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astrangestormIt had been there on the calendar, that Sho was having soccer practice that night. As scheduled, Nino changed out of his jumpsuit and headed up to deck 4, finding Sho was getting ready to head out.
He greeted Nino at the door in a pair of black shorts and a short-sleeved green jersey. “Flyboys,” his jersey said in black letters, with an ancient-looking airplane beneath it. The informal soccer league apparently had team names. And custom-made jerseys. Sho’s hair was pushed back from his face, held in place with a black sweatband. His forehead was rather broad, and he looked a lot more like his father, at least in the photos Nino had seen. He left Nino in his sitting room while he headed to his bedroom to find a pair of cleats.
“Flyboys?”
Sho laughed. “Most of us are certified pilots. Kit or Nori flyers or officers who started out in a cockpit. They let me join because navigation’s…close enough.”
“And heaven forbid you play for a team that’s not top brass.”
“I’ll have you know, Ninomiya, that the Deck Devils are a really good team. I would have played for them no questions asked if they had a spot open.”
“The Deck Devils?” Nino scoffed, moving to retrieve Shota from the loveseat where Sho had left him.
“Flight deck guys, they talk trash like you wouldn’t believe.”
Sho checked his quarters to make sure he had everything he needed.
“I can drop by before first shift in the morning to come get him,” Sho said, “Shota was actually well-behaved today, believe it or not.”
“Actually…” Nino said, wondering why he was even asking. He’d never been into soccer. Give him a broken-in glove, the solid power of a bat in his hands. Baseball was above and beyond better. And yet…
“Actually?” Sho asked, oblivious to Nino’s distress.
“Actually I’m not doing anything tonight, so I thought maybe I could come watch. Me and Shota, I mean,” Nino said. When Sho’s face perked up, more curious than annoyed, Nino kept blabbing. “Lieutenant Matsumoto, he’s on your team, yes? We’re friends. We served on the Hakutaka together.”
“Oh,” Sho replied, and Nino wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. “Oh, Matsumoto. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We do drills for an hour, then just have a friendly match. It’s not the most exciting thing…”
“Well there’s civilians wandering all over deck 8. Already had security going around telling kids not to buzz the doors of the crew quarters so it’s a bit of a mess right now…”
Sho nodded. “That sucks. Yeah, yeah, definitely come along.”
And so Nino found himself sitting on a bench in the small park at the center of deck 7. It wasn’t much more than a couple fields of astroturf, a few plastic orange cones standing in for the goal. The blue-painted ceiling and bright lighting tried to give the massive room the feeling of a real outdoor park back on Earth. It succeeded to a certain extent.
Tonight the Flyboys were taking on a team made up from the cleaning crew, who’d named themselves the Bulldogs. It turned out that the Flyboys were not as gender-specific as the name implied, since the team was half men, half women. The Flight Commander herself, Eikura-san, was standing near Jun, the two of them stretching and chatting with one another.
“Fly People didn’t look as cool on the jersey. The ladies were very understanding,” Sho admitted, leaving Nino alone to head over to greet his teammates.
Nino sat there with Shota beside him, keeping the parenting tablet in hand. The last thing he wanted to do was interrupt their practice by not attending to Shota right away. There were a couple people in off-duty clothes sitting on the Bulldogs’ side of the field, their own sim-children in tow. So at least Nino wasn’t the only one lurking around, cheering on their partners from Project Papa-Mama. Though he supposed he might have been the only one with ulterior motives.
He caught Matsumoto’s eye from across the field, watched as he jogged behind Sho while the teams did some running to warm up. Nino hoped that the look he was sending back in Jun’s direction was a scary one. A “don’t you dare tell him anything” kind of look. Then there was some good old-fashioned stretching, and Nino focused on breathing, watching the players sitting on the turf, legs spread and stretching their muscles.
Finally after a few practice kicks, some dribbling, the match was underway. Some ensign Nino didn’t recognize, a woman with a noisy whistle, was serving as the referee. Shota alerted Nino a few times during the first half of the match, a whining demand for feeding and a bath that he hurriedly silenced. If he had a real kid, this wouldn’t be as easy as pressing a button, he knew that much.
Nino didn’t know too much about soccer, and watching the friendly match wasn’t really making him like it any more than he had before. It was a lot of running back and forth while nothing happened. The Bulldogs scored a goal, then the Flyboys scored the next two. Jun seemed to be in a defensive position while Sho was on the offensive side with Eikura. Beyond that, Nino didn’t know much about what was happening.
When the ensign blew the whistle to announce the halfway point, Sho came jogging over. His skin glistened with sweat, but he didn’t seem as exhausted from all that running as Nino would have been.
“Told you it wasn’t very exciting,” Sho said, grabbing a towel from the bag he’d brought along and left at Nino’s side. He wiped his face and his neck before sitting down. “You don’t have to stay if you’re bored.”
“I’m not bored,” Nino said. Just because he didn’t like soccer didn’t mean he didn’t like watching Sho run. He was quick, setting up several passes for other team members. It was a pass from Sho each time one of his teammates had scored. He was fun to watch.
Sho rested the towel around his neck, holding onto it at each end. His shorts had ridden up a little when he’d sat down, the fabric resting midway up his thighs. Nino looked away, fumbling with his tablet.
“Your son likes to watch you,” Nino joked.
“Me? I’m pretty average. My brother’s the athlete in our family.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he’s really into rugby. That was always a bit too tough for me. Those guys don’t mess around.”
“You’re tough in other ways, I’m sure.” He set down the tablet, watching the other players mingle around, chatting with one another. Only Sho had come over this way. “Your brother still play? I’ve never watched rugby before.”
“He attends the JSA Academy. He plays for one of the club teams, but he’s graduating this year, so he’s busy as hell.”
“Another Chief Navigator in the making?”
“God no,” Sho laughed, though Nino wasn’t quite sure why that was so funny. “No, Shu’s more like you. He’s in the engineering track.”
Nino was puzzled. “And how is that like me? I’m not an engineer.” And he definitely hadn’t been to the academy. You had to be near-genius level to get in, at least if you aimed for the command track someday. And both Sho and his brother had attended? Then again, it made sense if their mother was an instructor there, if their father worked for JSA. A family of geniuses, Nino suspected.
“He likes to know how things work,” Sho explained, digging his toe against the fake turf. “With you, it’s the shuttles. For Shu, it’s engines and the guts of a ship. After I decided I was going the nav route, he got obsessed with FTL drives. It’s my fault he went engineering.”
“Your fault?”
Sho looked serious. “It’s dangerous, engineering. Fires down there, short circuits, lots of hazards.”
“We work in space,” Nino reminded him, jostling his shoulder. “All our jobs come with a bit of danger. Today could be the day gravity control goes offline. Or life support. Explosive decompression…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sho said, “but he’s my baby brother, you know? I changed his diapers.”
“Well then if your brother’s anything like me, Sho-san, I think he’ll be just fine. I’m very good at keeping out of trouble.”
Sho got to his feet, dropping his towel on top of his bag in time with the ensign’s whistle. “Somehow, I have a hard time believing that one, Nino.”
He left with one of his brilliant smiles, and Nino slouched in his seat, crumpling a bit under the weight of that smile. It was hopeless now, wasn’t it? Sho had just compared Nino to his brother, saying how alike they were. These feelings…the feelings Nino was still adjusting to, they were going to stay one-sided, weren’t they?
He peeked over at Shota, smiling wistfully. “And that’s that, huh?”
He supposed it wasn’t so bad to be friends with a bridge officer though. Sho was a nice guy, a really good guy. Maybe when Project Papa-Mama was over, he’d be able to see Sho in a different light.
In the second half, Sho managed to score a goal to put the Flyboys further into the lead, and in celebration, he wrenched his jersey off, swinging it around his head. Some of the ladies on the field clapped and cheered him on. Nino stared across the field at his bare chest, at his abdomen, the muscles of his back moving while he swung his jersey.
He wasn’t going to be able to see Sho in a different light just yet.
While the Flyboys (and girls) celebrated their victory, Nino left quietly, hauling Shota off with him.
Two more weeks of this project. And then what?
—
A week later, the Suzaku made it to the asteroid belt, Nori shuttles leaving hour by hour hauling Japanese civilians off to new work assignments. The Suzaku flew some distance away, the belt crowded with smaller work ships from the various mining colonies and stations operated by several countries.
Nearly four hundred passengers had left at the Mars drop-off a few days earlier, and another four hundred men, women, and children were off for new lives here in the belt. Most were headed for Itokawa Station, JSA’s main presence in the asteroid belt. In two more days, the Suzaku was off to its final stop, New Hokkaido on Haumea, to dump off the remaining passengers.
From the asteroid belt, the Suzaku would fly halfway to Jupiter before the jump out to Haumea. It would be the first jump of the Suzaku with civilians aboard, and the pressure was clearly on. Most of the passengers traveling out to New Hokkaido had never been through a jump before.
In addition to all the time Sho was spending plotting out the jump and at least a dozen alternates, the coordinates run over and over again in the astrometrics lab simulator, he was also leading information sessions with some of the medical staff from Sickbay, describing the basics of FTL travel while the doctor he was teamed with explained potential side effects. The Captain was so pleased with their efforts that he wanted Sho and the chief medical officer, Yonekura-sensei, to record the sessions to play on future assignments to save them time.
Nino was taking more overnights with Shota, his sleep interrupted again and again. He discovered, though, that Sho hadn’t gotten much sleep himself. One morning he wasn’t even in his quarters. He’d somehow fallen asleep while working in the quarters of Ensign Aragaki, a member of his navigation team. The woman had found Nino waiting in the corridor, had apologized and asked on Sho’s behalf if he could hold on to the sim-child a few more hours so Sho could rest. Since Aragaki herself outranked him, Nino had had little choice but to agree.
While he understood Sho’s predicament, Nino’s job hadn’t gotten any easier. The security team was patrolling the ship day and night, issuing warnings to kids in the corridors. Nino had gone in for a bath one evening only to find two young boys spraying each other with shower heads, their disinterested father lathering up beside them even though the baths were clearly marked for crew access only. And on the job, Nino and the other deck crew were cleaning shuttles, finding items left behind that had to be flown back to their owners, delaying departure times. He’d also added a new task to his skill set, scraping chewing gum off a Norimono’s hull.
On top of all that, on top of Sho working himself half to death and blowing off his Project Papa-Mama responsibilities, on top of Nino performing tasks that were not in his job description, Nino was trying to avoid Sho as much as possible, if only so he didn’t let his crush on him develop into anything more serious.
The last few weeks he’d seen Sho every single day, passing Shota between them, comparing tablets to try and anticipate when Shota might next interrupt their lives. Though Sho had been rather mellow for a while, the time suck that was the Haumea jump had made him grouchy again.
But where before Nino had taken it personally, he now had a better understanding of all the pressure Sho was under. Sho was only being short with him because he had fifty other things to get done that day. His time was precious.
His time with Nino was often spent accomplishing other things. In the morning, he was usually only halfway dressed, brushing his teeth or shaving when Nino arrived to drop off or pick up Shota. In the afternoon, he was usually coming out of meetings in his perfectly-fitted uniform, standing in the corridor with his hands on his hips, giving out orders with firm authority. In the evenings, he was in the gym in a sleeveless tee and shorts, sweating and waving for Nino to just drop Shota next to his treadmill.
The more Nino knew he ought to avoid Sho, the more he wanted to be near him, to learn more about him. Sho was a black hole and Nino had gotten too close. Sho’s strong gravity was pulling him right on in.
He was heading for his quarters, having just had a bath and returning to find Aiba standing in the hallway with a bag of rice in his arms, Shota most likely. In the last week, Aiba and his partner had drawn a face on Magic, had even doodled a mohawk on his bag for some reason.
“I’m sorry, am I late?” Nino asked, hurrying to his door.
“No, I’m early,” Aiba said, though he was missing his usual cheerful smile.
Nino opened his door, holding out his arms. “I can take it from here. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Aiba handed Shota over. “Actually, can I chat with you a minute?”
Nino’s quarters were a mess, but he simply shrugged, letting Aiba inside. Aiba didn’t seem all that concerned about the mess, having a seat in Nino’s chair while Nino sat on the bed, running a comb through his damp hair.
“Sho-chan had to run to the astrometrics lab again,” Aiba said in lieu of an apology. “One of the ensigns was plotting something for Haumea, and the simulator showed us crashing into Charon. Charon being one of Pluto’s…”
“Aiba-san, I know what Charon is,” Nino interrupted.
“Oh. Right. Well yeah, so he had to go off and check the guy’s calculations, figure out if it was a math thing or a problem with the simulator since Charon isn’t even close. So he’ll be there until…well, you know Sho-chan, he’ll be there until he has the answer he wants.”
Nino sighed. “Understood.” Sho was supposed to be taking Shota for the night, but Nino was starting to doubt it.
“Are you upset with him?”
“Huh?” Nino asked, his comb stuck in a small tangle of hair.
“With Sho-chan. He says you’ve been…quiet.”
“Well, I’m not very loud.”
Aiba shook his head. “You know what I mean. Sho-chan is worried you’re upset with him.”
“Of course I’m upset with him,” Nino said nervously, trying for a joking tone. He was surprised Sho had even noticed a change in him since he was always going in a million different directions, from one task to the next. “He’s slacking off on this very important Project Papa-Mama business.”
Aiba leaned back in Nino’s chair, face full of doubt. “He says you’ve stopped arguing with him.”
“And that’s bad?”
“He says you just go along with whatever he says so you can get away from him as fast as you can now.” Aiba looked at him with astonishing seriousness. “Is that true?”
“He’s busy. I’m trying to respect that.”
“I see.”
Nino watched the doubt remain in Aiba’s face. He and Sho were very close, it was obvious. When Sho was upset, Aiba was upset.
“What do you want me to do, Aiba-san?” He leaned forward, staring back at him. “What do you want me to say?”
“Very few people have the guts to tell Sho-chan he’s being dumb. He has an entire team of navigators to work with, he doesn’t have to do everything himself. They’re there to help him, but he’s stubborn. And doing those trainings, taking on that extra responsibility, he could have had someone else do those too,” Aiba explained. “Sho-chan thinks that if he just stops and breathes for a few minutes, if he just takes a break that it’s going to ruin everything.”
“Ruin everything? What’s being ruined?”
Aiba’s smile was rather bittersweet. “He thinks he has to be a superman to be a captain someday. But he’s going to burn out if he doesn’t stop. I’ve worked with him for years, and he doesn’t listen to me. Not about things like that anyway. He always says ‘I’ll manage it, I’m managing just fine’ and I know he’s not. He takes on too much. He thinks it’s proving a point, juggling so many things.”
Nino looked away. He’d been so impressed by Sho, with his jam-packed schedule, with his ambition. Nino had almost felt lesser in comparison, since he felt that work was just work. His job was just a job. He did his work seriously, but he didn’t let it dominate his life.
“But since he met you…”
Nino perked up. “Me?”
“Yeah, you,” Aiba said. “That thing with the star charts, he told me about that. He came back to the bridge steaming mad, saying some punk crewman said he wasn’t following protocol. That that punk crewman told him he’d been wrong, neglectful in his duties. Nino, nobody ever talked to Sho-chan like that before. XO Nakai always says that Sho must be gunning for his job, but he’s only teasing when he says it. Nino, you’re honestly the only one.”
Embarrassed, Nino pushed his mouth against the inside of his arm, his words muffled. “I was mortified afterwards. I was incredibly rude to him…”
“No,” Aiba insisted. “No, you made him stop and think. Even if it was some simple work procedure, installing those charts, you made him stop. He needs someone like that. He needs someone to remind him that his way isn’t the only way. He needs someone to pull him back before he goes over the edge.”
Nino felt his face grow hot, the seriousness of what Aiba was saying. “Aiba-san, he’s a grown man.”
“Yeah, well I’m his friend, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”
He looked up, seeing the pleading expression in Aiba’s face. He was a kind person, a devoted friend. But Aiba seemed to think he wasn’t enough.
“You want me to argue with him?”
Aiba relaxed a little, chuckling gently. “I want you to tell him when he’s being an idiot. He listens to you.”
“He’s my superior officer.”
“He’s your partner.”
“For the next week! In a week Project Papa-Mama is over and done with. And then we’ll have no reason to be around each other…” He paused, seeing Aiba’s teasing grin. “Aiba-san?”
“Hmm?”
“I think you’re misunderstanding something here.” Oh god, had Jun talked to him? No, Jun would never. Did Jun even know Lieutenant Aiba? So that meant Aiba had figured it out on his own. When had Nino become so damn transparent?
Aiba got out of the chair, walking over with that same dumb grin on his face. “Am I?”
Nino got to his feet, avoiding Aiba and his meddling face. Weren’t there tasks a chief tactical officer could be doing right now instead of trying to play matchmaker for his best friend? Then again, having the best friend’s endorsement could only help him out…
What was he saying?!
“In a week he won’t be ‘Sho-san’ any longer, he’ll be Lieutenant Sakurai. Lieutenant Sakurai who is owed respect as my superior. So for the next week, if it’ll make you feel better, I will do my best to yell at him, complain because he is not losing as much sleep as me over a dumb bag of rice. He won’t burn out on the jump to Haumea because I’ll be verbally kicking his ass for other things. And then when that week is up…” He hesitated, his mouth feeling too dry. “…when that week is up, that’ll be the end of it. Of me getting him to…to stop and think.”
“Is that what you really want?” Aiba asked. He seemed to be enjoying himself now, so Nino headed straight for the door, opening it and gesturing for Aiba to leave.
“I don’t know what I want!” he complained, waving for Aiba to go.
And that was the truth. Nino did not know what he wanted. Well, sex with Sho would be a great way to cap off Project Papa-Mama. He couldn’t deny that any longer. After seeing him in various states of undress the last few weeks, Nino had been thinking about it a lot lately. Imagining what it might be like to get Sho to stop blabbing about jump calculations and just kiss him quiet. To find a few hours alone in Sho’s overpacked schedule to mess around, to learn if Sho was just as bossy in the bedroom as he was in all other things. To find out what might get someone like Sho to finally give in and lose control.
But a playful night together with Sho didn’t quite fit Nino’s usual requirements. Nino, who hated drama, didn’t fuck around with friends. Or superiors. Nino needed to be with people who’d be nothing to him the next day, merely someone to offer a nod or a smile in the corridor the next time they saw each other. He couldn’t do that with Sho. He couldn’t do that to Sho.
After three weeks of Project Papa-Mama, he couldn’t reduce Sakurai Sho to a nod or a smile in the corridor. Nino had never wanted something serious before. He didn’t want the expectations that came along with it. Hooking up with Sho was a risky thing to contemplate. Sho wanted to be a captain, a ship’s captain for god’s sake. Sakurai Sho was the textbook definition of “too many expectations.” If they got together and the whole thing soured, Sho had the power to get Nino transferred. Nino could fuck up his entire livelihood, just by being with him.
Aiba stepped out into the hall, clearly on the side of “you have my blessing, take the risk.” Nino didn’t much like that a guy like that had the ability to fire weapons.
“He’ll be unbearable until after we jump,” Aiba said quietly, as though he was giving him a secret, free hint. “But he doesn’t have to be.”
“Thank you again, Aiba-san, I’ll bear that all in mind. But if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure that my son requires my full, undivided attention.”
The bag of rice remained irritatingly silent on the bed behind him.
Aiba patted his head, smiling in the most annoying fashion possible. “Whatever you say. See you later.”
Nino shut the door, heading for his parenting calendar. He was exhausted. He’d have Shota for the next two nights, with the morning of the third day already noted down as the day they were jumping to Haumea.
He opened the private messaging function, staring at the blinking cursor for what seemed like an eternity before he started to type.
Sho-san, this isn’t working. I don’t care if you’re jumping us to Haumea blindfolded and with your hands tied behind your back, you’re taking Shota tomorrow night.
He pressed send, shutting his eyes and immediately wishing he could take it back. Instead of taking his usual path of least resistance, Nino found himself listening to Lieutenant Aiba. He hoped he wouldn’t live to regret it.
—
Sho hadn’t responded to his message.
Sho wasn’t even there come morning when Nino got to his quarters. He stood there feeling like an idiot in the middle of the deck 4 corridor, holding onto Shota, his parenting tablet shoved in the pocket of his yellow jumpsuit after his fifth attempt at ringing Sho’s buzzer.
Shota’s sensor had gone off nine times during the night, a brand new record. Apparently he’d been programmed with a cold, waking in the night all out of sorts. Nino had come precariously close to going down to the flight deck and finding something nice and sharp to split the bag open, let the rice spill all over. But because he wasn’t a crazy person, he’d simply rolled over in bed, smearing his finger across the glowing tablet screen and burying his face back in his pillow to muffle his screams of protest. He hoped that Lieutenant Commander Matsushima sent around a survey when Project Papa-Mama was done so he could explain in excruciating detail why he found it unnecessary for a bag of rice to have the sniffles.
Nino’s shift on the flight deck started in fifteen minutes, and he was just wasting time standing here waiting for someone who wasn’t even around.
He stomped off, pressing his palm to the computer panel at the end of the hall. The computer acknowledged him. “Good morning, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”
“It’s not a very good morning. Do me a favor, will ya?”
“Please input a request.”
He almost growled his response. “Please locate Lieutenant Sakurai Sho.”
Their dog tags doubled as a means of locating them anywhere aboard the ship or on property owned by JSA like a Kit or a Nori. Nino swore that if Sho was still inside his quarters sleeping through (or ignoring) his buzzing, he was going to use the cumbersome bag of rice to break down the door. Or at least he’d try.
“Lieutenant Sakurai Sho is on the flight deck.”
“Why the fuck is he on the flight deck?” Nino shouted, seeing a pair of officers give him a dirty look as they passed.
The computer wasn’t having it either. “Please input a request.”
Nino took his hand away instead. He had his answer. He caught a lift down, finding Sho standing by the assignment board talking to Chief Okada. They shared a laugh, Okada slapping Sho cheerfully on the back. Well, at least they were having a good time.
He approached, trying to keep from tearing his superior officer a new asshole in front of the entire flight deck. Sho was on his turf now. “Good morning, Chief.” He took a breath before addressing Sho. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“Nino, there you are,” Sho said, dark bags under his eyes, but a friendly smile on his face.
“Crewman Specialist, the Lieutenant has requested you for a top secret mission,” Okada said, sounding more amused than anything. Nino watched as Okada erased the ‘Ninomiya’ assignment on the board, replaced it with “1/2 shift, Kit 2 after lunch.”
“You’re taking my hours away?” Nino asked, hugging the rice bag against him in confusion.
“I’m giving your hours to Sho-kun. You’ll report back for a half-day schedule after lunch. You can poke around with Mr. Perfect’s Kit today, he drove someone to tears yesterday and I want that Kit cleared properly. He claims there’s a problem with his radar, so I’m not clearing him to fly until you take a look, Ninomiya.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, looking between Sho and his superior. “Understood, sir.”
“Please follow me, Crewman Specialist,” Sho said, holding out his hand to lead Nino away.
Nino could only walk at his side, not wanting to cause a scene on the flight deck. He was well-respected here.
It wasn’t until they were inside the lift that Nino erupted. “What the fuck was that? You’re messing with my shift?”
Sho held up his hands apologetically. “Hey, slow down.”
“I won’t slow down,” he shot back. “You can’t come down and just…just take me off the job. Our positions have nothing to do with each other, and now my assignment is falling on someone else for the day. Sho, you can’t do stuff like this!”
Sho was still holding his hands up. “Just, will you listen?”
It was only then that Nino realized that Sho wasn’t in his duty uniform. He was in his off-duty clothes, his jacket unbuttoned, shirt untucked. “Why aren’t you on the bridge?”
“Ensign Aragaki is on the bridge for first shift. I gave it to her. I’m off today because the jump is tomorrow, that’s my focus for right now.”
The lift let them off at deck 12, and Nino followed Sho down the corridor, confused.
“Then why are you pulling me off my job? What’s this top secret mission?”
Sho chuckled. “I told Okada we were in danger of failing Project Papa-Mama, that we had to meet and work on making up for it.”
“You lied.”
“It’s for Project Papa-Mama, I didn’t lie about that,” Sho said.
They stopped walking and Nino saw the nameplate beside the door. Astrometrics Lab.
“I don’t understand,” Nino said, voice barely above a whisper.
Sho pressed his palm to the panel beside the door. “Computer, authorize non-Nav personnel Ninomiya Kazunari to enter. Authority, Sakurai Sho.”
“Authorization granted,” the computer replied, indifferent.
Nino followed Sho inside, still holding Shota in his arms. No alarms went off, though Nino was fairly sure that he really had no business being in here. What was going on?
The room was maybe the size of Sho’s quarters, dark aside from the computer screens inside. There was a long work table in the center of the lab, its surface aglow from about a dozen different screens’ worth of data readouts and images. There were more screens around the room, bolted to the bulkheads. Each had a nameplate underneath. He walked along, reading each of them. JSA-409-Mercutio. JSA-409-Rosaline. JSA-409-Juliet.
“The telescopes,” Sho explained, standing on the other side of the central table, leaning against it. “We control them from in here, can point them wherever we want within reason. For our calculations. Or if you’re a nerd like me, for plain old stargazing. They’re each mounted to the hull of the ship.”
Nino ran his fingers over another nameplate. JSA-409-Benvolio.
“They’re all characters from Romeo and Juliet. When the Suzaku was first deployed years ago, it seems like the Chief Navigator was a fan. The star-crossed lovers theme. I guess it’s easier to tell someone to check Mercutio than to check JSA-409-A396.”
“I never read Shakespeare in school,” Nino admitted.
Sho gestured to a group of chairs off in the corner. “If you want to set Shota down…”
Nino did so, although he still wasn’t sure why he was in the astrometrics lab. He crossed his arms, feeling rather out of place. He was in his flight deck jumpsuit. Even with dozens of washes, most of his jumpsuits were covered in stains from fuels, lubricants, oils from the deck. He was almost afraid to touch anything, knowing all the instruments had to be very sensitive.
“Are you having a meeting in here? Am I going to be in the way?”
Sho was looking at him with a teasing expression. “I was up until 3:30 double checking my team’s work. We have 20 viable jump scenarios for tomorrow.”
“You didn’t answer either of my questions.”
“Nino, nobody’s going to come in here.”
He froze, standing in the corner of the room. “You said this was about Project Papa-Mama.”
“It is,” Sho admitted, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “I wanted to apologize to you, Nino. I know I haven’t been fulfilling my end of the agreement. I know all the changes on the flight deck have you all scrambling.”
Feeling it was safe enough to do so, Nino leaned back against the wall, grateful for the solid feeling of it behind him. “Yeah, exactly, which is why you snatching me away last minute from the deck when we’re so busy is pissing me off.”
“I thought we’ve been getting along,” Sho said, Nino hearing the slightest tremor in his voice, but he covered it well. “My behavior has been inexcusable, and I’m sorry for it. So I know it’s selfish of me to use my rank to pull you off your shift, I know that, but I just…I thought I owed you a proper apology.”
“I accept it,” he replied, “so can I go back to work? Why did you need to steal half my shift to apologize? Surely you could spend your free time more wisely. In the gym or getting more sleep…”
“I want a family someday,” Sho blurted out, cutting Nino off.
The only sound in the lab was the usual hum of the ship.
“I always have,” Sho continued, his focus apparently on one of the screens before him on the table. “Or at least that’s what I thought until this project started. I grew up more fortunate than most, I understand that, but it was hard…it was hard when my dad was away all the time. My grandparents helped look after us since Mom was busy too, but we all missed him. Sometimes it took days to get messages to him, sometimes it took months to get messages back. He missed birthdays. He never came to practices, to piano recitals. We were a JSA family, nobody judged us for it, but it was hard on us. It was hard on Mom.”
Nino wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but all he could do was listen to the wistful longing in Sho’s voice.
“So I told myself I’d do things differently. I’d balance things better. I’d get a good JSA assignment, but I’d also be married by 30, have a couple kids by 35. I’ve had Captain Inohara as a mentor the last few years, I’ve seen the way he’s managed to balance it all. Having his wife and kids aboard now, I’ve never seen him so happy. So I’ve gone all this time with those expectations, that I’d be able to do all of that. My job, a family. Well, I’m going to be 35 in January, and I can’t even make time for an imaginary child…”
“It would be different with a real kid, Sho-san, you know that,” Nino told him. “You can’t just push a button on a tablet to shut up a real kid. You’d adapt. Kids are easier to love too, compared to rice.”
“I want a family, but I’m not willing to put in the time. Not now anyway. Project Papa-Mama, it’s opened my eyes, Nino.” Sho looked up again, looking at him with heartbreaking sincerity. “I’m not ready, and I don’t know when I will be. All I can think about is my job. I’m selfish.”
Nino stepped forward, standing across the table from Sho, the warm glow from the screens casting shadows on his face. “But you still want that. You still want a family. Someday, right?”
“My dad, he was gone a lot, but he did the best he could. My dad’s job let me fly among the stars, visit places that most kids growing up in Tokyo could only dream about. If it hadn’t been for all those family trips, the four of us meeting up with Dad at some place in the middle, I’d have never fallen in love with navigating. I used to plot the courses at home, with my telescope and my computer. I’d find where Dad was, I’d learn about the space where he was. I’d learn about the places where we’d meet him again. I’d figure it all out myself.”
Sho’s lower lip trembled, and Nino’s heart broke for him.
“Family is everything to my dad. Family is everything to Captain Inohara. Even when it’s tough, they found a way.” Sho tearfully gestured to the corner where Shota was. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get there?”
Sho, who in Nino’s eyes could accomplish just about anything, was falling apart. Sho, who always carried himself so confidently. This stupid, stupid project…Project Papa-Mama, Sho felt he’d failed it. And Nino suspected that Sho had never failed at anything in his life.
Nino wanted to tell a joke. He wanted to cheer Sho up. Because even though he could listen to Sho’s frustrations, could understand the type of life Sho had expected for himself, Nino had never wanted those things. And even though he didn’t, he didn’t believe that made him selfish. Nino always gave himself an out, the ability to change his mind if circumstances changed. One day he might want a family. Today he didn’t. In Nino’s mind, it was that simple. But telling someone as serious as Sho to wait for the right person to come along, to just live one day at a time? To not beat himself up for not living the exact same life as Captain Inohara? What good would that do?
What Sho needed was a visit to the Counseling Offices. Those people had the answers, and if they didn’t, they at least were trained to help Sho cope with what was bothering him. Nino wasn’t trained for this. They really were different people, him and Sho. But Aiba had said Nino was different in a good way. Aiba had said that Nino could get Sho to at least stop and think, to consider other options.
“Sho-san, I don’t have an answer for that,” he said gently, trying not to let his resolve crumble at the sight of tears rolling down Sho’s face. “But what I do have is time. I have until lunch today if you want to talk. And then I have the rest of tonight. I know you’ve got the jump tomorrow. I know Project Papa-Mama is over soon. But I will make time for you. If you ever need to talk, about anything, about what’s pissing you off, about what’s making you happy, about nerdy star chart shit…even if I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, I’ll listen to you.”
Before Sho could answer, Shota interrupted with his four-note chime. Boop boop boop boop. Boop boop boop boop.
Sho rubbed his eyes, pulling his parenting tablet from his pocket.
“Custody’s still assigned to me,” Nino pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah I got it. I’ll switch it over,” Sho said, tapping his finger against the tablet. A few moments later Shota quieted down again.
Nino moved, grabbing two chairs from the corner of the room where he’d left Shota. He brought one to where he’d been standing, then brought another one around to where Sho was. He pressed a hand to Sho’s shoulder, pushing him into the chair before heading back around and having a seat himself.
“You decided to steal the entire first half of my shift today, Lieutenant.” Sho was wiping his eyes, seeming a bit ashamed about his outburst. Nino decided to continue the conversation first. “So since we’ve got time, I’ll tell you a little more about myself. I figure after three weeks of seeing my charming face daily that you’d be curious. Am I wrong?”
For the first time in several minutes, he saw the tiniest smile on Sho’s face.
“Of course, I’m never wrong,” he continued, leaning back in the chair and getting comfortable. “Shall I start with Ninomiya Kazunari, the early years, or just the JSA ones?”
“Anything,” Sho replied quietly. “Everything.”
“You got it, boss.”
So he started at the beginning.
Part Five
