Work Text:
As far as space pirate ships went, the Carte Blanche was deeply unsexy.
There was nothing particularly appealing about the shape of the exterior. It was largely ovular, the least sexy of shapes, and between the standard, unpainted metal panels of the hull and the dull eggshell white of the interior cabins, the Carte Blanche was fairly puritanical for a ship in its specific universe.
That was alright by the crew. Due to a clerical error, the entire crew of the Carte Blanche were betas.
While this rather dulled the aesthetic of space pirates, they could hardly complain about its effectiveness. With no crew members going into blind rages or wilting over couches on a whim, their average productivity was far above most other space pirate crews.
Juno would have suspected that Buddy planned this to help with the team’s general morale and amicability, but they all still had their disagreements, given that they were people with traits and personalities unaffected by their alignment. Besides, such a ploy for utmost professionalism and productivity in the workplace would be pro-Capitalist and go against the core values of the crew as a whole.
Whether or not the Carte Blanche was a sexy vessel didn’t matter. Its crew had survived a turbulent year, secured the Curemother Prime, and most recently, managed to piece together a wedding in three days. Their accomplishments stood on their own, and that was something Juno could be proud of.
Juno had only planned one wedding, but one was enough to know exactly how much work went into the matter. The fact that the crew managed to pull together such a beautiful occasion in such a narrow window of time was no small feat.
Juno wouldn’t have expected anything else from a group of people as competent and as unsexy as the crew of the Carte Blanche. For all their familial squabbles, the six of them were the kind of one and a million group of people Juno would believe could pull off just about anything.
He supposed one didn’t need a lot of bells and whistles on a wedding when the main theme seemed to be space--the physical distance between people, the emotional distance between people, and the mass of velvety purple whirling all around them from the great, eyelike window watching over the wedding with an approving gleam.
There was a certain weight to that space, in whatever way a void could have substance. A few minutes ago, the handful of feet between Juno and where Nureyev stood, holding to his instrument and watching the wedding with rapt intensity, felt like miles. However, with the speeches wrapping around him like the gentle hold of a favorite blanket, Juno couldn’t help but appreciate just how small that space was.
The distance that stretched between Mars and Brahma might as well have been an infinity. Just a few thousand years ago, it was an impossibility. The fact that two people, falling through the void of time and space like comets, could just happen to collide and choose to stay together, no matter what forces tugged them elsewhere, had a kind of beauty in itself.
Even more beautiful was the brief space between them now. While they had chosen closeness over the cold of the void, they still made room for a space when necessary. Love, attachment, or whatever other kind of bonds held people together didn’t change the fact that they were people at the end of the day, and people, being human, were fluid things. As people and their relationships evolved, the amount of space they wanted or needed evolved to.
There was a certain beauty in the option to give someone he loved breathing room, especially when knowing that space wouldn’t last forever. Love, in a way, meant watching someone walk away and trusting wholeheartedly that they would come back.
Juno would have spent a lot more time ruminating on the concept of space if all the space visible from the window hadn’t been swallowed whole by the great, dark shadow of an unseen vessel.
“What is that?” Rita stuttered.
“A massive interstellar cruiser,” Jet thought aloud, trailing off. “I’ve never seen one so large move so quickly.”
“Dark Matters,” Buddy swallowed.
Before Buddy had time to conjure anything more than a half order, the sound of the opening door sliced through the dead silence throbbing in the room.
Juno was well aware there wasn’t any wind in space, but the Dark Matters agents brought a distinct chill with them anyway. He could hardly believe he once made eyes at anybody in one of those suits. If he weren’t a beta, he might have been able to excuse it. However, he was a beta, so he only had his general baseline personality to blame. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t a beta.
If the sound of the door had been the slice of a knife, the sound of the agents’ footsteps was the pounding of an executioner’s drum.
The agents were all armed to the teeth and proud to show it. They were packing more heat than an omega convention. None of the members of the Carte Blanche cared about that because they were all betas, but they still cared about not getting shot, so they stayed silent.
At least, the majority of them stayed silent.
Buddy and Agent G traded words like they were blows in a battle. Juno could barely keep track of the conversation between all the sharp eyes and sharp expressions and sharp words lashing back and forth across the room as both of them tried to keep their cool and present an image of authority to the gathered crowd.
He was so busy following the conversation that he nearly missed when another agent’s blaster shot its load and sent Agent G toppling to the ground as the space of the room began to reek of ozone.
Juno knew who it was the moment she stepped forward. He couldn’t have mistaken Sasha Wire if he wanted to.
Sasha Wire didn’t enter a room so much as she held it for ransom. Any in her presence were like musicians unto a conductor, breaths quick and hearts pounding and eyes rapt in a desperate scan for any twitch of the wrist that might imply an oncoming movement. Sasha could play any room like a fiddle if she wanted. That so-recently anointed space went tense around her, knowing better than to make sudden movements.
Being an alpha was not a prerequisite for being a girlboss. However, it certainly didn’t hurt.
Sasha sniffed the room, eyes visibly narrowing behind her sunglasses. From the casual nature of the murder, Juno almost expected her lips to curl into a smile at the scent of the blasterfire. However, his heart dropped into his stomach at the sight of a glare crossing her face instead.
“Agents,” she began, voice as hard as a fill in your own joke here, “this may just be the unsexiest vessel we have ever set foot on.”
The agents, seeing their own dead brethren upon the floor, knew better than to disagree. They wouldn’t have anyway, regardless of whether or not Sasha had just killed Agent G. As far as spaceships went, the Carte Blanche was not a sexy one, and neither was its crew. The Aurinko Crime Family itself was fine with that, but Juno guessed it was a bit more of an acquired taste for those accustomed to the alpha-ridden corporate ladder at Dark Matters.
Sasha sniffed again, this time with distaste rather than intention.
“I have better places to waste my time,” she decided with a shake of her head. “You’re on thin ice, Aurinko. You had better not inconvenience us so severely again.”
“Duly noted,” Buddy replied as coldly as she could without getting shot herself.
“Fall out,” Sasha called, though not without one last steely look over her shoulder at the unsexy crew whose unsexiness had allowed them to live another day free of the wrath of Dark Matters.
As the footsteps faded and the door closed behind the interlopers, the room itself seemed to take a shuddering breath. The shadow over the window vanished, leaving nothing but the crew of the Carte Blanche, shaken, puritanical, and most importantly, alive.
Juno cut the tension with a fat rip from his sim cheesecake vape, replacing all the meaning in the space between the crew with the sweet synthetic smell of the cloud.
“What the hell was her problem?” Juno asked from behind the massive vape rip.
“Gosh, Mistah Steel, I thought we were gonna be goners for real this time,” Rita breathed, wiping her brow. “I didn’t think this whole dynamic thing would be so important to people that it would make up their minds on all their major decisions and cloud their judgement and stuff, but I guess you never know with some people, you know? I just thought that if an organization like Dark Matters has all this tech, it’s probably gonna be competent enough to move past all that stuff, but then again--”
“I am just happy all of us have survived uninjured,” Jet nodded.
“I’ll drink to that,” Vespa shuddered, “I thought I was gonna have to get this brand new suit bloody on my wedding day. I’d really have to make them pay then.”
“Amen,” Juno vaped in agreement.
“Could you perhaps spit cloud further away from my depressing instrument, love?” Nureyev called from somewhere beyond the dessert scented abyss of misted vape juice. “It’s terrible for the wood. My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience.”
“Nah, you’re fine,” Juno replied quickly, temporarily stuffing his vape pen back into his pocket. “I get it.”
It wasn’t even an excuse to make peace. He was all too happy to put more space between himself and the one he loved, especially knowing that the space was small enough that they could mutually decide to close it at any time. Communicating boundaries with someone was a part of loving someone, whether those boundaries were a request not to bring up certain topics or a request to vape further away from one’s depressing instrument.
Nureyev looked at Juno across that space they chose to hold in their hands together and smiled. Juno returned the expression in kind before disappearing behind another fat vape rip.
There were a million ways to tell someone you loved them. Juno hoped to spend the rest of his life finding them all. Smiling in the middle of his sim cheesecake scented vape cloud, Juno was pretty sure he’d just discovered another one.