Out in the Black Ch. 12

This is a book-length work, so not every chapter will involve sex. If you're just looking for a quick wank, this may not be your story.

Thanks for reading!

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"Sorry for the surroundings. This was the only place on the ship with enough room for us to meet and have the space to work." The murmurs and shifting from my crew quieted as I talked. "First, I'll have our engineer here demonstrate the cameras we'll be using, then we'll discuss what's needed from each of us, try to anticipate problems and brainstorm solutions." My short pause was purely for appearance. One common trait among those remaining on my ship was the ability to think on their feet. They would hold their questions to see if they were answered by whatever the engineer planned to say.

"Rusty?" I prompted. He gave me an inscrutable look, but nodded and came forward without delay. The rest of the team was suitably impressed with what he'd rigged up using the ship's old recording equipment. I could see that he had already implemented a few of my ideas from when he'd showed the drones to me, and something warm and glowing took up residence in my chest. A few people offered suggestions and he made note of those as well. Memories of the night before kept trying to crowd out all other thoughts, but I managed to push them back down. I absolutely did not have time for that at the moment.

I'd lounged in bed later than usual in the morning, my body feeling the effects of the night before. Plus, after all my insomnia and early rising recently, I figured I could afford a bit of a lie-in. Predictably, this was spoiled by Alix. She barged into my quarters and dropped onto my bed, causing the gel to shift against some of my more tender areas. I couldn't completely suppress my wince.

"No fucking way," she shouted. "Oh, and ew!" The XO jumped to her feet and made a show of wiping herself off. I rolled my eyes and gingerly sat up, keeping the sheet wrapped around my waist. "You have got to be kidding me, Mac. How did this happen?"

"Well, first he kissed me," I began, voice raspy, "and then - " Li held up a hand and shook her head.

"I thought you weren't doing this anymore?"

"I thought so, too, but," I shrugged, "stuff happens." She gave me the look that statement deserved. "We talked. It was good."

"Cries of passion don't count as conversation, Mac."

I made an obscene gesture that failed to get the expected rise. She was really unhappy about this. "It's fine, Leelee," I insisted. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at me. I could just imagine her cornering Rusty later and what his reaction might be. "Actually, you want to know the weird thing?"

"No, I really don't."

I ignored her denial. "I'm pretty sure he wanted me to tell him again." Alix made a noise of disbelief. "He asked me if I remembered. And he wouldn't, well, never mind." As much as we shared, there were still things I didn't need to spell out. The engineer edging me as he encouraged me to spill my feelings was pretty high on the list. " Just trust me, it was clear what he was after."

"Other than your sweet ass?" Our conversation moved on to other topics, but I could feel the tension between us and I hated it. I just didn't know how to fix it without giving up Rusty. I'd tried that and it hadn't gone well for him or me.

"Control to Mac," the XO said in the tone of a person repeating themselves. And not for the first time. She snapped her fingers in front of my face, bringing my attention back to the activity in the cargo hold.

"Shit, sorry. What?" I shook my head and tried to focus.

"I said the design team needs your input on the ideas they've been storyboarding."

"Right. Got it." I picked my way through the gathered groups to where a wall had been repurposed into a giant display.

Time flew as I was pulled into different teams to discuss possibilities and approve ideas. When the sound of grumbling stomachs began to overtake the babble of conversation, we broke for the night. Everyone had at least a basic grasp on what I wanted them to contribute and I'd instructed them to let their brains chew it over for the night before beginning again in the morning.

The situation was difficult to plan: this was different from any report I'd done before, both in lack of external support and the dearth of first-hand knowledge from the station itself. Rusty had been understandably reluctant to press those he knew for details, but I hated going in without a clear picture.

"I'll get that," I offered. It was just the engineer and me left and he was trying to carry his cameras, gloves, and the transmitter, which wasn't working out all that well. I took the box from him and followed as he led me to his workshop on the engine deck.

"Thanks." Our fingers touched when he took the transmitter from me and I let go so fast I nearly dropped it on his toes. "You okay?" The desire that zipped through me at the contact had left the hair on the back of my neck on end; every cell of my body strained to reach the man who was stepping forward to check on me. It also knocked down the barriers I'd been reinforcing all day and memories of us tangled in my sheets flooded my mind. The look on Rusty's face said his brain was going the same direction, his expression turning predatory. My body automatically backed away from his advance. Of course, this being a spaceship and all, there wasn't much away to back.

"Please," I breathed, pressed against the bulkhead, not sure exactly what I was asking for.

Rusty stepped into my space, standing close but not touching me. "Please what?" His voice was rough and his eyes dropped to my mouth. I leaned in, closing the gap. His moan fed my gasp as our lips touched. One hand behind my neck, the other on my hip, his mouth moved over mine for an endless time.

"We shouldn't be doing this," I protested weakly as he nibbled along my jaw, though I didn't move to push him away. The crew was still roaming the ship and the chances of someone coming to talk to the engineer were high. It wasn't that I was embarrassed about being with Rusty, but the thought of someone catching us in the act after they'd watched the video was somewhat mortifying. And I didn't want anyone getting wrong ideas. But still, I didn't push him away.

"I know," he agreed, kissing his way down my neck. I gave up fighting and dropped my head back against the wall plating.

"Cap, can I have a word?" Li's voice filled the room and I belatedly remembered the cameras. In a show of solidarity, Rusty had left all of the recording devices on this deck in place. That Alix was using the ship's comms instead of my private channel told both of us she was making a point.

"Damn," Rusty groaned. "Cockblocked by the XO." I laughed softly and he joined in.

"I guess I should go," I said, making no move to do so.

"I guess you should," he replied, running the backs of his fingers down the side of my face. I leaned into the caress and our lips met again.

"Captain," Li said warningly.

"Fuck," I muttered. "Fine! I'm going, I'm going," I called out, stepping from the circle of Rusty's arms. He chuckled ruefully as he watched me go.

"What the hell?" I demanded, storming into my quarters. As expected, Alix was seated at the table, drink in hand, looking completely unrepentant.

"That was me saving you from yourself," she said, shoving a second glass in my direction.

"I didn't ask you to do that."

"No, you didn't." She sipped her drink calmly. "If you had enough presence of mind to ask me to save you, you wouldn't need saving."

"I am a grown-ass man, Alix. I decide who I fuck, not you."

"If it were just fucking, I wouldn't care." She stood and slammed her glass against the table. "But it's not just fucking, is it, Mac? This idea of yours is big. We've all signed on because we believe in it. In you. But I'm not willing to put the futures of everyone on this ship in jeopardy while you and the fucking engineer play whatever game you have going on." I started to argue and she cut me off. "No, Mac!" Li shouted. "We need you focused." My XO sighed and downed the drink I had ignored. "Just - just get some sleep." She left without looking back.

Naturally, my first instinct was to seek comfort from Rusty, which only drove my friend's words home harder. I made myself stay in my room, alone, and tried to think through the accusations. Looking back over the past tendays without allowing my emotions to blur the edges was difficult, but if I had been behaving badly enough to warrant an outburst like that from Alix, I owed it to her to be honest with myself. It was unpleasant, to say the least. I had gone from a successful celebrity media personality with access to the galaxy's rich and famous to an unemployed, blacklisted disgrace hiding in unsettled space, and I had taken my crew with me.

Knowing it was concern for that very crew that had caused a number of sleepless nights didn't offset the damage. And it truly had been at somewhat of a remove for me, more of an academic question. I was too wrapped up in my tempestuous affair with a certain engineer to really feel any of it. But I was feeling it now.

Alix had been angry, sure, but underneath was real fear. And that was a punch in the gut. This plan of mine was more likely than not to fail. There were too many unpredictable factors, too many moving parts outside of our control, to expect any real success. And yet the crew was sticking with it. With me. That they had that kind of faith in me was terrifying. That I had been taking it for granted, failing to truly appreciate what that meant - that was contemptible.

But then there was Rusty. As bad as I felt for not fully acknowledging the risk my crew was taking, I couldn't regret him. He had been surprising in many ways, most of them pleasant. I delighted in discovering new facets of his personality. Even had the sex not been incredible, the time we devoted to one another was well spent. And no matter what Alix thought or how much I cringed at how trite it sounded, I was confident he felt something for me. After last night, I had no doubt that he knew exactly how I felt about him.

~*~

I played it back again: "When are you just going to admit you're in love with the guy?" And again. Kells looked as tired as I felt. Checking the date, I realized the deadline for her refit was quickly approaching. The last thing she needed was me burdening her with my bullshit. A good friend would let it go. I played it back again. Part - hell, most - of me wanted what she was saying to be true. It would be easier if I could just love Cap. We got along great, worked together well, and the sex was the best I'd had in as long as I could remember. Not that I would tell her that; I didn't have a death wish.

This was the type of situation I was trying to avoid with my rule. Since I'd broken the damn thing and got myself in the situation anyway, best thing would be to keep going. Maybe we'd get tired of each other someday, but until then we'd have some fun. Kells made it sound so simple. "Just admit it." Just admit to this emotion you don't know the first fucking thing about. This thing that everyone else seemed to recognize, that was so common people were always falling right into it.

"When are you just going to admit you're in love with the guy?"

Face twisting sourly, I spat out "how the fuck would I even know" and stabbed the send button.

A punishing run on the treadmill failed to work out my anger. Even going to bed didn't help: the imagined argument with Kells continued uninterrupted. I eventually tired of tossing and turning sleeplessly and decided to hit my workshop to get busy on the camera updates. In fact, when I wasn't in some team meeting, that's where I spent most of the handful of days we had left until we got to the Ring. By the time we were down to the last eighteen or so hours, I had to admit it was a pretty fucking slick rig. Of course, then the captain decided to drop another bomb.

Me and Cap were sitting in the galley with a couple of the creatives. Cap had his ever-present cup of coffee while the rest of us took advantage of Bailey's habit of baking when he got nervous; this time he had made cookies that just melted right on the tongue. Fucking amazeballs. Over the last few days, the team leads had taken to eating together and watching Cap's old shows. The creatives said they were looking to keep stuff that worked and figure out what could be improved. To be fair, they did take some notes. But mostly we spent the time ribbing the captain on the faces he made when his subject was spouting total bullshit and he was trying to keep it together. Cap took it all with good humor, even letting us in on what had been going through his head on some occasions. It was nice seeing him relax with the crew. I'd known for a while that the Matthison Carolinas we saw on screen wasn't much like who our captain really was, and it made me happy more of the team was discovering that as well.

The vid ended and the others left, still arguing whether they liked Cap's hair better in this vid or the one we'd seen last night. Alone in the galley, the captain and I shared an amused look. "You ready for this?" I asked quietly. He grimaced and shook his head.

"I don't know if it's possible to be ready for something like this," he said after thinking for a moment. "We're going to a place most of us have never been, to talk with people we've never met, about a story the pee-tee-bee don't want gaining traction. I've heard rumors that this is what journalism actually used to be, way back in the twentieth, but I don't know if I believe it. I mean, look at all the resources we're having to pool together just to get a single shot at this.

"That reminds me," he tossed over his shoulder as he got up to refill his coffee, "I'd like to do a final dry run tomorrow before we dock, just to make sure everyone knows their jobs. Will you be ready?"

"I just need to run through the controls with your camera person and we'll be set."

"Um, Rusty." The way the captain said my name sent my stomach plummeting through the deck. "You're my camera person."

"Oh, no. No way. My job is to make the stuff. Other people use it."

The captain sighed and sat across from me again. "There are no other people."

"What about - " I waved a hand at the now-empty display.

"Like they would let me use my own crew." He barked a humorless laugh. "Most of the upper tier celebs have their own lighting and camera crews. They bring their makeup and hair teams to quote-unquote casual dinner parties, for which their designers will have provided no fewer than three outfits."

"That - that doesn't make any sense. It's completely redundant." Each time I thought rich people couldn't surprise me more, I found out something that proved me wrong.

"It only seems that way if you view the job of a camera person as just filming." I gave him a look and he laughed. "What you have to realize, Rusty, is that their entire lifestyle revolves around the way they are portrayed in their vids. A camera person who can reliably record their patron from the best angles in the most flattering light is a hot commodity. A makeup artist who can disguise scars or wrinkles or the signs of anti-aging treatments is worth their weight in gold, so to speak. I have been privy to bidding wars over designers where even the lowest offer was enough to buy the Marzi ten times over." I realized I was gaping at him and shut my mouth with a snap.

"All of that to say," he continued, "that no, I don't have my own camera person. Or lighting technician. Or hair and makeup, for that matter. My people were allowed to handle the pre- and post-production stuff that could be done remotely, but otherwise I had to rely on whatever my subject provided on site. Since making me look good made them look even better, I didn't usually have to worry about it. If you dig up some of my earliest stuff, though, you can see where some were having fun at my expense." He squinted over my shoulder, chewing at his lower lip.

"There's a risk in that, though." Cap sounded lost in thought. "Sometimes mid-tier celebs will pay a shared crew enough that they are willing to turn over unflattering footage of a rival in the hopes of rising on the other's fall, but since crews are trying to climb just as hard as the celebs and they never know who might be their next employer, most who pulled that kind of shit were lucky if they ended up hired on to do local news for one of the indie feeds. It's all so much more civilized now." There was a world of pain in the way he emphasized that single word.

"Cap, look - " I hated disappointing him, but I didn't know the first thing about camera angles or lighting or any of that shit.

"Rusty, I'm sure I can find someone who is willing to volunteer, but I have to be honest: I really want you there with me. I trust you to see what I'm missing and to make sure the important stuff is covered. Please just consider it, okay?" Well, fuck. When he said it like that, I would have to be a real asshole to refuse.

"I'll do it on one condition." He perked up and promised me anything. It really didn't take much to make him happy sometimes. "You stay with me tonight."

"Oh, Rusty," he groaned, wiping a hand over his face, "I don't know."

Since the night the XO busted us in engineering, Cap and me had been keeping our distance. He never told me what they talked about, but it didn't take much in the way of brains to look at his face and figure out she'd come down on him pretty hard. He looked, I don't know, hunted. Wary. I hadn't seen him eat much of anything lately, and he'd been pretty good at making sure we weren't alone together.

Li wasn't giving me shit, not like she did back at the station, but we weren't exactly easy with each other, either. Not like we'd really been friends, but working together on the cameras put us less on edge. At least, I thought it had. We'd even joked around some when we met up in Cap's quarters. All of that was gone, either erased or hidden behind a perfectly neutral expression. Whenever she had to speak to me, she did it in this completely flat voice, no real volume or inflection. It was like being talked at by a damned robot.

So yeah, I was pretty sure I'd been at the heart of her disagreement with the captain. But I kept thinking about the message I got from Kells back when I first admitted she'd won our bet. She said she was surprised it happened so quick, that she'd been expecting some sort of "last night before everything changes sort of thing." I hadn't really considered what life would be like if this failed and the captain was arrested. I'd spared even less brain power on figuring how things might go if this worked. It's not that I didn't care, but I couldn't know what I was going to have to work with until I had it in hand. And, well, I was pretty damn good at creating something out of close to nothing. It was kind of my thing. Even in that moment, I wasn't too worried about whether I'd land on my feet, but if this was the end for Cap and me, well...

"Just company, Cap. And if you really don't want - "

"No, I do. You know I do." The captain looked at me and dropped all pretending. He was exhausted and I doubted he'd been getting more or better sleep than me. "Li read me the riot act about letting myself get distracted, but right now I'm too fucking tired to worry about her." The corner of his mouth turned up. "Gotta warn you, though, if we don't go soon, I'll be asleep right here in my seat."

"Well, we can't have that." I stood and offered him a hand. He took it and I tugged him to his feet before releasing the contact. As we headed to my quarters, I made a mental note to order some of that Jovian Dark Roast for him when I sent Kells the "sorry I'm a shit friend" package I'd been planning. If he was going to keep this up, he needed something a lot stronger than whatever we'd been stocking.