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She looked over her shoulder, forlornly, at where her cable was snapped—and at the fact that the space we were in didn’t have any apparent doors.
“What should we do?” I asked her, as between the two of us, she was the Outer Space expert.
“Wait to be eaten?” she said, as a tense tease.
I made an unaccommodating sound and squeezed her more tightly. It was all I could do—that and watch her eyes flicker, reading and re-reading the inside of her helmet’s screen.
“But seriously...there’d be easier ways to kill us. Like whatever it did to the first team.”
I could feel her bright mind thinking, and I already knew I would not like what she would suggest next.
“I think I can get out of this suit, Ceph.”
“No,” I said, winding about her more thoroughly.
“It says the atmosphere here is breathable for me.”
“You saw what happened to the others!”
“I did,” she said, with a strong nod. “But none of them tried to take off their suits. So this is different.”
“Why?” I pressed. “Why would this ship treat you even remotely differently?” I was trying not to shout at her, because I didn’t want to injure her like I had the other day, but I was running out of options.
“Because—it showed you me. Right?”
I frowned strongly. “I would’ve never said anything if I’d known it’d lead to this.”
She squirmed up in my embrace to touch her helmet to my cheek again in another distanced kiss. “I’m not getting air in through my cable, Ceph, and my bail-out oxygen hasn’t released, so either way, I’m fucked. Unless...” she said, slowly wriggling her arms free—and I felt forced to let her. “Close your eyes.”
I stared down at her instead. I knew she was about to do something foolish, and if had to hold another mate’s corpse in my arms it would break me.
“I know, Ceph,” she whispered on our ’qa. “So close your eyes. I love you.”
I snapped my eyes shut, and felt her taking her helmet off.
I was preparing myself for agony while wrapping myself around her for as long as I could hold her, physically and mentally both, when I heard her calling my name. I only opened up one eye a sliver—and found her smiling at me, her hair flowing around her head like she was a siren. “I told you I could breathe here! My helmet was right!”
“How?” There was no possible way we could coexist in the same place.
“I have no idea. Magic? Science? Both?” She pushed away from all my arms. “But if you let me turn around, you can help me get out of this!”
I lowered my head quickly, running my cheek against hers, seeing as I still had the rest of her trapped. I felt the heat of her skin, and the contact made our ’qa light up.
“Oh,” she gasped, feeling it too.
I turned her at once, my tentacles searching for her suit’s fastenings.
“Up at my neck,” she directed. “And then there’s buttons you push at each hip.”
I did all these, and helped to hold it still till she’d shed it like a sea snake’s skin and was swimming in front of me with a scrap of clothing still on.
“I’m breathing!” she said with delight, swimming up, and then swimming down again. “And I’m not dying!”
She laughed, and I laughed too, one born of relief. I sent a seeking tentacle after her, catching her by an ankle to pull her near.
“None of this makes sense, Elle.”
She caught my face between her hands, flutter kicking to hold herself aloft, sending pleasurable waves from the motion across all of my lower-arms. “I like it when things make sense too, Ceph, believe me—but in this one case...does it have to?”
