Chapter Text
The first thing Raffi registers upon surfacing from the deepest sleep she’s had in years is that the bed is shaking. The second thing she registers is that Rios is in the bed with her. The third thing she registers is that he and Seven are arguing.
“Will you please get your feet off my leg? They’re ice cold.”
“They wouldn’t be cold if you’d stop yanking the blankets off them.”
“Well maybe if you’d let me cuddle, I wouldn’t need so many blankets.”
“Touch me again and I’ll—”
“What,” Raffi rasps, struggling upright on one elbow, “the goddamn hell is going on?”
“Cris is hogging all the blankets,” Seven huffs, while at the same time Rios mutters, “She’s trying to shove me off the bed.”
“Allow me to rephrase the question. Cris, why the fuck are you in our bed?” Again, the twin responses.
Cris: “My room is haunted.”
Seven: “He heard a noise and got scared.”
Raffi closes her eyes and heaves a sigh. “I knew we shouldn’t have attended that lecture.” She opens her eyes and turns to Seven. “We went to a conference on lunar folklore before you got here. And someone,” she snarks, “forgot to tell his inner child that there aren’t any monsters under his bed.”
“I don’t think that’s how the inner child stuff works,” Cris begins, but shuts up when Raffi clicks the bedside lamp on and snaps, “Out.”
“But—”
“Out.”
“Fine,” he huffs, standing and shuffling toward the door. “But if a ghost kidnaps me in my sleep and feeds me to the moon hyenas, I’m coming back to haunt your ass.”
“Moon hyenas? What the hell kind of lecture did you attend?”
“A bad one,” Raffi mutters, glaring at Rios, who makes a face and gives her the finger as he slowly closes the door. “Sorry,” she sighs once he’s gone. “He’s not normally like that.”
“Yes he is,” Seven says, but her words are without rancor. She sounds like she’s reciting a simple fact. And given that it’s Seven, she probably is.
Raffi switches off the light and settles back onto her pillow, smiling as Seven curls around her side. “Lunar folklore, huh?”
“Bunch of horseshit if you ask me.”
Seven huffs a laugh and kisses her jaw. Raffi hums in appreciation, then closes her eyes as Seven continues to explore, sending tingling waves of warmth up and down her spine. By the time Seven reaches her mouth—lips warm, arms warm, fingers moving down—Raffi’s irritation is gone. “If this is the price of a late-night wake-up call, I’ll take it.”
In the dark, against her skin, she feels Seven smile.
The next night, Raffi gets a solid three hours of sleep before she wakes up to Rios jostling her arm. “Oh no,” she says upon opening her eyes and seeing him bending over her with bedhead and bloodshot eyes, “not again.”
“Yes again,” he insists, tugging her out of bed. “You gotta come see this. There’s a ghost in my bathroom and I swear I’m not pulling your leg.”
Five minutes later, they stand in the doorway leading from bedroom to bathroom, every cabinet, drawer, and door hanging open. “I swear it was literally right there,” he says, pointing to the cubby to the left of the clawfoot tub.
“And I swear we’re picking the newest, cheapest, least-historical hotel to stay in the next time we travel.”
Seven pokes her head into the room. “What’s going on?”
“Will you please tell this man his room isn’t haunted?”
“You room isn’t haunted,” Seven deadpans. Then she steps inside and shuts a few dresser drawers. “You’re probably just hearing the lunar phantasms.”
“I’m sorry,” Raffi says, “the lunar what-nows?”
“I knew it.” Rios raises both hands to his head and grips the roots of his hair. He stares at the cubbyhole, then turns wide eyes on both of them. “I fucking knew it.”
“Seven,” Raffi begs.
“Haunting implies malevolence, or at the very least mischief. Lunar phantasms are harmless. Well, aside from the noise.”
“Seven.”
She shuts her mouth and looks at Raffi, clearly confused.
“That does it,” Rios says, grabbing his book off the bedside table and cocooning himself in an armful of blankets. “I’m sleeping on my ship.”
“My ship,” Seven retorts.
“Not yet it isn’t. And not tonight. Fucking lunar phantasms,” he mutters, disappearing out the door.
Raffi wraps one arm around her ribs and massages her forehead. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Okay,” she says the next day, carrying their coffee out onto the balcony. “Now that I’ve gotten my beauty sleep, I have to admit that was brilliant.”
“What was brilliant?”
She hands Seven a steaming mug. “The lunar phantasm thing. You come up with that on the fly, or…?”
Seven frowns. “I didn’t make it up. It’s true.”
Raffi snorts and nearly chokes on her coffee. “Ha ha,” she says once she’s recovered, “very funny.”
Seven sips her coffee and continues to stare at her with wrinkled brow.
Raffi lowers her mug. “Seven. Please tell me that was a joke you made up to fuck with him.”
“Why would I want to fuck with him?”
She studies her expression for any hint of amusement, but either Seven’s got a killer poker face or she’s telling the truth. “You mean you weren’t just trying to get him to leave the cabin so we could fuck?”
“We do that with people around all the time.”
“Yes but—” Raffi clenches her mug. “Never mind.”
Raffi finishes her coffee in silence and then disappears inside. Seven stays on the balcony, certain she’s done something to upset her but uncertain how to fix it. She’s about to go looking for her when the glass door slides open and Raffi steps outside.
“Okay,” she says, perching on the edge of the lounge chair Seven’s sitting on and resting her hands on her knees. “I’m ready to hear about the lunar phantasms.”
Seven searches her eyes. “Did I upset you?”
“No.” Raffi twists the soft, loose fabric of her trousers. “Well, maybe a little. But I took a step back and now I’m okay. I’m ready to hear this—” she waves her hands in the air “—legend.”
“It isn’t a legend,” Seven begins, then pauses and recalibrates when Raffi’s face does that weird stutter again. “Well, it is a legend, but like most legends, it’s based in truth.” She shifts her legs so they’re hanging over either side of the chair and pats the space between them.
Raffi turns and scoots until her back is pressed against Seven’s chest. “Tell me more?”
Seven hooks her chin over Raffi’s shoulder and wraps one arm around her waist, then uses the other to point over the edge of the balcony to the towering cliffs that make up the rim of what the locals call the Bay of Rainbows. “The legend is that the moon is haunted by a non-native alien species that evolved into pure emotion and became nomadic to prevent themselves from being assimilated by the Borg. The truth is much simpler and less dramatic than that.”
“Mm,” Raffi hums, leaning back against Seven’s chest. “And what is the truth?”
“There’s a species native to this range of mountains that exists slightly out of phase with us for nine tenths of the lunar year. But for thirty-five days, they’re just in phase enough to interact with the environment in ways that we can perceive. That’s what Rios heard last night, and the night before.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“No. A little annoying sometimes, but never dangerous. They’re…benevolent poltergeists.”
Raffi chuckles. “And to think I lived on Earth all my life and never heard about them. How do you know all this?”
Seven shrugs. “I lived here.”
Raffi leans forward and turns to look at her. “You did?”
“For a few months. After Earth, before the Rangers. Everyone took turns choosing places for us to live those first two years, and Harry picked the Moon.” She cuts Raffi a look. “Don’t ever get him started on this hunk of rock if you’re not prepared for an hour-long lecture. He gets emotional and always pulls out his clarinet.”
Raffi purses her lips in an attempt not to laugh but loses the battle. Seven smiles and dips her lips to Raffi’s shoulder, pulls her back against her chest and squeezes.
“We should probably go find Rios,” Raffi says when she stops laughing.
“Probably.”
“But not right away.”
Seven nuzzles her nose against Raffi’s ear. “Wait ten more minutes and the sun will hit those cliffs. It’ll take your breath away.”
Raffi wriggles deeper into her arms, then stills. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’re the one getting sentimental about the Moon.”
Seven kisses her neck. “It’s been known to happen.”