Catastrophe Jones

This is Issue #82 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

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It was his turn to laugh, glancing away, sighing. “I’m — I’m missing an arm. I have these wings. I got no idea how they’re maintained, how to make sure they don’t just become broken machines attached to me by bolts and wires and scars.”

She reached to slide her hand over his skin again, over the seam where his body was made of flesh, and then made of metal. “This is a part of you now, like every other scar. Like every tattoo,” she said. She leaned to kiss him, there, along the line that divided him, and when he flinched and looked away, she reached up and touched his cheek, turning his face back to hers.

She looked up at his eyes and held his gaze as she kissed him there again, as she rubbed her cheek against him, catlike, unafraid, no trace of disgust on her features. She accepted him, reveled in him, and he began to relax, finally, hope and joy waking up in his eyes.

He watched her touch him, watched her lift his hand to touch her.

After long moments of contact, of kissing, she slowly pulled back, her eyes glassy. She still held his hand, pressed it to her skin. “Now,” she sighed. “D’you want to tell me what won’t let you sleep?”

“D’you want me to?”

She nodded as she moved the palm up over her ribs, and used his hand to cup her breast, sliding the fingers over her skin, up over her collar, up to her jaw. She kissed his palm, his fingertips, ran her tongue against the edge of one copper nail and then slid his hand back down against her body.

“I want to know all of you, Einin. Every piece,” she says softly. “I know you’re not, but I’m the kind who pushes. I don’t want you to take forever to come to me,” she murmurs, letting the metallic fingertips of his hand slide over her belly, letting him explore her with that touch. She pulled the hand back down over her breasts, her ribs, her belly, then move lower.

“When I died,” Nathan said, watching Jules. “When I died, most of what I remember was being cold. It was cold, and dark, and I wasn’t me anymore, and I was losing the memory of who I was. I was alone, and I was afraid,” he whispered.

Leaning into him, she spread her legs and pulled his hand between her thighs. He cupped her there, and his other arm swung around behind her, pulling her close, so he could cover her mouth with his.

“Don’t stop.” Her mouth moved against his, and he folded her against his body, fingers grown slick between them. “Tell me.”

“I lost something of myself.” His heart pounded against his chest; she pressed herself close to him, and could feel it, thundering against hers. “Not just my arm,” he clarified. “Something else. Something important.” He fell silent, and they caught their breath from kisses, as her hands sought to peel him out of the rest of his clothes.

Familiar scars and lines mapped him; she sought old routes to well-remembered pleasures, and finally laid him back to the bed. She watched his wings fan out beneath him, an aura of glittering feathers surrounding them on the bed. She traced pathways that made his hips lift, his skin flush, his toes curl. “Keep talking, love,” she whispered. “I’m listening.” Finally, she took him into her mouth, her hands on his hips, the riot of her red curls spilling over his belly and thighs.

His voice caught as he reached down and toyed with her hair. “I wasn’t me. For awhile, before I remembered, I was someone else. I wasn’t me, and I would’ve lost you forever. I would’ve–ahh–”

Jules lifted her head, smirking. “Keep going.”

“Mercy,” Nate breathed, watching her, his eyes gone wide, his pupils blown.

“Keep. Going.” She curled a hand around him and moved slowly, almost painfully so. She put her mouth on him again, her breath hot against his thighs.

“I can’t think,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I ca–”

She pulled back to crawl up his body, to spread her legs and straddle him, one hand still around him, guiding him against her. She held his gaze as she moved with him, slowly, with painstaking care. “What are you afraid of?”

He watched as she shifted to straddle him, both of his hands held her hips as she slid against him. His heart raced in his chest, and he whispered, “I don’t–”

“Tell me,” she urged.

“What if this is all there is?” He stared up at her, his eyes wide, his body tense.

“And what if it is?” Her fierce eyes hushed him, glittering. She kissed him, moved with deliberate desire, and his heart stopped racing with fear. Instead it thundered with the quickening, rolling motion of her hips, leaving his heart humming, his spine electric. “What if it is, Einin? What if this is all there is?”

The look on Nathan’s face shifted; his brow relaxed, and then furrowed into focus, instead of worry, and his full lips broadened into a wide, lazy smile. “Just this?”

“Just this,” Jules purred, her eyes half-lidded as she sighed, relaxing into their rhythm.

Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, lost with her, biting his lower lip, forgetting his fear, forgetting mortality, forgetting worry. They were going to die. They were all going to die. But no sooner or later than they were ever going to; there was no reason to shy from it, or rail against its inevitability. Not when there was so much else to enjoy in the world. Not when there was Jules.

You came back to me, Jules thought, watching him, reveling in the way he surrendered.

He saw the dreamy look on her face, and pulled her down, leaning up to catch her mouth in a hungry kiss. “If this is all there is? Just this? This,” he breathed against her lips, laughing, letting go, “Oh, this, love, will do just fine.”

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This is Issue #81 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

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* * *

There was silence, but only briefly. “Can’t?”

“They roughed me up but good, Nate.” Her voice was abrupt and without apology.

His expression crumpled in the dark.

Jules could see the outline of it, the sharp angles of his grief lit up by the faint blue of the aetheric torch.

Rage and pain, and so much sorrow, to know she had been so hurt, and no one had stopped it. He cleared his throat, cleared his mind — focusing on his own anguish would get him nowhere. She was telling him, finally, and he’d be damned if anything got in the way. “Oh, love. Is… Is there anything I can do?”

“To what? Fix it?” Her lips twisted in frustration.

“Well, no, no,” he promised, shaking his head. “Not if you’re tellin me it’s a done thing. But to ease it, maybe. So if you see the soldiers again, it doesn’t blind you?”

Jules was silent again, for a long time, feeling Nathan’s pulse in his fingertips as they laid against hers. “Aren’t you disappointed? Y’wanted t’get out of here. Bridgewater. Babies. Retire and raise strawberries.” She laughed quietly, tears in her eyes. “I was actually afraid to tell you. I didn’t want you to lose your dream, Einin.”

“I guess, if I have t’think about it,” Nate said, shrugging. The movement rustled his wings, made them chime quietly. “Disappointed, maybe, but not in you. Now’s not rightly the time for me to worry about sowin seeds.”

She smiled faintly, shaking her head at his terminology.

“You’re tellin me you got injured past injury. You got assaulted.” He paused, and then said the words aloud, “Y’got raped, Jules n’I don’t need the details unless you want ’em out there. You tellin me… If it heals somethin, then spill it. If it makes it better, if it closes the wound, then tell me every last moment of it, and I’ll listen, and I’ll stay right here, and I’ll keep you safe, so you aren’t lost in it, but unless that does somethin for you, you never gotta satisfy that kind of curiosity in me.”

“So you’d never ask?”

“Like as not, unless you start tellin me you need me to. I could see, from before the Maxima goin’ down, how being close t’me hurt you. How you stayed with Sha. It was all right; you needed her. Abe and I caught up,” he whispered. “But you were stiff when I held you. You were happy to please, in bed, but you got shy when I went to return the favor.”

Jules slumped, her face burning, “I didn’t mean for–”

“What, for me t’notice y’had feelings? Mercy, Jules, Y’flew with Abe too long,” he said, earnest. “I know the Krieg in you demands strength. But come now. The Celd in you has to know I won’t shame you. I won’t demand you be all better. I won’t make it about me. Y’got hurt. Y’got fucked up. But y’don’t have t’go it alone.”

She turned and looked at him again, swallowing roughly. “N’if I never want t’tell you the details?”

“What, like I should make you relive something beyond shitty because I deserve every bit of fact about your life, regardless of how much it hurts? Do I own you, Mrs. O’Malley? What do I say?”

She blushed, smiling shyly — a look she’d never worn for anyone else.

“What do I say, Jules?” he whispered, leaning in to barely brush his lips to hers.

“You say: ‘Go anywhere. Do anything. Fly. Just… Come back t’me’,” she said, breathless. There were tears on her face, but they weren’t of pain as she wrapped her arms around him and sank into his embrace, covering his face with kisses.

“I’m here,” he promised. “And I’m yours.”

“I’m here,” Jules answered back. “And I’m yours.”

“S’all we need, yeah?”

He reached to touch her, to slide his hand against her, to pull away the uniform gently, carefully. He watched her while he did it, watched her face, her eyes, her mouth. He looked for the tension, looked for the fear, and guided himself carefully around its edges, letting her come to him.

She warmed to his touch, shifted to offer the curve of her neck, the rise and fall of her shoulder, down past her back.

When his fingertips slid around to the base of her spine, he paused. In the faint hollow of her lower back, his first two fingers rested. He felt the scars there, fresh and merciless. He bared her, and turned her so he could see her skin, laid her down on her belly, and sucked in a breath through his teeth when he saw the line of scars running down her spine. “Oh, Jules.” He shook, hands trembling as he felt something ignite behind his eyes. “Did he–”

“No,” Jules interrupted, quickly. “The Queen.”

“Do they hurt?”

“Not anymore,” she murmured.

He carefully touched each one, and then leaned down and over her, kissing them, pair by pair, taking in the new patterns of her skin.

She lay beneath his touch, his eyes, trembling with an excited sort of nervousness as she made herself vulnerable, allowed him the nearness she had tried to refuse to feel.

He carefully rolled her back over, and helped her sit up, wanting her to feel in control, safe, rather than hovered over, suffocated. The whole time, he’d carefully used the mechanical hand to undo buttons, to pull straps, but he didn’t let it touch her bare skin. When it was time to hold her, to keep her close, he let that part of himself be still, kept it from her.

When she sat up, she reached for it, twining her fingers in the delicate machinery of his. “Can you feel me?” She watched the gears move, the springs twist, the tiny pistons shift. “Can you feel me, with…”

Nathan’s eyes held to Jules; he watched her with a hunger she could feel, a pressure that was there more than his touch, surrounding her, cradling her. How had she ever thought he would crush her with something so gentle? “With my fantastically amazing new appendage?”

“Y’not allowed t’call it that,” Jules snorted, laughing. The absurdity of their situation, his humor, her laugh — it didn’t dispel the need, the intimacy; it broadened the strength of their connection. They were neither of them perfect, but they still fit, and it was good.

“I can.” He nodded, and his smile deepened. “Feel you, that is. Pressure, and warmth. Friction. S’an aetheric current runs through it, like nerves,” he said quietly.

“Does it… does it come off?” Curious, she reaches to unsnap his shirt, finding all the ways it attached under his arm, under his wings, pulling it away to bare his tanned, tattooed flesh. She traced her fingers around the bronze cap at his shoulder, pulled gently at it, felt where his skin met the metal, where he became one with the device, and could no longer be separated.

“Not in any good way, I imagine,” he said softly.

“Y’makin a face.” Her voice was quiet, not reproachful, but teasing.

“It’s just my face,” he promised.

“No. Your face is sweeter than that. Right now, y’makin a face like y’waiting for me t’run screamin.” Her voice was blunt, easy.

“I’m not whole anymore,” Nathan whispered quietly. “I’m not the man I was.”

Jules smiled up at him. “Y’so adorable. Don’t spoil it by talkin bullshit.”

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This is Issue #80 of DeathWatch, Book II: tentatively called Heart Of Ilona, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find DeathWatch, the first in the series, or start from the beginning of Book II!

Happy Reading!

PREVIOUS

* * *

A hearty laugh moved through the crew, and Hugo and Nate smirked at one another.

“Go,” Jules called. “Get cozy with your stations, and get cozy with your mates. It’s been fucking months of horror for so many of you, and it’s not quite over yet. You’ll need sleep before the dawn — our allies say we’re safe enough here for the night, but nothing’s guaranteed come morning.”

“Morning,” Hugo said. “I heard tomorrow, maybe the night, the Kriegs’ll be here. That they’re invading, finally.”

Jules nodded. “Let me be clear about one thing — tomorrow, we fight against the Kriegs.” She lifted her hands up to stay the sudden rising volume of shocked cries. “If you can’t do it, and I sure as faith’n’fuckall won’t make you, I’ll need you to stay below,” Jules explained. “This is an Ilonan ship, and the Kriegs will blow us out of the sky if they can. When the battle’s over, we’re promised freedom. Does anyone doubt me?”

“You?” Brett laughed darkly. “Never. Ilona? Every day, every word. But if you say this makes us safe, Commander, then we’re safe, and we’ll follow you.”

“Safe? Mm, that’s a loaded word, ‘gator. We’re safe enough, for the night. As far as the rest of it goes, I say we’ve got a choice, and a chance, and that’s more than a lot of people have, right now,” she answered. She raised her voice, let it ring out to her crew. “Are you with me, Agilis?”

The call back was a bright, loud chorus.

“Aye!”

Jules saluted Brett, cupped his cheek with one hand, and when he leaned down, she kissed his forehead. “It’s good to be aboard,” she said. “Now get some rest, eh?”

“Yes, Commander,” Brett promised.

She headed to her cabin, more exhausted than she realized. She glanced back, and saw Nathan disengaging himself from the others; she gave him an easy wave. “M’not going anywhere,” she promised.

He nodded smiling, and mouthed, “Be with you soon.”

Jules nodded back. A wash of nausea and dizziness passed over her; she’d been out from her earlier slip, but hadn’t rested yet, and she was nearing the end of her ability to stay conscious. She managed to make it all the way onto her bed inside her quarters before she passed out, boots and cloak still on.

Her last thoughts as the darkness claimed her, were of Coryphaeus, and promises.

* * *

When she woke, it was only a little while later; she woke to the feeling of someone undoing the buckles of her flight suit, and that white lightning fear slammed through her. She went stiff, panicked, and her eyes wide open wide, huge in the dark.

The smell of sweat and gun oil was heavy on her tongue, familiar, but not enough to soothe. She uttered a low cry in her throat, turning her face away and squeezing her eyes shut.

There was a slithering sound, a rasping, metallic sound, the groan of leather armor, the sound of skin on skin.

Pressure, on the bed.

One hand lifted her, gentle, while the other freed her from her uniform. Her heart thundered as she struggled to keep from screaming.

When Nate’s lips touched hers, she flinched.

Immediately, the feel of being surrounded was gone. A lantern was flicked to life, and in the dull blue glow of the aetheric torch, Jules sat up, staring at Nathan as though she’d seen a ghost.

He put a finger to his lips, got up, moved to lock the door, and then went to sit on the edge of the bed, within arm’s reach, but without hovering over her.

“We better start talking, love,” he said quietly, “But if you want, I can go first.”

“I’ll go,” Jules whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, back before the Maxima–”

“I have to stop you.”

Jules rolled her eyes, laughing. “You’re terrible at waiting your turn.”

“It’s just that Abe already spilled the beans on that one. When we confronted him in the Valley. You don’t owe me an explanation. I want to know, Jules, but if it doesn’t help to tell, then I don’t want you to do it for my sake. I want to hear it, for yours, if you need it. I’m curious. I’m concerned. But not every story’s mine to know.” Nathan’s voice was soft, and he offered out a hand, laid palm up on the bed, for her to put hers in.

She did. “Fell into a rough bunch of Ilonans in the Southlands. Weren’t truly Ilonans, now that I’ve learned more about it. Were Tenebrians,” she explained quietly. “Crew was taking turns on dock leave, whoring, drinking. The city was open, crawling with our side. Abe was runnin a game. I left him to it. Stupid of me. Took a walk, got myself bagged.”

“…oh, Jules, no. Y’didn’t — they did it to you–”

“They did it, I did it, it happened. Don’t quite matter much on blame. I don’t take blame on that bullshit,” she snorted. “Point is, it got ugly.”

“Ugly enough y’couldn’t tell me.”

“Ugly enough I didn’t want to.”

He could hear the defensiveness in her voice, and he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “S’okay. Y’know I’m not the guy who pushes. You’ll come t’me in time if y’need me. If y’want to.”

“I’m comin t’y’now, Einin,” Jules said, her voice low, trembling.

“Lay it on me, Mrs. O’Malley.”

“They hurt me,” she said softly. “N’I thought I’d been done with it, but then I saw those soldiers on the pier. Came rushing back. Scared the wits out of me,” she said, turning to look up at Nate’s eyes, watching the way the lantern burned there.

“Y’not a woman t’be scared, I know.”

“I’m not scared of monsters,” Jules whispered.

“No monster as terrifyin’ as a man,” Nate whispered back.

There was silence, for a bit, and Jules leaned into Nate’s arm. “I can’t give you sons and daughters, little bird,” she finally said aloud, into the dark.

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