Work Text:
“Your boyfriend’s on the holos again.” Baoxiang’s voice through the speakers was melodious, carefully modulated. A bit deeper than it had been the previous day, because he always liked to play around with it, the same way he played around with his avatar.
Esen pressed the button on his wristband to turn the nearest screen on, and then, only belatedly, as he navigated to a news channel, said, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Against his shoulder, the metal wall of The Iridescent Scholar warmed and began, gently, to vibrate. Baoxiang’s way of laughing, followed only a beat or two later by an audible laugh through the speakers. “Your celebrity crush, then.”
On the screen, the crew of The Gentle Empress was assembled in front of a smoking wreckage of some sort. There was text at the bottom of the screen, scrolling quickly, but it was in characters, which Esen couldn’t read. Zhu Yuanzhang was talking, gesticulating wildly with her prosthetic hand, the flesh one clasped on the shoulder of her first mate, Xu Da, who, being much taller than her, was gamely stooping to allow her to do so.
Probably Esen could find out what the wreckage was about if he bothered to turn on the volume, but he didn’t much care. His gaze slid, helplessly, to Zhu Yuanzhang’s right, where The Gentle Empress’s chief of security was standing. There was a bruise darkening on his jaw, and his cuffs were frayed, his hands covered in soot. Esen’s stomach clenched.
“They’re in sector fourteen,” Baoxiang said, in a sing-song tone. “A ship crashed into a space station and The Gentle Empress was the only nearby ship big enough to take on the refugees.”
Sector fourteen was less than half a day’s travel from their current position. “And you learned all this from the broadcast?”
“It would help if you learned to read characters,” Baoxiang said, in a tone of smug superiority. And then, “No. We just got pinged by a government ship. They’re looking for volunteers to handle the cleanup and we’re within range.”
“It’s not on our route,” Esen said.
The air to his left shimmered, and Baoxiang coalesced into view, sprawled on the floor. He had given himself a ridiculous headdress made of branches covered in small, pink blossoms, and a set of layered robes in a dizzying array of colors. “Do you really want to miss your chance to see him again?”
“What would I even say?” Esen said, laughing in spite of himself. “That I think he’s handsome? Half the galaxy thinks he’s handsome. I don’t even… what could I even offer him?”
Baoxiang was looking at him, horribly tender. “Oh, Esen,” he said. He shimmered away, and reappeared, much closer. Close enough that Esen could feel the artificial warmth of the projection, and the faint buzzing against his skin that felt, almost, like brushing against another person. Slowly, Baoxiang reached out and put his hand over Esen’s. He’d altered himself so that the touch felt real, corporeal. Warmth and softness, even if no mindship could quite replicate the feeling of touching skin. “Sex isn’t the end-all and be-all of all romantic relationships.”
“I know that,” Esen said, though, really, he didn’t. He’d never had a romantic relationship. Not a real one, anyway, only endless rounds of meetings with people picked out for him by matchmakers, who had all looked disappointed when he hadn’t wanted to touch them, and who had all declined to meet him again.
“I think he liked you.”
“He was just being nice,” Esen said, trying to dispel the image those words conjured, Ouyang’s bright eyes, his fluid grace as they sparred, the way his smile was always a little bit crooked, the thin scar over his left eyebrow. Over the two weeks they’d spent together, Esen had developed a desire to… not sleep with him, because he still didn’t quite see the appeal of that. But to be close to him. To hold his hand. To make him laugh.
It was stupid, this feeling. Like Esen had known him forever.
“He wasn’t nice to me,” Baoxiang said.
“You weren’t nice to him, either. You called him a dick.”
“He was being a dick,” Baoxiang said. And then, in a quieter tone. “And perhaps I was… maybe a bit jealous of how much attention you were paying to him.”
“You were jealous? I didn’t think you’d even noticed my absence. You were spending all your time with…” he trailed off. There was a reason beyond terminal shyness Esen hadn’t kept up a rapport with any of the people from The Gentle Empress.
“She’s the first other mindship I’ve ever really known,” Baoxiang said quietly. Mindships were much rarer in the Khaganate than in other parts of the galaxy. Baoxiang had only been the fifth they’d created, and Chaghan had been bursting with pride when his sister had been selected to bear him. Even when the birthing had killed her, her mind destroyed by the strain of it, Chaghan had been proud. He had taken the infant mindship in, and raised him alongside Esen, and named him The Golden Stampede. He had boasted to anyone who would listen how his adopted son would become a warship.
And then Baoxiang had grown, and he had been nothing like Chaghan had hoped. He had applied for a change in name and designation as soon as he’d come of age, and he’d been traveling between the Khaganate and the Empire as a merchant-class ship ever since. Esen had gone with him. Every year, for New Year’s, he’d sent a message home, and an array of gifts, and he’d never received anything back, until, two years before, the package had been returned to him, the words Recipient Deceased. Return to Sender. stamped on it.
“I’m sorry,” Esen said, uselessly.
“Your life is short, Big Brother. You can’t waste it trying to protect me from heartbreak. I’ll get over her. And if I don’t… mindships live for a long time and Zhu Yuanzhang is human. One day she will be gone, and Ma Xiuying and I will still be here.” Baoxiang wasn’t looking at him. He was staring up at the ceiling, at the poem that was appearing on it, line by line. First in characters, and then, next to it, in the flowing Mongolian script. Baoxiang kept changing it, and Esen was bad at deciphering poetry anyway, but he understood enough.
“Fine, fine,” he said, “I’m taking your incredibly unsubtle hints.”
“Good,” Baoxiang said. He turned towards Esen and smiled, like a cat, the expression the same as when he’d been barely more than a child, and had just learned how to make himself look human. “I already changed course to sector fourteen. And pinged the government ship back to signal our availability to help. Ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you for being so respectful of my wishes, Baobao,” Esen said. His stomach was churning. He tapped his wristband with trembling fingers and scrolled down his contacts. The last message he’d sent to Ouyang, six months before, Meet you there seemed to stare almost accusingly at him. It seemed weird to write now that so much time had passed. Ouyang had surely forgotten him by now.
But it would be weirder not to write. And at least if Ouyang didn’t want to have anything to do with him he could just ignore him via message instead of doing it in person.
We’re coming your way. Clean-up duty.
I look forward to seeing you again. How have you been?
This is Esen, by the way. Your ship picked me and my brother up in sector seven last year. My brother’s a mindship. He had an engine failure.
There. Now Esen had humiliated himself, Ouyang could ignore him and they could both get on with their lives.
Esen’s wristband buzzed.
I remember who you are.
Or Esen could find the nearest airlock and throw himself out of it.
Nothing followed Ouyang’s message, for long enough that Esen’s heart quieted and he managed to make himself walk to the canteen and heat up dinner.
And then, as he washed the dishes, the wristband buzzed again.
I look forward to seeing you, too.
And then, a handful of seconds later.
I’ve missed you.
***
Ouyang caught up with Zhu just outside the fifth deck’s mess-hall. “I’m going to murder you,” he said, not bothering to raise his voice, and then grabbed her arm and shook her until she dropped his wristband.
She was wheezing, and he was almost worried about that until he realized that it was with laughter. “Insubordination!” she gasped. “Mutiny! Yingzi, save me!”
Ouyang’s feet went out from under him and he slammed his chin into the cold metal floor. His already-bruised chin. “Fuck you,” he said, once he could breathe again. “Turning the ship against me? Just because-”
“Thank you, my sweet darling wife,” Zhu said, talking over him, and planted a big, showy kiss to the stretch of wall next to her head. Disgusting.
“Stop acting like an idiot,” Ma said, her avatar materializing in the corridor. Ouyang might almost have appreciated her for it, despite his still-throbbing chin, but the way she said it made it clear that she was flirting.
Zhu put a hand to her chest, collapsing dramatically against the wall.
“If you two start making out in front of me I will send a report to Human Resources,” Ouyang said. Honestly, Zhu stealing his wristband and using the access codes she was entrusted with in case he died to send messages to Esen without his authorization should have rated an HR visit on its own, but complaining about it would make Ouyang look stupid, and childish, and also like he cared far too much what Esen thought of him.
He turned his back to the sickeningly sweet couple, pointedly. His wristband had locked from disuse, and when he put it on his wrist again, it flashed with a notification.
Esen had replied already. There went Ouyang’s hope of deleting the message before he saw it.
He opened their conversation. The last message read I missed you, too.
As Ouyang looked at it, his wristband chimed softly, and another message appeared below it. Baoxiang says that if we break a few traffic laws we can be there in three hours.
Ouyang bit his lip, but was still unable to suppress a smile. Before he could talk himself out of it, he wrote back, Don’t break any laws. I’ll wait for you.