Page 44 of Under Control

“Alex, just leave, before you make me do something I’m going to regret.”

“But—”

“Go!” Tracht shouted, angrier than Alex had ever seen him. Alex scrambled to get dressed and run out the door, suddenly terrified that if he didn’t obey, Tracht would annul the contract.

===

Without anything better to do, Alex called Nadia and arranged to meet up with her. There weren’t any good movies playing that they hadn’t already seen, and anyway, Alex was too restless to watch a movie.

“Does this have something to do with why Lina got called back to work in the dead of night? Which, not cool. We were in the middle of something.” Nadia swirled the spoon in her parfait. “I think I made up my mind.”

Made up her mind? Alex frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, see, this is one of the reasons I’d never date you. Do you even remember what I talked about last time?”

“Something about Singh and Fontaine? Anyway, who cares about that. Tracht is…” Alex trailed off, unsure of how to continue. How much he should share. He trusted Nadia, mostly, and if she told Singh, well, Singh already knew. But maybe Tracht wouldn’t want Nadia to know. On the other hand, Espinosa knew, and Espinosa wasn’t half as understanding as Nadia.

“Okay, so weird shit went down yesterday.” Alex leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “This is a complete secret, got it? Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“When do I ever?” She sounded annoyed, but she motioned for Alex to continue.

Alex filled her in on what happened in broad strokes, leaving out all the really nasty details. He saw Nadia’s eyes widening, and she clutched her own bondcollar at one point. By the time he was done, Nadia was shaking her head.

“Fuck. That’s... fuck. Is he all right? Tracht?”

“I dunno. I think he’s staying in today, resting. Probably.” Alex hoped Tracht was resting. He’d gone through the mails and noticed that Tracht had canceled everything on his schedule for the day, so that was good, at least.

“So why are you here, instead of with him?”

“He kicked me out.” Alex hunched forward. “I dunno. He got really mad. Shouted at me too, which he doesn’t normally do. You know what I mean—normally he does this scary calm voice, right? First he told me to leave, to eat if I wanted to, and then he started yelling when I said I wanted to stay. So now I’m here, but I can’t stop thinking about it. And we just let the guy go thanks to Espinosa, and—”

“Okay, okay, hold up. You’re getting loud, Alex,” Nadia said, pointedly glancing around the cafe. It wasn’t too full at this hour, but a few people were starting to stare. “Why do you think Tracht sent you away?”

In a much quieter voice, Alex answered, “I dunno. Because he’s pissed off at me?”

“No. I don’t think that’s it. From everything I’ve heard, he’s fairly quick to punish you when you’ve made him mad.”

“This feels like punishment. I know he isn’t hurting me, but I just… I thought I did a good job. I saved him. That has to count for something, right?” Man, his voice was sounding really whiny. “I thought we’d hang out together today.”

Nadia ate more of her parfait, then slid the rest of it over to Alex. “Here, eat. If Tracht says it’s okay, I think you really should eat this. You sound like you’re coming off sub-drop, and of course Tracht isn’t in any condition to deal with it right now.”

“Sub-drop?” Alex stared at the parfait, and for a while he actually considered not eating it. Tracht had said he could, but he hadn’t sounded like he’d meant it. On the other hand, Alex was hungry, and if Tracht was going to be a dick about everything then Alex might as well take him at his word. He dug into the sugary treat.

“Yeah, sub-drop. Like… when you’ve had a really intense scene, and then afterwards you feel like crap, and you either want everybody to leave you alone or you feel really, really needy. I’m personally more of the latter type. And you’re going to be shocked by this, but Lina gives way better aftercare than Charlie does.”

Alex didn’t know why that was supposed to shock him, but he didn’t really know what she meant by aftercare anyway. “That sounds like some girly thing.”

“No, Alex, it’s a human thing. You’ve got emotions too, although you pretend you don’t.” She got up and moved to sit in the chair next to him, wrapping her arms around his. “I’m happy to hang out with you today, okay? But I do insist you listen to my tale of woe too.”

“Yeah, sure. This is about your contract, right?” Alex ate more of the parfait. Man, it tasted really good. Maybe he could convince Tracht they should share one, although Tracht preferred his sweets with a bit of tart.

Nadia leaned her head against Alex’s shoulder. “Yep! So you do pay attention.”

“Yeah, ‘cus you and Singh both were whining about it.” With the parfait finished, Alex didn’t know what to do with his hands. He felt kind of useless, sitting here, just chatting with Nadia. Maybe he should have stayed on the ship and seen about getting things ready for departure. They still had a week on Atalanta though, and what if Tracht left his quarters? Alex didn’t want to run into him. Except he did.

“We weren’t whining. And if you thought that the two of us were bad, you should have seen Charlie trying his hardest not to cry every time he looked at us.”

Yeah, Alex couldn’t imagine it, and he didn’t care. Fontaine could fuck right off. He was feeling a bit nicer towards Singh since she’d managed to remove the collar without hurting Tracht too badly. “So, what? You gonna stay with them?”

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