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“Does this feel okay?”
Kanaya’s fingertips are a smooth caress on Terezi’s skin through the fabric.
“Yes,” Terezi says, a little harsher than she means to.
Kanaya’s palms place to the neat angles of Terezi’s shoulders, touching and testing the fit, arching along the re-sewn parts just under her collar. Terezi hasn’t been touched like this in far too long, and the feel of her fingers is a surprise that she deems uneccessary, no matter how good it is to have a gentle hand pressing lightly to her nape.
“Can you breathe properly?” Kanaya asks. Her grip flattens, covers her shoulderplates and shifts swiftly down to her hips; she brushes away an invisible piece of lint and pauses, a few moments overlong.
The shipboard lights are bright; the walls are an uncharming grey. The room is a little cramped, a little messy with consoles and organic machines. A fabric extruder squats obtrusively in the corner.
“Of course I can,” Terezi says, rolling her eyes.
This is rote fitting hoofbeastshit, but Kanaya always sounds honest when she says it, like she really cares. It’s an appalling lack of guile.
Terezi lets out a long, quiet breath as Kanaya’s careful thumbs dip into the tense knots of her back.
“Unwarranted physical contact,” she mutters.
“Unwanted?” Kanaya confirms, “You seemed tense.”
“Unusual. Continue.”
Kanaya nods, though Terezi can’t see it from that angle. Terezi breathes in, tastes the stale recycled ship air, and holds back a cough from leaving her throat.
The jacket comes away, two fingers either side of Terezi’s trapezius muscle and a gentle twist to slip it from her shoulders, carefully. The zip edges click together as Kanaya neatly folds it, a discomfort in the pause before her hands are back and ready to work again.
Kanaya’s thumb slips down the black undersuit zip, brushing upwards again to pause at the fastener. Terezi’s sign is emblazoned boldly across her stomach, the tips of the longer line curving around to end just below her kidneys. It’s textured, thin strips that zig-zag down for grip against outer layers to hold her in and pull things closer to her shape.
“I hope there is no surcharge for this.”
“None,” Kanaya says plainly, “Dress uniforms are very important. This modification will be at cost of materials only.”
Terezi shrugs her shoulders, trying to wave off the lingering ache in her back where Kanaya hadn’t quite freed her knots.
“Out of my first Caegar pouch.”
Kanaya’s hands rest again upon Terezi’s back, spanning the width with her hands.
“I’m afraid so.”
She works right up to the chitin plate joints that overlap over Terezi’s spine, smoothes over the grooves through the synthetic cloth. She digs in just a little harder with her thumbs again and something clicks.
“Ugh,” Terezi says dully.
Kanaya’s lips part for an understanding sigh.
“Are you lonely?” Terezi asks, “Or are you making me pay through the nose for your companionship now?”
Kanaya ignores it. Terezi’s head tilts back to catch Kanaya’s eye, and machinery overhead casts a shadow over her nose. She gives her a toothy smile.
“Don’t be shy about it,” she says, “Everybody knows you work too hard.”
Kanaya puts her hand to the curve of Terezi’s skull and puts it back forward. Terezi doesn’t fight it, a quiet little laugh rattling low in her protein pipe.
Kanaya doesn’t say anything else, putting her body further toward Terezi’s side, tweaking at her sleeve, picking at the cuff to test the durability. She huffs another sigh.
“I couldn’t be lonely,” she adds, out of the blue, “I see people all the time.”
Terezi turns her head to listen.
“You have always been a terrible liar. You will still be a terrible liar in fifty sweeps.”
Kanaya’s gaze diverts, a nervy rattle-tick sound emanating from her thorax as she turns away to navigate to her box. She begins rummaging through looking for something. Terezi catches the milk-sour scent of a handkerchief; old lace and bio-service oils.
“Are you getting enough food?” Kanaya asks abruptly, changing the subject, “I have seen some very unsavoury things to do with food preparation during my time here.”
Terezi shakes her head, mostly out of frustration rather than a negative answer. She puts her own hands to her suit, the uncovered bareness of the sleek black synthetic, the rigid leather support strips at her sides and thighs.
“Yes,” she grinds again, after an uncomfortably long pause, “Don’t patronize me.”
Kanaya doesn’t seem to notice, angles around on her toetips and then puts her feet down flat to balance. Terezi rolls her shoulder uncomfortably, breathing in slowly and evenly to colour the room. Kanaya is a towering shape in hemoanonymous service grey, wide shoulders that taper down to a narrow waist and long, strong legs that end in the sour liquorice bite of a black boot.
Kanaya comes back to Terezi’s side again, to pinch open the snaps holding Terezi's sleeve to the bodysuit. She examines the angle and fit, glances at the carefully-made join under Terezi’s arm. She lifts her arm, manipulates it to check the movement with a wary eye on the seams.
Kanaya lets her arm fall, and frowns, putting a hand to her chin to think.
“You did that,” Terezi says out of turn, “Doesn’t it look good enough for you?”
Kanaya’s face draws into sadness, though she doesn’t refute it. She takes two steps more, to face Terezi on the stand that lifts her up off the floor. Terezi narrows her eyes, her mouth pulled taut and mirthless.
“You have your job.”
“I wanted to ascertain your feelings about it,” Kanaya says. Her hands are fidgetless and still, the knuckles splashed lightly with scars over the otherwise artful arches of her bones.
Terezi brings up her chin to regard Kanaya balefully despite her burned-out oculars, leaning almost to tap nose-to-nose.
“I don’t have any.”
“I’m worried about scar tissue,” Kanaya says.
Terezi snorts.
“Always a seamstress. You shouldn’t care! I am an invincible starship and will live forever.”
Kanaya shakes her head.
“You’re not, though,” she replies.
“This is not standard helmsman fitting procedure!” Terezi snaps, “Ask me the next question.”
Kanaya regards the helm-system apparatus warily. Six contacts hang ready on a trollenoid frame, a new design that nevertheless still deigns to have lockable cuffs ready to fit around every limb.
“The next question, Miss Blueberry Crush!”
Her toe taps imperiously on the stand.
Kanaya’s eyelids lower. Her gaze traces the floor, all the way back to the toolbox on the deck. A saw is peeking ominously, nudging out of the loose cover.
“State your name,” she says, as formally as she can manage.
Terezi lifts her chin and regards Kanaya nosewise while she’s looking away. The tips of her ears are going blue with an unwanted flush again. The shaved sides of her head never hide it, and Terezi wonders silently what the stubble would feel like under her fingertips.
“I am the imperial starship, Diehard Dawnseer.”
Kanaya shakes her head. Terezi juts a hip, mustard sign still bright over it.
“The Codetrix. Helmsman-conscript.”
“You were a hatchsign-elect,” Kanaya contradicts, “And that’s really not what I came here for.”
Terezi’s mouth twists.
“I will not pail you. I’m a vital service and you are the service troll. I don’t care if you die.”
“I’d care if you died.”
“Would you care if we pailed?”
Kanaya’s mouth does something again, twisting up in a pained grimace as the top half of her face stays relatively immobile. A bead of sweat appears on her forehead.
“That is also not why I came to see you,” she says, drawing her mouth grimly straight again before she clears her throat to begin again. Her mouth opens for a peep before she’s cut short.
“Hatchsign Pyrope,” Terezi continues regally, ignoring her, “Information useless, prepare to be expunged.”
“Cancel that order,” Kanaya snaps quickly, loud enough to get caught by the audio pickups, though not yet the acidic bite that Terezi can imbue in every verbalized shipboard command.
“Don’t contradict me,” Terezi says darkly.
Kanaya pulls out a handkerchief; dabs at her forehead. Terezi's lip curls with a victorious smirk.
“Don’t delete your past,” Kanaya says, “It’s important.”
“Why,” Terezi says, “It is not to me. You know who I am. Anybody else doesn’t matter and neither do I. I will persist very comfortably and keep living after you are reassigned. And you will be, because you have no ties here.”
Kanaya shakes her head.
“Not standard procedure,” she echoes, ignoring her. “Do you consent to become the pilot of the Diehard Dawnseer?”
Terezi laughs.
“So you can move on from here, and tick your box as willing to serve? No. I don’t.”
Kanaya tucks away her handkerchief; fresh perspiration appears at her temple.
“Terezi, please,” Kanaya starts, “I know what happens if you do not agree.”
Her hands come together, gripping one over the other. She begins to pop her knuckles in a nervous habit, one by one with audible snaps.
“I also know what happens if I don’t agree,” Terezi says, lifting her hands in a shrug. Her wrists shine bright on the underside, a metallic contact plug on show echoed at her asymmetrically uncovered elbow; “Quadruple trauma and biowires as per the traditional job. I assume you’ve done that before.”
Kanaya moves aside and turns her back; Terezi can't pick out the movement of her face.
“You still have to fit my boots,” she adds.
Kanaya logs into a console, brushing delicately over the interface for a handprint. Mustard-yellow text reflects brightly on the underside of her hands.
“You are a standard size,” Kanaya replies, “It will not take long.”
“Standard size pinches my heels.”
“Are you determined to be objectionable today?” she says, mostly under her breath.
Terezi laughs.
“Do you expect me to explain myself?”
“Perhaps I do,” Kanaya says primly. She taps the mini-keyboard, ordering up several styles, and the fabric extruder goes to work with a quiet grumble.
“I don't like you,” Terezi fills in, “Now explain why you have come here. You have pulled strings, Kanaya. This is not your designated ship spread.”
“I don't think have to explain anything,” Kanaya says.
Terezi shrugs.
“Indulge me. I will be plugged in soon. Who knows when I will be let out again? My online accounts will fester without my steady hand.”
Kanaya curls her lip around her fangs, surly with a haughty tip to her chin.
“I was asked to fill in for somebody. They broke their arms.”
“False. You broke their arms.”
Kanaya nods, her attention purposely diverted. Her fingertip hovers over the interface again.
“I think you need a moirail,” Terezi says, “I abstain.”
Kanaya shakes her head, putting her hand up to flick a stray curl away from her forehead.
“I'm just fine, okay,” she says, “Stop it.”
Terezi's horns buzz up with psionics in coils, teal flashes that arc upwards and earth on the overhanging hardware in a fizzing aqua-sweet splash.
“You are not fine,” she says, “Anybody can see that.”
A bead of sweat rolls down Kanaya's forehead.
“My reasons are private,” she says, and bites down on her lip.
The vessel creaks, some part of the bio-interface network underneath the metal skin easing into the gaps and voids and coiling around empty ventilation tubes. Kanaya's lips part with a soft pop. Terezi's mouth opens too, inhaling silently to taste the air. Hours-old sweat under high-priced, high-blood perfume, the acrid nylon and broken insect stench of the fabric extruder.
“If you're going to tease me, I will hold it against you forever.” Terezi says, puffing out a breath to clear her palette.
The extruder honks with a jarring noise, the job done. Three pairs of nearly-identical shoes stand at the exit port, faux leather glistening.
“I won't remember it,” Kanaya says, “And in fact I don't remember why I came.”
She twists away, leaving Terezi on the stand.
Terezi stays, digging the pad of their thumb into the still-raw skin around the healed-up edge of the metal contact at her wrist. It runs a jarring jolt of pain back up her arm to her elbow, clearing her head.
“Let us be clear,” Terezi says to Kanaya's retreating back, “I also knew Vriska. I knew that you wanted her, that is no surprise as everybody else did. I also know that pride kept you quiet.”
Kanaya turns away to the console input, tapping at it with upset vehemence. The metal around the keys dip under her force.
“Do you want to save my hands just so they can touch you back?” Terezi calls from the platform. She steps off, and the computer registers the lack of weight with an offended beep.
“You know you wanted her hands. Did you keep them?”
Kanaya bristles, slamming a fist into the console. It drips a greyish ooze between the cracks.
“Perhaps I will have to cancel this appointment. And the next person will not be quite so forgiving.”
Terezi’s psionics buzz again, splashing from contact to contact down the length of her arms. Her fingertips tremble with the force and feel of it, holding two palmfuls of mental energy. A pace away from the helm station platform, the psionics are no longer earthed usefully into shipboard power flow.
“Highbloods always want a lowblood bulge,” Terezi says, “Do I slap you or pap you?”
She gestures swiftly with her left hand, throwing an arc; it lands with a sting on the close-cut angle of Kanaya's nape.
“Ow,” Kanaya says clearly, shivering at the jolt.
“There is a reason,” Terezi says, digging harder, “You’re here with unfinished business. I can’t help.”
“That is assault on a superior officer,” Kanaya says, turning to face her, thoroughly finished.
“You don’t believe that really, do you?”
Terezi’s right hand gestures smoothly, a far more gentle motion. The teal-blue light reaches for Kanaya’s face, and earths lightly on her cheek with a quiet paf as she tips her face away from it.
“Shoosh,” Terezi croons, “You can’t exchange me for her.”
Kanaya’s head dips. She looks back to the broken console, the grey goo already setting firmly in the air to seal up the gap.
“I didn’t want her back,” she says slowly, “I know it’s impossible.”
“What do you really want?”
Kanaya’s arms raise in a hopeless shrug.
“I miss her. Don’t you?”
“I did.”