"Have you gone as long before? Like this?"
He squints at her amusedly. They are naked and she is reclined against his stomach, legs stretched out horizontally on the mattress, hair fanned like a flame over his torso. "In bed?"
She rolls her eyes. "No. Flying sublight. Without the hyperdrive."
"Oh." She hides a smile at his disappointment. "Well, it's certainly bailed on us before. But we've never gone more than a few days before getting it repaired. We're usually closer to planets or hubs where we can dock and get it fixed.
"Of course," he adds, "being stuck in the middle of civilization has its own problems. I think I'd rather be where we are now."
"Really?" She finds that hard to believe.
"Yeah. Less chance for unwelcome visitors." He crinkles the ends of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. "There was this one time, I think we were somewhere in the outer core and a day away from landing, when we were boarded by a group of shady spice-runners."
"Shadier than you?"
"Much. We couldn't outrun them of course and they surprised us. They were quicker than I anticipated." He rubs his chin. "I think there were four of them, Galmorrans. Once they were on board they spread out through the ship, rounded us up, and held us at blaster-point."
She casts back to the freighter that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, glided beside them for two days, and then disappeared. She wonders yet again who was on board and for what purpose. "You didn't have your blaster on you?"
"Well, uh." He flails awkwardly. "Let's just say that's the part of the story I'll keep to myself."
The implication is obvious. There are very few circumstances when he's not wearing his blaster and the two of them are currently in one at the moment. She searches herself for jealousy and is relieved to detect only a vague stirring.
"They're yelling all sorts of threats about making off with our cargo," he continues. "Turned out something had gone wrong with their trade and they were desperate to have something to take back to their boss. I don't have much to give them – we had just dropped off a delivery before the hyperdrive failed – and they're starting to get impatient, so they put me in binders and duratape me to the wall."
She winces at the thought of him pinned and helpless. "And then what?"
"The usual. Roughed me up. Promised more of that treatment after they kidnap me and drag me wherever it is they're going."
"How'd you get out of it?"
"Lots of charm." He doesn't miss her reaction. "And bluffing. Mostly bluffing. Thankfully they weren't very bright. I was throwing out names left and right of beings who may be able to help and managed to stumble onto a mutual contact. I convinced myself, and them, that this particular cartel boss owed me a favor, so I made promises in her name that were convincing enough."
She blinks, unimpressed. "That's it?"
"Well, it didn't seem quite so insignificant at the time. They ended up tracking us to the hub and followed us around until we got the hyperdrive fixed. We managed to distract them for long enough to sneak away."
She wrinkles her nose. "Tell me another story. A better one."
"A better one, huh." He thinks for a moment. "There was this one time we were planetside, somewhere in the mid-rim. Four, maybe five, years ago. We're there to drop off a shipment, not a large one, one that we can carry on us, only the guy doesn't show. So we wait and we wait. Gets to be late and our contact is still nowhere to be seen; must have been waylaid or, more likely, intercepted before he could meet us. So we start to head back to the ship about the time the local law enforcement decide to start doin' their job.
"We know we're being followed. Only beings on dubious errands hang around in the part of the city we're in. We're trying to lose them without being too obvious about it. At one point we hide out behind a black-market spice shop but that just introduces a new set of risks."
He pauses. "Looking back, I'm not even sure if we were the primary targets. Maybe we were just a side quarry, fresh pickings that would give them an easy victory. Or so they thought. But you know how it is in the heat of the moment – it's easy to feel hunted even when you're not."
She turns her head, finds his eyes. "I know."
He moves his hand from where it lies curled on her sternum and brushes her cheek. She leans into his touch automatically, drawn by the charge between them that plucks something from deep within and rearranges it into a new shape, one that then insists on being integrated with the rest of her.
"And then what happened?"
He lets his hand fall, adjusts the pillow under his head. "We come out of the crowd without the package. At this point we're running from the law but maybe also from our contact and his associates since now we're empty-handed."
"The story of your life," she quips.
"We're walking quickly, heads down, when I see a clump of beings off to the side," he continues. "There's a few of them squeezing through a door into a building and somehow, I'll never know how, we manage to part through the crowd and slip in behind them. I assume it's the back entrance to a restaurant or something, but it actually turns out to be some sort of dive bar and the beings we're glomming onto are that evening's entertainment. Next thing I know, they have instruments in hand and are leaving the tiny kitchen for an even tinier stage. I don't want to follow them but I also don't want to go back outside and the cook is giving us a look like he knows exactly what we're up to. In the end we have no choice but to join the band."
"Both of you?"
"We got lucky. It was an inter-species group."
She props herself on her elbow and searches for a crack in his game-face.
"It takes a few seconds to dawn on them that they have a couple of new members, and in that time I make a beeline for the open mike and start singing the first song that comes into my head."
"You sang."
"Well, yeah. What else was I supposed to do?"
"Did the rest of the band join in?"
"After a few moments. Felt like a lot longer, though. I was sweating, trying to get into it, faking enthusiasm, waving to the others to get them going before the audience starts up." He pauses, thoughtful. "That's probably what convinced them to start playing. They didn't want to get booed even if it was the fault of someone who had randomly butted into their gig."
She decides to play along. "Which song did you sing?"
"One that was popular at the time. I'm sure you know it." He croons a few lines softly to himself, and then to her. "We'll get some overhead lasers and four-engine quads, fuel-injection throttle and dura-plated rods." He catches her eye, does a little wiggle with his shoulders. "Impressed?"
"No," she states flatly. "Your voice is terrible."
"I know. That was the third stroke of luck. The band was horrid, a collection of no-talent duds, so I fit right in. Fortunately the audience agreed and provided another distraction; not long into the song, around the time I start creeping offstage, the shouting starts up, bottles flying, the whole treatment. If they had been any good, the jig would have been up."
She smiles indulgently. "I don't believe you. It's not true."
"Which part?"
"All the parts."
"I swear it happened." He lifts a hand solemnly. "On my honor."
"Well now I'm convinced." She props herself on an elbow and walks her fingers down his abdomen until she reaches the damp hairs at the base. She splays her hand above the stirring organ and juts her chin at him casually. "If you really want me to believe you, you'll swear on that."
"You sure you want to take that risk?" He cocks an eyebrow. "It's as much for your benefit as it is mine."
She makes a noise of disgust. "You are such a man."
"Last time I checked," he agrees.
She shakes her head, withdraws her hand, and slides up his body until their heads are level. Pulling the sheet over them, she kisses him lightly once, twice.
"I bet you have a never-ending supply of stories in you," she says. "Both real and imaginary."
He nods slightly, wrinkles his forehead. "You like hearing this stuff?"
"I do," she admits. "There's something – I don't know – soothing about it. Lying here in an empty space, no distractions, nothing waiting for your attention…" She trails off.
"You've never had that before."
She doesn't respond, doesn't ask him if he has. She assumes he has.
He notes her silence. "You got any stories of escaping the palace and running off to establishments not suitable for princesses?"
"There might be one or two." She arches her back slightly, registers the tip of each finger against her vertebrae. "I'll have to try to remember the details."
"When you're ready, then."
She admires the ease with which he navigates the give-and-take between them. Prickly with each other for so long, they have nothing but empty hours in which to re-learn patience and accommodation, traits that may have once existed but rarely asserted themselves in deference to the more tempestuous impulses. It comes more easily for him, she thinks; he is able to relinquish emotions that in her linger like a watchful predator, on guard for fresh opportunities to exert their rightful dominance.
"There are things you keep to yourself," she thinks out loud.
He tenses, wariness creeping into his body language.
"Yeah. Of course." She can feel him trying to fight his usual defense mechanisms. "But not 'cause I don't trust you or not want you to know. Just –." The muscles in his jaw twitch. "There are things that happened in my past, to me and because of me, that are hard to put into words. Things that I wished hadn't happened but now think that maybe they had to. I never know how much weight to put on those events, how to think about them." He shakes his head to dismiss the memories. "Though I can't complain, really. Wasn't anything nearly as bad as what you've gone through."
"I suppose not," she says softly. She's never had the luxury of debating whether her own history is significant enough to dwell on. "Though in the end, who can say? As awful as it was, I've learned I can't say, not really."
"Because some things aren't meant for words."
"Or they're meant for the spaces between words."
She feels him nod. "The things more important than words."
That must be true, she thinks. It feels true. But she misses being able to say the words she once said so often and with such ease that when she lost those opportunities she also lost another part of herself.
She's quiet for so long that after a while he pokes her ribs. "Hey. You're not using your silence to tell me that you don't like my stories, are you?"
She blinks, comes back to herself and to him. "Oh, are you finally figuring out how to read between the lines?"
"Smartass."
"I'm honored you think so. Such a declaration from you is surely the ultimate compliment."
He turns to look at her, his expression unreadable. "Almost."
She flushes and presses her face into his neck. The spaces between words, indeed.
Sensing her discomfort, he tugs her closer and finds her ear with his lips.
"I got one last story. One I know you'll like." His voice is silky smooth and she can guess what's coming.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Once upon a time," his hand lands between her thighs, tickling under her curls, warming her up again, "there was a tight, wet – hey! — that found itself in need of a big, hard – OW!" He rubs under his ribs. "What an ungrateful audience. And for a story that is completely one hundred percent true, no less."
"Skip to the good part, hotshot."
"That's what I was trying to do until someone unleashed her fists of fury on me."
"Just be grateful my aim was off and your big, hard – whatever – is still in one piece."
"In that case." He grins and starts to rotate them but she squirms from their collective unit and turns onto her side.
"Like this." She peers over her shoulder.
He wraps his arms around her, one under her neck, one over her waist, enclosing her in skin-roughened warmth. "However you want it."
By now their bodies are practiced in accommodating each other that he slips easily inside her with a hum of appreciation. She settles in the cradle of his chest and his lips dot her shoulder as they move together languidly. When the soft brushes turn into a pinch she flinches and swats his thigh in remonstrance.
"Sorry," he mumbles. Reluctantly, he leaves the meat of her arm and drags his mouth northward. "You taste good."
She laughs softly and extends her neck like a shore bird in anticipation of his touch. "You're insatiable."
Their pace quickens as he clasps her tighter and works his fingers between her legs. In the moments that follow she comes undone and is rebuilt into new version of herself, one fully knowable only to the two of them.
"I always have another story in me," he says when they are lying on their backs in the dark. "All you gotta do is ask."
He is snoring lightly when she slips from his arms and digs under the mattress for the oversized robe she has adopted as her own. Making her way through the corridor, she slides open the hatch to the cockpit and settles in his chair. She sits, arms wrapped around her knees, and listens to the churning of the engines, loyal and punishing in their faultless rhythm.
Through the viewport one of the stars shines brighter than the rest. She watches and wonders what awaits them at their destination and tries to ignore the voice inside her, clearer than a bell ringing across a wind-swept plain, that promises nothing good.