They had broken something open against that wall, and it wasn’t going to be a simple matter of slamming it closed again.
It was too late for that; it was out in the air between them, sizzling and sharp. Snapping electric in every shared breath.
Jun watched him like a trapped animal as Theo reached up to push a fall of silky black hair away from Jun’s sweat-slick forehead, letting it run through his fingers in a moment of indulgence.
“Of course. Whatever you say, Captain.”
Chapter Eight
“Do you have much confidence in the dinghy’s ability to cross the Verge?” Theo asked as he surveyed the busted dash with a healthy amount of skepticism. “I’ll admit, upon first viewing the vessel, I had my doubts of how spaceworthy it may be. Now that I have truly experienced the interior construction, however, I am entirely sure that it is not. Spaceworthy, that is. Something of a ramshackle death trap, more like. Probably best suited to completing the collection of a museum of mistakes in aeronautical engineering.”
Jun didn’t lift his head from his view screen as he entered the new coordinates, mouth set in a hard line of concentration. “I did it before.”
Theo hid a small smile at the curt response. He had expected to continue his one-sided conversation all the way to the barrier of the Verge. It was a pleasant surprise to be acknowledged. He tried to rein in his delight, aiming for casual instead of jumping at the first real interaction Jun had allowed since they entered the cockpit. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
Jun huffed, sitting back in his chair as rapid-fire flight projections scrolled across his screen. He rubbed one hand over his head, his shoulders tense. The reflection from his screen emphasized the shadows clinging to the hollows of his face. “‘Confidence’ isn’t the right word. It’s going to work because I have to make it work.”
Theo swiveled his chair back and forth with his toes on the floor. He played idly with the excess strap of his harness, letting it run through his fingers until he reached the frayed end, looping it around his palm, then releasing it to start all over again. “Well, you certainly do not suffer from a lack of determination; I’ll grant you that. Perhaps you ought to add it to the lovely bit of calligraphy adorning your knuckles. Honor, Valor, and Determination. I say ‘determination’ because single-minded pigheadedness wouldn’t fit in any language I know of.”
Jun’s head whipped around, his eyes comically wide. The tattooed knuckles in question gripped his armrests as he pressed forward into his harness, and then he jerked to a stop as if he’d forgotten it was there. “You can read Hangul?”
Theo couldn’t determine whether to be insulted by Jun’s obvious surprise. He decided that, ultimately, if he were to take offense every time a man underestimated him, he would spend his entire life in an unsustainable state of pique. Instead, he tilted his head to the side and pulled out a lock of hair from behind his ear. He began to braid it absently with a shrug. “Well, yes. Of course I can. Why? Can’t you? I did assume you could, based on the amount of personal real estate you have allotted to it.”
Jun’s lips dropped into a frown, the rest of his face quickly following suit. “Yes. I can.”
Theo considered for a moment, reading the tension in Jun’s shoulders and the sharp question in his eyes that might have been hope if it weren’t so ruthlessly stifled.
“Do you speak Korean?” Theo asked, voice lilting musically with the switch in languages.
Jun flinched, his face flickering from shock to joy to suspicion so quickly that Theo got emotional whiplash just from watching it. Jun leaned in as closely as his harness would allow, straps cutting into the solid wall of his chest as he flung out his words like an accusation.
“Why do you know it?”
Theo shifted in his seat as Jun’s voice dipped even lower with the switch, hitting Theo somewhere deep below his navel. There was something about heirloom languages that made every word hit the ear like poetry, unlike the sterile, pragmatic flat tone of Standard.
“I’m a linguist. I collect languages, especially heirlooms. Thirty-one, so far.” He switched back to Standard, hoping to erase some of the suspicion from Jun’s face. “I’m a hyperpolyglot.”
The blank-faced rapid blinking was a fairly common, if somewhat disappointing, response to Theo’s revelation. “You’re a what?”
Theo bit back a sigh, more than accustomed to providing an explanation at this point. Accustomed, and entirely bored with it. “It means I’m multilingual. I understand, speak, read, and write in multiple languages. It’s my only talent, I’m afraid. I’ve never been particularly good for anything else.”
He wanted to add a cheeky “outside the bedroom,” but Jun didn’t seem receptive to bawdy humor, much less any reference to their previous encounter. He seemed to be making every effort to forget that it had ever happened, in fact.
Theo stomped down on a tiny twinge of hurt over it.
Jun nodded, his brow pinched thoughtfully together. “Makes sense.”
Theo’s chest clenched painfully at Jun’s ready agreement that he wasn’t good for much at all. As true as it was, it always hurt to have it so directly confirmed.
Though remaining aloof was not among his limited talents by any stretch of the imagination, Theo hoped to keep his tone light. He was afraid that an edge of the sharp band around his chest might creep in. “Why do you say that?”
Jun’s smile was quick, there and gone in a flash. It left Theo with the impression he’d been stabbed through the heart with something beautiful and rare, yet he was too awed by the sight of it to mind the pain. “You talk too much for one language,” Jun said.
His tone was teasing instead of disdainful. Just the slightest dash of fondness softening the insult. The combination of that and his toweringly rare smile left Theo reeling.
Jun’s face
