sleep with Titus for three nights running because of this, the first night he makes a fuss over sleeping with his leg out of the covers and resting it on a spare pillow.
By the next day I already strongly suspect he’s milking it, but I don’t say anything.
Breakfast and dinners become more relaxed again, and Acer brings up them actually organising themselves and properly utilising their staff. And more importantly...actually getting to know their staff. Like they should. I sit and listen to their conversations and I already get the problem; they think it’s all completely their responsibility. All of it.
They can’t possibly shoulder all of that, but it seems like they've been doing their best to for the whole time they've been here.
They plan a Day Off. They actually say it like that. Like it’s a mythical creature that needs to be summoned. You can hear the capital letters.
Titus is working again tomorrow, but the day after, we are all Going Out. Together. They have a surprise thing that they want to take me to go and see. It’s like a happy, giddy feeling has spread amongst us and I keep finding myself shyly grinning at them, and blushing when they grin back. Which is stupid, but I can’t help it.
On night two of his being ‘injured’, Titus tells me he feels like a thick cloud has finally passed overhead. That up until now they’ve just had little seedlings of hope with no way of knowing how to encourage them along. Apparently, us getting...things...out in the open, if you like, has caused the flowers to bloom.
It’s just about the sweetest thing I think I’ve ever heard.
He holds me close, and tells me about how after Kita had died...the cold weight of the emptiness had been an unbearable thing to carry.
I don’t feel at all equipped to deal with this conversation, so I lie there with him in the dark, stroking his mane and letting him talk.
“It’s like, we've had no hope, no interest...no nothing, for so long. We didn’t know how to cope with the change you’ve made in our lives. And we’d gotten so used to the idea that this was it. This was our life now, forever. The High Council saved us by giving us purpose.”
This has been niggling at me, and I take my chance.
“Do they...help people out often, like that?”
He thinks about it, “No, not really, but because of the circumstances I think they felt a little...I don’t know. Involved?”
I stroke at his mane again; I don’t want to ask but he doesn’t feel inclined to volunteer any more. I dither about it, not exactly feeling it’s my place to know, but really wanting too.
He sighs, “You want to know why they did it for us? Got us this position?” I nod in the darkness. I know full well he can still see me.
“It was stupid really, a billion to one chance of happening. Three separate subsystems had to have failed for her transport to go down. And we were supposed to have gotten home to take Katha, but we’d been training and then gone to a meeting. We were late. Kita wouldn’t wait so she took her up with her. She was a historian, she had a couple of friends on the High Council, she was probably going to be voted in for a turn at some point soon. They like to keep swapping some members every term, voting new people in so old members could move on. It looks good, you know? ‘Sat a term at High Council’ can get
you opportunities. It’s good experience.” His voice sounds full of fondness, and sadness. “She was always getting so excited about some dusty thing in some museum or other. Some book. I don’t know why, I never really got it. She loved it though.” I hear him yawn. “Can’t search in a book. You have to read the whole thing.” He snorts. “You ever seen a book?”
I can’t help but smile. “Yeah, we have a lot on computers...but still a lot of books too.”
“What like actively? You still use books?”
I laugh again, “Yeah. Use them in schools still, and to tell stories and…well, record history. We have bookshops, you want to learn about something, you can always buy a book.”
He huffs like he’s never heard of something so silly, but then says, “She would have loved it there.”
He snuggles in deeper, and the purring starts up. I try to wait for him to fall asleep before I start stewing on it...but if it was so unlikely...then why did it happen?
I frown to myself. It just doesn’t seem to sit right with me.
TITUS
I stand and admire the efficiency with which I have packed the picnic bag. I should have recorded a vid; I think people could probably benefit from my clearly superior lunch packing. Not a single bit of space has been wasted. I’ve been up for a little while already. I couldn’t just lie in bed knowing I was responsible for getting this right. I pack it away in the refrigeration unit ready for when we leave. Then I check our messages. We’re technically not working today, so I shouldn’t be doing this. We’d all promised Poppy we’d leave it alone all day but...it’s a hard habit to break.
And anyway, my main goal is to make sure today will be on schedule. I check specifically for updates from the research team; all seems to be going to plan.
Maybe...maybe I could just quietly go back and see if Poppy is awake. I’d left her this morning whilst she was still sleeping. I’d gotten three nights with her because of my ‘serious sporting injury’, I grin to myself. It’s going to be strange to go back to having nights off again to share. It’s funny how fast you can get used to something.