He tells Tanaka not to let anyone disturb him, but there comes a trilling at his door anyway. Rather, there comes a Trill at his door. He leaves one hand light against the table as he stands and snaps, “What now,” but lets it fall to his side when the door hisses open and Wednesday Lie steps over the threshold.
“I brought you water,” he says, entirely neutral. “CMO’s orders.”
Marlo frowns, but steps clear of the curved divider and further into his line of sight, placing that one hand on the white metal. There’s a concern in the back of Wednesday’s mind his face doesn’t betray, as it never does. Typical. Always one to sweat the small stuff.
“Well, come in,” Marlo amends, gesturing across the great red rug in the quarters’ center, spread wide over the Federation emblem seared into the floor. Wednesday’s pristine boots sunk into it—an old thing, frayed but thick, a sign of goodwill from a Talaxian freighter—as he crossed, stopping just short of the edge, and Marlo’s own boots, cracked and still caked with pale brown dirt.
In the stark white light of Marlo’s captains’ quarters, the dark speckling on Wednesday’s skin stands out in sharp relief against the brown when he inclines his head; he does not offer out the water.
“Your CMO,” Marlo says, after a moment, without lowering his gaze to Wednesday.
“My head nurse,” he returns, “and your CMO.”
“I was doing just fine with the EMH,” Marlo snaps.
Wednesday stares at him, brows almost imperceptibly raised. “No, you weren’t. Your Achilles’ tendon never did heal correctly.”
“Your point.”
Wednesday’s eyes soften, all but imperceptibly again, at the same time a guard goes down in his mind. “Take care of yourself,” he says, the thick snaking of a genuine affection coiled deep in his belly, only the surface exposed. “You know how to pilot this ship better than my own crew. I would prefer to have you at the helm when we return—but that requires you to stay alive.”
Marlo smiles, all teeth, even as the space between them opens itself into a chasm within him, eager and waiting for an excuse to gnaw. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were concerned.”
Wednesday doesn’t laugh, of course; he doesn’t even smile, but Marlo knows the leaping sensation. He takes Marlo’s hand, Marlo’s broad, weathered palm and roughened fingers, and presses the canister into it; wraps his own hand over Marlo’s fore and middle fingers, soft by comparison.
Oh, how tempting the rope bridge is, wild and swaying over the canyon.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Marlo says, as quiet as he can make it.
“I am only here to ensure everything is still in working order,” Wednesday answers, and withdraws his hand, steps back in the same motion. He turns to face the mounted viewscreen, still glowing with the schematic of a Class-L planet, its broad deserts and quartzite mares outlined in blue.
Marlo waits, feeling out the shape of Wednesday’s worry as it deepens. He knows what Lie means to say before he puts the words to it. “We picked up a supply of freshwater a week ago. I’ll have some sent over. Computer—lower temperature in this room, ten degrees.”
“Don’t bother telling me to lie down; I heard it already,” Marlo says over the answering chirp, but there’s no venom in it.
Wednesday casts him a glance over his shoulder. “Lie down, and stop making a habit of getting trapped on strange planets.”
Marlo grins something fierce, and barks a laugh. “Nah, I’m just tryin’ to relive the good ol’ days.”
Wednesday turns again, but not before Marlo catches the ghost of a smile on his mouth, and he can’t do anything to conceal the rueful amusement lapping in the base of his throat. He knows as well as Marlo the hundred emotions entwined in that sentence, a braiding of fear and resentment and warmth; the familiarity earned in long black nights in an alien home and the lingering weight of his fingertips on Marlo’s skin. A memory of a memory.
Now he stands in the bitter white light of a stolen starship, the long black night at his back and a silver floor colored red before him. Wednesday lets his eyes rest on Marlo’s desk, a curved silver thing, lined with terracotta fragments from some Delta Quadrant ruins and a sleepy, pine-green houseplant.
“You’ve made quite a home of this place,” he says, and Marlo can shape the width of the chasm within him.
“You’ll want a report,” Marlo says, instead.
Wednesday inclines his head, again, and there the guard goes back up in his mind. “When you can,” he concedes. “I want you in your right mind first.”
Marlo sets the water canister on the table with a metallic clunk and steps across the room to him, the old boots leaving pale dust to mingle with traditional Talaxian patterning, to stop just short of his side. “Your nurse told me I should work on getting my fine motor skills back up to par,” he says. “I’ve got this big knit blanket I’m working on for the bed. You should come see it when it’s done.”
Wednesday says nothing at first, his face entirely neutral. Marlo can’t trace his breathing over the hum of two transwarp engines in tandem—he doesn’t hear anything else at all, but traces the thing that spreads itself wide in Wednesday’s chest. And then he laughs, a huff of breath, ruefully amused again.
“You know when our night shift begins,” Wednesday says, and turns back to face him, raising his hand to Marlo’s face: the pads of his fingers to Marlo’s jaw, cheekbone, temple, catching on the curlicue ends of his pitch-black hair. “A few thousand kilometers should be enough of a buffer.”
“I’ll be turning left,” Marlo confides, trying not to smile.
“I know,” Wednesday says, as quiet as he can make it.
“You should stop by the mess hall before you beam over,” Marlo says, lifting Wednesday’s hand from his face and gathering them both within his. “I think some sand might’ve got in the replicators. Did you know Harmon’s trying to pick up cooking? Says I was an inspiration.”
He pulls a face placed somewhere between a grimace and unrestrained delight; Marlo knows the leaping sensation. “Infecting the rest of the crew with your anti-replicator rhetoric, are we? I shudder to think—but in the interest of thoroughness…”
And there neither of them have to say anything—there’s a thick, nauseating coil wound over itself in Marlo’s belly, even as Wednesday draws his hands back to himself and smiles. Almost imperceptibly: just a twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll see you soon, then,” he says.
“In eight-thousand light-years it is.”
With that, he’s gone, the door hissing shut and the clicking of his boots fading down the corridor.
Marlo’s own make no sound over the rug; he unscrews the lid of the canister and drinks without tasting it. He sinks, finally, into the black leather cushion, picking idly at the topline of one boot.
In the long window behind him there is only an endless black night, and a birds’ eye view of an alien home, and no sunrise left to keep him company.