The Element of Surprise
I had to work hard to keep this hidden from Joshua and believable, to say nothing of making myself understood. I know my crazy for inventing stuff can get a bit much but Andy was game for anything and he made it awesome. Thanks, Andy!--Maer
Sunday, 14 Nov 2523
Durance class Exeter
En route to Highgate
1530 hrs, ship's time
I came off the stairs to the crew deck and paused in the lounge—chances were Joshua would either be in the galley or in hydroponics working off his manic. I listened and heard splashing and turned my steps aft. Sure enough, I found Joshua in the galley working on something. I leaned on the jamb and watched for a moment, taking him in.
His back was to me, but he seemed happy. I took in the various bowls of ingredients he'd already laid out, eyed the pots and pans in play, and tried to guess what he'd planned to cook. The final dish eluded me. Everywhere I looked I could see his hand, from the precise way the pots and pans hung on their racks, to the dirtied bowls and utensils rinsed and waiting a full wash in the sink. It all told me quite clearly that Joshua was in his element and was the ruler of his domain.
All of which I expected, really.
The weapon we'd breathed in affected us differently. We were all insufferably confident and more than a bit manic about it, but how it was expressed took different forms. I had to watch myself like a hawk in the engine room lest my drug-induced condition led me to do something catastrophically stupid. Which nearly happened this morning and I was just coherent enough to get out of there and find something more constructive to do.
Which, of course, was ready and waiting. I just needed someone to share it with. I grinned at Joshua's back and decided that there was no time like the present. After all, that was my foremost idea.
"Hey," I said softly. He had a knife working on some vegetables and I didn't want to startle him into cutting off a finger. "Got a moment for me?"
---
As Joshua prepped dinner, he thought about the crew and how they were handling the trip. Arden was unaffected, except by Nika, who seemed almost sloshy happy and didn't mind falling into bed with the good doctor. He guessed Kiera was happy, but she had been mostly avoiding him, except for mealtimes, when she brought her guitar to help perform. Rina...well, Rina was manic but it was a manic brought about by a severe overconfidence and a general lack of concern for the potential effects. But she had handled it pretty well so far.
Joshua didn't feel like the Pax derivative had affected him much. His behavior didn't feel much different to him. Maybe Blue Sun had done something to him that basically nullified the effects. When she entered the galley, he Read her surface thoughts quickly to save time. "Put all those thoughts of pipes and ball bearings out of your head, silly, and come help me fix the Kung Pao chicken."
---
Damn. I should have thought of kittens. Dead ones.
I narrowed my gaze on the counter with the ingredients to avoid thinking further on the surprise and took up the least dangerous object I could find. A spoon. Even so, several methods by which I could kill someone with it zipped through my head before I could stop them.
Hm. Make that less dangerous object.
Aloud I said, "What do you need me to do?"
---
"Don't kill me with the spoon and chop the chili peppers over there, please. They are the last thing I've not gotten to. Don't worry, you'll be fine with the knife." Joshua didn't know why he hadn't done this sort of level of reading before. It made things so much more efficient. And with so much to get done and so little time to do it, every moment mattered. He then turned his attention to the chicken pieces, which needed to be lightly spiced.
---
I slipped the spoon into my pocket and pulled a knife from the block and got to it. The knife was wicked sharp, just the way I liked it, and it made fast work of the hapless peppers. When I'd reduced them to tidbits four millimeters square, I forced myself to stop and ask, "How fine do you need them?"
---
"Bite sized, please." Joshua scraped the newly spiced chicken pieces off the board into a waiting bowl with a dramatic sweep of the knife. "So, you going to tell me what this surprise is or do I have to wait longer?"
---
I frowned at the peppers under my hands.
Bite sized for a mouse, maybe. Hell, it's all going to the same place no matter what size it is.
I wordlessly swept my mistake into a waiting bowl and slid it across the counter to him, distracting myself from his leading question by calculating the amount of push needed to send the bowl sliding next to but not into the others. By the time it stopped, I'd suppressed what I wanted to hide and sent a prayer of thanks Heavenward for Mike's training.
"It can wait a few minutes longer," I said, finally daring to look at him. "The chicken, however, can't. It'll spoil if you let it sit out. Besides, there's no telling if Jahn'll get it in his little kitty head to play food critic and try some behind our backs."
---
Joshua smiled. So it was something she had to show him, not tell him. He filed the piece of information away. He maneuvered the chicken around in the bowl, making sure all the pieces were covered in the soy sauce-sherry-cornstarch marinade. He then swung the fridge door open and slid the bowl onto the middle shelf. "Now we have to wait. For the marinade, that is."
---
"Fair enough," I said, distracting myself with the stinging of my hands. Pepper juice. The very devil. The sink was at my right elbow and I made good use of the hot water and soap. Having gained relief, I wiped my hands dry and turned for the door. "C'mon. It's this way."
Careful...
I counted the deck plates underfoot, noticing several had their borders dinged by something small and with a flat-edge profile, and let myself dwell on what could have caused it all the way down to the cargo bay. When we came off the bottom tread (with 10 of the mystery nicks counted and filed away for future repair), I finally allowed myself to relax. I bounded over to the portside ladder up and waved him to join me.
"C'mon over here. I need to see if this fits you or not."
I picked up the mess of webbing and cords and carabiners and held it out to him.
---
Rina had definitely become even more detail oriented. But that's ok, he realized. Joshua had just gotten better at letting that sort of information just flow past him. He let her distractions distract him on the way to viewing the surprise, so he wouldn't be tempted to dig deeper and Read it out of her. And when she handed him the surprise, he was so glad he did. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked, with a gleeful grin plastered on his face.
---
He was genuinely surprised and knowing I'd managed to pull it off made me soar. My feet were still firmly planted on the deck but my grin widened as I answered.
"Try it on and find out."
---
Her joy just fed directly into his, making him even happier. He felt good and he never wanted to feel any differently than he did in this moment. He slipped an arm and a shoulder in, but started to get himself a little tangled in his excitement to put it on. "Wanna give me some help getting this in place? Gives you an excuse to touch me and if you help me slip this on, maybe I'll help you slip something off later on." He gave her a sly smile. And maybe slip something in too, he lewdly thought to himself.
---
Joshua had no idea how irresistible he was at that moment, all manly and clueless, and the promise of sex wasn't even necessary to make me want him naked and grappling me. I stepped right up and gave him a hungry kiss even as my hands got busy sliding the harness off him.
---
He could kiss her forever because, damn, she tasted good. Fire and spice and just a hint of sweat. One of the few ways that he had noticed that the pax had affected him was that his senses seemed enhanced, or at least more sensitive. He wasn't sure that he actually believed that was true. But in this case, the illusion of reality was as good as reality itself. His desire to just take her right here and now warred with his desire to see the equipment on him correctly. In the end, the harness won, if only because he knew that the sex might be even better with a little more anticipation thrown in to the pot. Just like with cooking, you gotta have all the right ingredients if you want a truly fantastic result.
He broke away from the kiss as she managed to start untangling him. "So how did you think to do this?"
---
"Doing it backwards, love," I said throatily and knelt on the deck in front of him. I gave him a roguish smile and waited a beat just to tease him. As rewarding as heating up the sheets with Joshua would be, I wanted to savor what was about to happen right now. I was going to wring every last drop of pleasure from it, before doing the same with him. I shook out the tangles and held the harness ready for him to step into.
"As for where I got the idea," I said and smoothed the leg straps across his thighs before sliding my hands up to buckle him in. "I got it from you." I gave his crotch a gentle stroke and winked. "You, sir, are Peter Pan grounded and you got me thinking." I got the belt buckled good and tight and gave the rig a tug to check it before rising further to get his arms through the straps. "And you know with me, it's a very short step from thinking about it to doing it, right?" I ran my hands around his shoulders to his back, checking for twists in the webbing that would cut off circulation. The last thing I wanted was him passing out on me. At least, not until we've had our fun.
And since drawing out the suspense was a good part of that fun, I kissed him again, grabbing him by his harness to pull him into me.
Oh, yes, I was going to enjoy this immensely...
---
"You're going to help me fly, huh? Oh, and then you'll get me into the abseiling equipment after that..." Joshua smiled naughtily at Rina after the kiss. He took a moment to make sure everything was in place. Rina had done a fantastic job, which wasn't surprising. She didn't do anything halfway. "So how do I look?" He maneuvered as much as he could in the setup.
---
"Silly." I kissed him again and went for his tonsils for one intense moment. And reluctantly came up for air. "Sexy." I snapped the chest buckles in place and gave him a playful push toward the portside ladder. "And as ready as you'll ever be."
---
Joshua climbed up the ladder, a little awkwardly with all the harness and equipment on him. It was about 15 feet up to the top and when he got up to the small platform at the end, he realized that he didn't think he had actually ever been up there before. You've not been on the Exeter that long, after all. And some portion of it was spent feeling all crazy because of the ghosts, so certainly understandable.
Joshua looked down. It'd be quite a drop if he fell. So he focused on not looking down and staying balanced on the platform.
---
I stepped into my own harness and buckled in, all the while watching Joshua's progress. I climbed up after him and in a minute I'd joined him on the platform.
"It's simple," I said as I unbuckled a carabiner and a length of tac cord from the top rung. The ceiling was a mere five feet overhead as were the tracks the cargo webbing attached to. Standing carefully, I put my hand up and drew one of the webbing trolleys closer. "See these? We'll clip on to this, with this." I held up the carabiner and its line. "You can clip on from the back or from the front." I demonstrated the front-clip assembly on myself, running the line through the half dozen carabiners attached to my harness. I got the knots in the cord in place and turned to Joshua. "So how do you want it?" I asked slyly. "From behind or from the front?"
---
"You know that I like to go at it from behind..." He smiled again as he waited for her to attach the line.
---
"And I like it from the front," I grinned ferally at him. "I like to see them coming."
I got him hooked up and double checked the connections. While a fall of 15 feet wouldn't necessarily kill Joshua, it would put a major crimp in his day. I clipped myself to a trolley and clipped him to his and kissed him long and deep. Thanks to the Pax, a million things flashed through my head at once: everything that could go wrong with the equipment, the mathematical formula for the amount of force we'd hit the deck below based on our weight and acceleration due to gravity, and the goddamned taste and scent of him filling my head and making me crazy for more of him. If this was going to be the last kiss I got before I plunged to my death, I might as well make the most of it. I sucked down a breath and kissed him again, going harder and deeper.
---
As they kissed, Joshua pushed them both off the platform and the rush of adrenaline from the kiss combined with the rush of adrenaline from the feeling of soaring through the air. He let go of the kiss just so he could laugh out loud in delight. They had actually gotten a surprising amount of momentum from that initial swing and he was pretty sure they were (he was?) going to hit the far wall, but he didn't care. He was alive and he was flying and it was amazing.
---
Oh, dear God I love his man.
His laughter spiked through me, warm and buoyant, and the joy that bubbled up inside made me want to die. Such happiness wasn't meant for mortals. Only angels could withstand it. But maybe, just maybe, like the angels we could fly.
I wrapped my arms and legs around him and smiled ... and gave him one more surprise.
"Happy Birthday, Joshua."
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