Page 40 of Crash Landing
I wasn’t sleeping anytime soon. I knew my body and I knew how it functioned and insomnia was something I’d been battling since the freighter attack. Not that I dreamed of the incident, but something inside me still didn’t like the dark. The silence. The loneliness. It left too much room to remember the screaming. The explosions. The cold expanse of open space. The silence of the shuttle when all the power died in the middle of the endless black.
Saleuk was right there, only steps away. I remembered him being so irritated with me when I was on Sylos and the last thing I wanted to do was irritate him again with my neediness, but I also longed for sleep. And however I annoyed him on Phesah would just be a memory once we were off that moon and parted ways again.
“Dammit,” I whispered to myself, sitting up and tapping my fingers lightly on the edge of the bed frame.
Picking up my bundled blankets, I stood and walked quietly across to Saleuk’s room. From the doorway, I could see his face illuminated by the dim light of a wrist cuff like the one he’d given me. When he noticed me standing there, he turned and I pressed my lips together, wondering if I should just retreat back to my room and suffer through the night alone.
But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to.
“Saleuk?” I said softly. “Would you be comfortable with me sleeping in here?”
He didn’t answer for a moment and it put me on edge. But then he stretched out his hand toward me and beckoned me silently into his space. Shyly, I walked toward him and let him take my bedding to put it next to his on the bed. When he climbed to one side and stretched out on his back, one arm behind his head, I hesitated, staring at the small space I was left.
“You didn’t mean for me to sleep on the floor did you?” he asked.
Absolutely not.
I shook my head, slowly crawling onto the bed beside him. It wasn’t the largest bed, but it was enough. I laid down on my back, staring at his speckled ceiling. Our arms were touching, which was somehow a comfort, but my mind was still loud. Too loud.
“Why don’t you sleep?” Saleuk whispered.
“Why do you think I don’t sleep?”
The shadow of his hand came up and gestured at his eyes. “I can see it on your face.”
I took a deep breath, wondering if it was worth telling him. I was used to him poking fun at me, but something about that moment told me he wouldn’t make me feel like a fool. I hoped he wouldn’t, anyways.
“You’re a soldier. You’re probably so used to excitement and chaos.”
“I’m a little used to it,” he answered, his shoulder shrugging against mine.
“Well, I’m not. Do you remember the freighter that got attacked? The one you and Vahko responded to when you found Innifer and me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it still hasn’t left me. And I know that’s pathetic. But I still think about it. All the screaming and the fire and the fear of being sucked out into space and devoured by nothingness. Iused to dream of my body just drifting alone out there. I don’t anymore, but it’s hard to sleep. Silence scares me. I usually sleep with my music or my TV, but this place is so quiet. So dark.”
“Sam, that’s not pathetic. You nearly died. And you saw your friends dying. And forgive me for pointing this out, but you lied about who you were to get on the Nexus. You had no formal training to be in space. I know the fear you’re talking about. I’ve felt it.”
“How did you get over it?”
“I didn’t. For a long time, I visited vapor dens. I spent days in them, chasing away my thoughts with what was essentially poison.”
“Drugs? Yeah, I’m acquainted with that particular demon. When my doctor prescribed pills to help with my anxiety, I took them for a while, but considering my past with pills, I stopped. I was doing good for a while and then they sent me into space again and… well, obviously you can see how that’s going.”
“Then why’d you come?”
“Because I’m sick of being nothing. I’m sick of being scared and unimportant. Of being a liability. That day, I knew that if I died, no one would care. I don’t have family. Hell, no one even knew who I really was on the Nexus. I don’t want to be that unimportant anymore.”
There was a stretch of silence between us again in which all I could hear was Saleuk’s steady breathing and the faint thrum of his heart beating against his chest.
“We’re allowed our flaws and our struggles, Sam,” he whispered. “Without them, we are perfect and perfection is suspicious and dishonest.” There was another pause. Another long breath. “And you’re not unimportant.”
I turned my head to face him, barely able to see his face under the faint glow of the plant life. But I could see enough. My body was tired and the arousal was waning, but something elsewas yearning for attention now. Something lonely and in need of company and Saleuk was doing a wonderful job, whether he liked it or not, of making me feel safe.
Without giving myself time to think too hard, I rolled over onto my side and curled up against his long body. At first, he did nothing. But then he slowly pulled his hand from behind his head and coiled it gently around my shoulders.
I didn’t know how much I wanted—how much I needed—someone to just hold me until that moment. All of my worries and fears seemed to melt right off of me when I heard the first beat of Saleuk’s heart against my ear.
