Post 52

“I’m not going,” you say one more time, as if this time, Hoshi will pay attention to you. He does not and you have to run a little to catch up as he opens the docking bay and strides toward the command center. “There’s no way, are you listening to me? There’s no way we can even find Thiel, much less break in or whatever stupidity you’re trying to do here.”

No response from Mr. Tall, Dark, Handsome Extinct Species ahead of you. “Hoshi, seriously.” You pull a little on his coat and he stops, turning to you with a sigh. His eye roll irritates you significantly. You drop his coat and plant your hands on your hips. “Don’t give me that look,” you say, scowling at him. “You already know that Thiel is impossible to get to. That’s their whole Corporate security schtick. They have a level of secrecy unheard of by mere mortals.”

“Yeah, because you helped build it for them.” He’s looking at you with turquoise blue irises that seem to ripple with electricity and star dust and you briefly forget what you were arguing about. “Stop it,” you say, suddenly wise. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Hoshi smiles at you and slips a big hand around to cradle your neck. “Stop what?”

“Whatever psychic nonsense you’re doing right now. No.”

“Burke, Burke, Burke, my love, I’m not doing any psychic nonsense. I have, in fact, specifically avoided psychic nonsense to save your precious sensibilities. And this specious argument you are insisting on having right now is why I didn’t want to tell you any of this.” He leans closer to you and you inhale compulsively as he whispers into your ear, “Why else would I need you and your tracking system? You’re one of a kind, Kas.”

“Stop it,” you say again, but you flush hot and cold and you can’t tell if it’s nervous sweat or something else. Hoshi trails his fingers along your jaw, but straightens obediently and holds up his empty palms as he steps away from you. “As you say, pet. But I don’t do mind control. Anything you’re feeling right now is all you.” He turns back towards the command center with a smirk that makes you want to punch him. “We have things to do, love. Places to go. People to meet.”

You take a couple deep breaths and feel the cold steel pressure of the Snow withdrawal pushing behind your eyes as your heart hammers briefly. You tell yourself it’s the Snow anyway. 

“What is your thing?” you call after him, when the sparks in your vision fade and you can use your muscles again. “And why is your sister at Thiel?”

Hoshi settles himself into the pilot chair and Shori lights up her pale, warm golden color of active interface as protein fibers spool out of the console to surround and link with Hoshi. He sighs a little, as if the contact relaxes him and leans back into them. You shudder a little at the invasiveness of it and jump slightly as Hoshi’s voice echoes both auditorily and emotionally as Shori adds tastes and flavors of his mental state directly into your brain. It makes you feel itchy and vaguely violated. “I guess you could call me a physician,” that creepy resonant almost-Hoshi voice says. But the images you get from Shori are of...impossible things. Magical healing. Remaking flesh, laying on hands, curing diseases. Creating living things from nothing. Shori. Holy shit. He made Shori. She’s him. 

There is an amused chuckle as Hoshi hears your thoughts through the link and he winks at you. “She sure is. Any good doc worth his salt knows that you need that double ex chromosome for genetic stability, especially when dealing with cosmic radiation environments.” He closes his eyes and the viewscreen lights up with his flight plan and it’s obvious he isn’t paying attention to you anymore. 

You sit down hard into the copilot chair. You know that biopsionics are very, very rare. Even in healthy Heilong Houses, a biopsionic only emerges once every few generations. You glance at the creature beside you. If it hadn’t been for you and Thiel Industries, Hoshi would have been treasured somewhere as one of the few true healers in the galaxy. He would have lived in luxury, pampered and adored. Not using his gifts to grow a genetic clone as a spaceship to live as a mercenary fuck up in the bass-ackwards neck of nowhere. A biopsionic. Remarkable. You’re a little startled at the rush of protectiveness that the information triggers in you. Biopsionics are powerful and special, but also incredibly fragile. You should know. 

Another image of the lab and Caleb’s broad smile as he shows you the latest test case, stretched dead on the metal table, her dorsal ridge split down the middle revealing an enlarged gland, still faintly pulsing electric blue as Caleb prepares an extraction flask. ‘I’ve never seen one this big!’ He says, happy. You feel stomach bile eating its way up your throat and you turn away as he starts cutting into it. ‘These biopsionics have the most of any of them. I wonder why that is?’ He starts extraction and you fling yourself to a sink, gripping the slick, metal surface to heave up what’s left of the meal you didn’t get through this morning and all you can smell around you is alien sweat, disinfectant, and that sweet body smell of death. It’s on your hair, in your clothes, everywhere.

You blink, and you’re back in the ship. The slow, leisurely pace of the stars around you through the viewscreen reminds you that Hoshi needs an ion engine. And tracking software. To go back. Back to that lab. Back to the beginning. 

“I’ll help you,” you murmur out loud, mostly for yourself. “Fuck my life, I’ll help you. It’s the least I can do.” Hoshi does you the favor of pretending not to hear as you stagger back to your workshop, trying to muster up some level of courage that you haven’t been able to find for ten years. 

“Burke. BURKE!”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” you say, startled out of your reverie as a big hand slams against your desk, right in the middle of your design schematics. “Go away, Hoshi,” you mutter antisocially. “Some of us have work to do. Go play with one of your other friends.”

“I haven’t got any other friends, you’re my one and only. Burke, it’s been days since you’ve eaten or slept properly. Come out, take a break. Let me take a look at you. See if we can’t keep you alive a little while longer.” It makes you uncomfortable when Hoshi tries to take care of you. Even more so now, when you know what he can do. What he is. Who he is.  

“Go away,” you say, surly and uncooperative, trying to ignore the gray film covering your vision and the constant dizziness that now accompanies your movements. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” His eyes are deep blue today, almost black, you note, but only because he’s shoved his face up uncomfortably close to yours. “You need food and sleep and a chemical adjustment in your brain to stop that Snow withdrawal that’s fucking you up. I can help with all those things. Come out.”

“No,” you say, stubborn and a little guilty. 

“Burke, honey,” you can almost taste the exasperation in his voice. “Will you just let me fucking help you for one tiny second? Just pretend that you’re unconscious and let me fix you and then you can go back to being all strong, silent type.”

You purposefully don’t say anything, just glare at him and deliberately move his hand off your desk with a little flick. 

Without breaking eye contact, Hoshi puts his hand right back. “I could shoot you again. That was the only way I could get your attention last time. Seemed to be effective.”

You hiss in frustration and a little embarrassment. “Shut the fuck up and go away. I told you I’d build the engine and integrate the AI didn’t I? I told you I’d help you find Thiel didn’t I? Well, I’m doing the thing so why don’t you do us both a favor and get the fuck out of my workshop?”

“You are so grumpy all the time. Why is that?” is all Hoshi says, tapping his pursed lips with a long finger. “I was trying to be all respectful of consent and whatnot, but I think in this case, you’re just going to have to deal.”

You open your mouth for another pithy retort, but instead, Hoshi hauls you towards him and presses his lips against yours. You can feel his hand at the small of your back and the pressure of the wall as he steps through your legs to shove you back into something solid. And it’s not just the kiss. You can feel energy surging through your muscles and bones, an aura of purification and relief that makes you sag against him more than the physical contact, although the experience is intensified along every portion of your skin that’s in contact with his. It’s better than Snow. It’s like drowning in liquid sunlight being poured through your pores. You hear someone moan and he’s moving you with his tongue and that sunlight and you lose any capacity for rational thought. The light feels so good. You drag him closer to drink in more of him and are frustrated by clothes. They should be off. You need him closer. Deeper. He’s not moving fast enough and you rake your fingers up his back, down his shoulders in frustration and roll so that you can be on top. 

You wake up curled into Hoshi, his face opposite yours on the floor of the workshop. It’s cold and uncomfortable, but you hate to admit that you like finally getting to touch him. That thought is immediately followed by a wash of guilt. As if you had any right to touch him. It almost puts you in a bad mood, until you look at Hoshi’s face. He looks awful. Gaunt. Haggard. Almost as if he was the one going through withdrawal, not you. Wait. You feel great. Your mind is clear, if a little slower than on the drug. Your lungs are open. You take a deep experimental breath. No pain. No tingles, no gray vision, no shakes. Nothing. Hoshi’s hands are curled into himself, as if even sleeping, he doesn’t want to infringe on your space. Son of a bitch, you think, in mingled gratitude, horror, and self-loathing. He Healed you. You. Why? It feels like a waste of a gift to you and it makes you sigh in perplexed frustration. What am I supposed to do with you? After a moment, you pull him closer and stroke his hair back from his face, remembering that it had seemed to help in the warehouse. 

Hoshi’s muscles relax infinitesimally. You shove him over to one side so you can cuddle him, and try not to think about how embarrassing the posture is. He doesn’t seem to notice. But it’s easier to hold him this way and the instant relaxation and deepening of his breathing tells you it’s working. You can’t help but notice his skin is almost gray and his heart beats erratically. I’m sorry, you think at him. Hoping he can’t hear thoughts. You feel your eyes trying to shut and can’t seem to feel cold or the floor anymore and sleep seems like a good idea. 

In what could only have been minutes later, you wake up again. This time, you’re tucked in Hoshi’s bunk, the little spoon this time and the big lug is hot breathing all over your right ear. You check the skin coloration on the arm wrapped around you and it’s a healthy pink. You feel part of your brain relax as you elbow Hoshi. “Quit breathing on me.”

“Mmm. Quit ruining the moment,” he murmurs back and holds you tighter.

“I didn’t ask you to heal me,” you say. “You didn’t have to do that. Especially not when…” you stop. You don’t know how to say thank you or how to apologize for making him take on your pain or even if you want to say any of that. So you shut up.

Hoshi doesn’t respond to your aborted sentence. “I like holding you,” he says instead. “And it’s been ages since I’ve gotten to fuck someone with some spirit. Thank God.”

“Shut up,” you say, because you can feel your face getting red. “Don’t get used to this.”

“Why not?” Hoshi seems genuinely surprised and he braces himself up on an elbow to peer down at you. “Seriously. I mean, I don’t have to do the whole glowy magicky thing every time. I mean, I couldn’t you, know. It takes a lot out of a man. Though,” he gives you a toothy smile. “You’re absolutely worth it. I’m just saying, I’ve only got a couple of those in me and then I need a nap and a snack.”

You’re miserably uncomfortable. With him being so close and so...good...or...kind...or vulnerable...or whatever. It all just sucks and you don’t want to deal with it. You push him away. He flops down on his pillow and pouts. “Seriously, Burke, it’s a small ship and until you finish the ion engine, it’s going to take a while to get anywhere.” He pats the spot next to him. “Why not just enjoy the ride? Come on, I’ll only bite if you ask really, really nicely.” A smile with those sharp teeth comes your way. It annoys you.

“What is wrong with you?” you ask, searching the room for some kind of covering and settling on Hoshi’s coat. As you pull it on, you stop a minute and stare at your hands. “How can you...I mean...you know what I’ve done...who I am. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Should it?” Hoshi’s voice wasn’t light and playful now. “Maybe I don’t know what you’ve done. Maybe you should explain it to me.”

“Just stop. Don’t touch me,” you say as you open the hatch to leave. “I’m awful, alright, just leave it at that.”

“Burke--”

But you don’t stay to hear the rest of it.