Page 41 of Until the Stars Fall

Beck and I were nearly finished repairing the biofilter instrumentation that had flipped out on us a few hours earlier, overheating and smoking. We hadn’t seen much of each other the past few days, with all our shifts in the kitchen and garden, so getting to spend this evening with him was a comfort. Even though we fought machinery, we were at least fighting together.

He reached down to me from where he stood on a catwalk ladder, properly secured this time because I made him. “Hand me a hex key, please?”

I placed the tool in his hand. He brought it up to adjust the fastener, and the indicator bulb in front of his face burst.

I cried out and turned my face away. Glass tinkled to the ground. When I turned back, he was looking at the broken bulb, a deep bleeding gash across his face. He turned, and a narrow sliver of the fragile glass caught the light from where it was embedded in his cheek. He raised his hand to his face.

“Don’t touch it!” I grabbed his leg to get his attention. “You have glass in your cheek.”

“Damn I got lucky,” he said, wiping dripping blood from his beard below the cut. “That could’ve hit my eye.”

It was a lot of blood. I pulled at his arm to get him to come down. “It looks pretty serious. Let me see.”

“Shit. Is it deep?”

He came down from the ladder, and I stood on my tiptoes to look. “I can’t tell, but it’s definitely stuck in your cheek.” I helped him get the harness off and led him down to the sink, dragging a stool over. “Sit down. Let me get a better look under the light. We might need to wake up Zola.”

He peered at the mirror while I switched on the light over the sink.

“Come on, sit down so I can see.”

He complied, hooking his heels on the rung of the stool and letting his knees fall outwards. I wet a clean towel and wiped his face around the gash the best I could. It was hard to see the wound under all that blood. If I used tweezers, I might accidently break the fine glass off in his skin. It would be mighty hard to get the rest out then. And he might need stitches. Right across his handsome face. That’d be a damn shame.

“Gemma,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you use your magic.”

I lowered my hands, my stomach churning. Since I’d told him about using my healing magic on him after the spacewalk, he’d been looking for ways to get me to use it. But short of purposefully injuring one of us—which was out of the question—we hadn’t had another opportunity. I was rusty, but if I used my magic, I might be able to get all the pieces out, even seal the wound so he wouldn’t need stitches.

“You could maybe save me from needing stitches,” he said, as if reading my mind.

I took a deep breath. “That depends.” I was nearly at eye level with him, and we looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. I trusted him. Whatever bond we were forming on this journey was not something I took lightly. I asked him the one remaining question.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you.” One eyebrow raised. “Are you gonna try?”

“I’m gonna…” What could I use to catch the glass? A soap dish sat beside the faucet. I removed the bar of soap, handed the empty dish to him, and pulled his hand to hold it over his left knee. “Hold this here. I’m gonna do a thing.” I took a breath and laid my left hand along the jawline of his unhurt cheek, turning his head to a better position under the light. “Be still.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see him watching me curiously, and it sped my heartbeat to be so close, to be touching him. It was already thumping at the thought of using my magic, like a bull with a rider eager to be let out of the gate. I studied his cut, then hovered my fingers over the glass fragment in his cheek, focusing all my attention on it. Emboldened by the rush of adrenaline, my magic sang through my veins, infusing my body with heightened awareness and the flush of power.

The magic in his blood rose up to meet mine. That didn’t happen after the spacewalk. I wrapped tendrils of my magic around the waiting tendrils of his, as if I were threading my fingers through his and making our hands stronger together, helping his magic do what it alone could not. Our magic actually fused together, flooding me with warmth, confidence, and the sensation of being wholly connected to his very soul. This would be easier than I thought.

I sinuously pushed our magic—gently, gently—skimming around the surface of the glass, identifying it, matching its inorganic makeup to three other minor fragments embedded in his cheek. I drew them out with an invisible force—gently, gently.

He took a soft breath, and the fragments of glass tinkled as they fell into the soap dish. With our magic wrapped intimately together, I directed the mending of his cheek tissue on a molecular level, putting back to rights the chains of proteins, minerals, and cells that the glass had torn apart, layer by layer.

When I sensed that his injury was mended, the skin around it matched and whole, I opened my eyes, not quite breaking our magical connection. I stood in between his legs, closer than when I’d started, close enough to feel his body heat. He watched me back, a look of unadulterated wonder and adoration in his eyes, his lips parted. My hands were still on his jawline. I felt like I was glowing. Standing like this, I could bring him in for a kiss so easily. The earnestness in his eyes smoldered back at me. Flushed with magic and the nearness of him, I very much wanted to.

He tilted his head and looked down to my lips. My heart hammered. I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t pull away, not with his face so close, his magic still mingling so intimately with mine.

I slid my hands further along his jaw, cupping his face, and we closed the distance like magnets. His lips were warm and sweet on my mouth, his beard tickling my face. The clatter of the soap dish in the sink, then his hands were warm on my hips. He deepened the kiss, and I pressed closer—

“Beck and Gemma, are you in here?”

We broke apart like two halves of a wishbone at Summer’s call, our bodies and magic sliced in two.

“Hey Summer, we’re over here!” I rushed up the steps and toward the door, my heart racing.

“Oh good, you’re both up. Can one of y’all come check the intercom switch on the bridge? It’s sticking.”

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