Star Crossed Kindness

Leo regarded the green tablet on the small table in the rec room of the artificial spaceship he was on and considered what a miracle of psychopharmacology it was. He had, like everyone else in the Astro Navigation and Rescue Service, gone through the required history of the human space flight programs from before first contact. While the Devonian side of the human family had a sketchier, somewhat more incomplete idea of what their species space flight had been like, they did have a few concrete data files pointing to pre-Arcship designs, and a lot of biological data on long term exposure to microgravity and radiation for the Devonian form.

It was bad for them, shocking.

But they lacked the Terran side of things: The sociological experimentation. Theymusthave done the science, but they had no record of their finding or their tests, but Leo knew all about the Soviet Mars missions, all about the bio-enclosure tests in the 20thcentury, and the future social experiments in the 21st, including the disastrous events of the 2078 First Shot colony on Mars. Basically, human beings of both branches, butespeciallyTerrans, could not handle long term enclosure with other human beings in the confined spaces of a starship for any length of time.

It didn't matter how much you loved your partners, how much you had trained, or how much your life depended on it, you would eventually devolve into paranoia, depression, and self harm. It justhappened.Devonians had the same thing happen to them, save it took longer since they thought slower without Terrans.

With Terrans and Devonians on the same ship, you could prolong things...but not forever. The Bonding was good, but it didn't manage to replicate the environment that both species had evolved to live in.

Thus...

The little green pill.

"It doesn't feel like enough," Leo said, quietly.

"Eat up, monkey boy," Midnight said as she walked past him. "I don't want to deal with space madness."

"It's just..." Leo picked up the pill. "It doesn't feel like enough. We're gonna be stuck in this tin can for six months, and this is the only thing that's going to keep me sane?"

Midnight snorted. "Uh, no, you're going to keep you sane, Leo. That pill just means youcando that. It's not magic." She leaned against the back of his chair. Her tail looped around his belly and she murmured in his ear. "I'm going to help too. I am magic."

Leo snorted.

He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed it. He felt the same. And if it worked, he would continue to feel the same, even a few weeks into the project. He stood up, stretched, then sighed. "Let's get to work!"

The truth was that running a spaceship - even a fictional one - was alotof work. Engines had to be monitored, electronics had to be checked and checked again, bodies had to be exercised, and minds had to be given a chance to unwind and relax. Schedules had to be kept, and the curious half-discipline, half-relaxation that was professional spaceflight had to be maintained. Leo found himself doing what he had been doing formostof his time training with the spacy. He managed duty shifts, helped two different personalities to find a common ground, talked over problems that seemed intractable - often in that case, he did very little save nod and say 'hmm' and then ask a few questions and, thus, provided the sounding board it took to get Bolide or Midnight or Gillian or, yes, even Tessa to the endpoint that they were looking for. He worked on the scheduled entertainments for the crew - the trick was to always give someone to look forward to in a way that made sure there was still a Monday and Friday, to keep everyonecenteredon still being a part of the greater human race, despite being millions upon millions of kilometers away from them.

He also-

"Hey, Captain!"

Bolide's voice jerked his head up and around as Leo put the finishing touches on tonight's entertainment hour - he had, he was pretty sure, picked the exact perfect movie to suit everyone's mood for the evening. Leo flicked his handheld back into his pocket and grinned at Bolide as she leaned against the entry to the tiny closet space that Leo used for his admin work.

"Yes, Bolide?" he asked, knowing that asking her to call him Leo since they weren't actuallyina navy would run up against Bolide's fetish for calling him Captain in bed.

"Um, I was just wondering if you could handle a little something for me," Bolide said. "Sponson set another message."

Leo sighed.

Two weeks into a six month voyage, and this was thesecondmessage that Sponson had sent. Yet...

He frowned. "Wait, didn't the last one get here a day ago?" he asked.

"Yeah," Bolide asked. "Why?"

"Well, it's just, I figured if he was doing a weekly call to try and get you back - bad idea, considering you're on a hypothetical xenon powered cruise to Callisto, then...he'd...try and make it a weekly thing, right?" Leo rubbed his jaw. "I'll take a look at it, tell you if it's anything you have to worry about."

"Thank you!" Bolide said, her ears going from drooping to perked up again. "I...sorry about being a big coward-"

"Hey, no, no, nothing to apologize about," Leo said. "What are captain boyfriends for?"

"Commanding starships?" Bolide asked as she ducked back into the curved main corridor of the habitation ring. "Byeeee!"

As she headed out, Leo sighed. Should he continue to do the job he enjoyed doing and, thus, put off having to look at Sponson's face for another few hours, or should he just get it out of the way. Leo rubbed his jaw. It was funny. Before he had met Midnight and Bolide, that choice would have eaten an entire day. As it was, he simply took out his terminal, accepted the file sent by Bolide with the forwarding message of "more like stinkson hehe ^._.^ <^_^>" and then tapped on the message. The view was of Sponson, midway into a beard growth that did not suit him in the slightest. He was leaning over the terminal in a small, dingy looking room, and he looked at the screen. He worked his mouth. Then said. "I..."

Leo frowned.

"Fuck," Sponson said. "Fuck, this was a mistake."

The image shut off and the big greenmessage endlettering appeared.

"What the hell?" Leo asked, quietly. Then, shrugging, he said: "I guess he's growing up."

He frowned, then.

"Wait, what did he send last time." He tapped at his terminal.

Her response message was another Fwd with "here ya go <3 <3 <3"

Leo hit play. The message was exactly what he expected - Sponson saying he wanted her back, and he missed her, and she shouldn't shack up with Leo. He didn't have any racial epithets this time. But Leo noticed something else: The footage was from one of those small apartments that you could get for free right out of school. Leo frowned and hit pause, cocking his head to the side as he considered what the fuck that meant.

Are you overthinking things?Leo thought.

Maybe. Maybe. But something at the back of his mind nagged him. He brought up Sponsons second message again. What was it. What was different? He frowned at the screen, his brow furrowing. He kept looking until a shadow fell across the doorway.

"Cap?"

Leo lifted his head.

Tessa was grinning at him. "I finished the replacement sims with Gill - I think we can manage a total swap on the ventral radiator in under an hour now. Without even being unsafe."

"Awesome, great work!" Leo said, chucking his handheld down onto the desk. "And how are you and Gillian?"

"We're doing better, I think," Tessa said. Then, coughing. "Ahem. That's, actually, uh, the other thing. Can you...not...schedule Twister again?"

Leo blinked, then nodded. "Of course. The Devonians will whine, they did invent the game but-"

"Why the fuck are you getting a message from a plughead?"

Leo blinked, jerked from his question to sitting bolt upright. "What?"

Tessa was leaning over the console. "Sorry, I know, visual privacy, Leo, but, like, that's a plughead badge." She pointed. "See? That's one of their fuck head symbols."

Leo squinted. "It looks like a tampon with an X through it," he said.

"Yeah, cause they're gonna stop being pussy whipped by Devis, they're stupid fuckheads," Tessa said, sitting her bulk down across the table from him. "Who is thisvato?"

"Uh, he's Bolide's ex," Leo said, then frowned. "How do you know what plughead symbols look like?"

"Oh, I got into fights with them all the time in New Shanghai and Addis Ababa," Tessa said, shrugging her massive shoulders. Leo frowned and tapped at his terminal, bringing up the prior message, with mute on. They both peered down at Sponson going through the motions of begging for Bolide's hand in bondage back. Tessa and he shook their heads.

"No symbol," Leo said. "Shit."

"Should we tell Bee?" Tessa asked.

Leo sighed. "It almost feels like pouring salt on the wound, to be honest."

Tessa nodded. "Well, I think you should-"

"Ah," Leo said, raising a finger, quieting the big muscular mechanic. He lifted his gaze. "I have to ask. Why no go on Twister?"

Tessa's cheeks flushed as much as they could. She hunched, then brushed her hands along her brilliant pink hair. Her eyes closed and she groaned. "Cause...I...don't want to make Gillian uncomfortable." She sighed. "When. You know." She squirmed in her seat, then muttered. "I, um. Get. Excited."

"Ah," Leo said, again, then smiled - in that gentle way he was getting really good at using for girls coming to him with semi-humiliating social problems. "I can't tell you what I've been told in confidence. But Gillian has been noticing you making an effort, and sheiswarming to you."

"Doesn't seem that way," Tessa admitted, her voice growing bitter.

"Oh, no, Gillian just talks like that," Leo said. He reached across the table, squeezing her hand. "I'll keep Twister off the table for now. But, hey, try your hand at asking Gillian out on a date. It's really not that scary."

"It sure seems scary," she said, laughing.

"I managed to do it in the middle of high school, you can manage it, Tesselation Tesseract," Leo said, releasing her hand. She snorted.

"You know, I kinda assumed that a Terran/Terran boyfriend girlfriend pair would be edgier about me horning in on your girl," Tessa said.

"Well, I'm not a sitcom character, I am a professional starship captain!" Leo said, completely matter of factly. Tessa snorted. "Also, I'm bigger than you." He flashed her a playful grin - and felt a momentary lurch in his belly. He wasninetypercent sure he had judged the situation and mood right, but...

Tessa gaped at him. Then she laughed and shook her head. "No way," she said. "How'd you evenknow?"

"Bolide is very talkative in bed and, uh, she knows how to get me overachieving," Leo said, his grin growing feral.

Tessa regarded him impassively. Then she grinned, impishly.

"Prove it," she said.

Leo rocked back in his seat, almost as if Tessa had reached across the table and flicked him right in the face. The closeness of the cabin was suddenly rather hard to ignore - the two of them were crammed into the tiny little space, with only the thinnest abbreviation of a desk marking the spot off between them. He laughed. "I, uh, was under the distinct impression that-"

"This is a friendly competition, not anything more," Tessa said.

"A literal dick measuring contest is friendly?" Leo asked, arching an eyebrow.

"If you're worried it makes you gay, don't worry, that's why I took the estrogen," Tessa said, her grin matching his earlier one.

"You-" Leo lifted his finger, waggling it. "You are trying to one up me."

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm curious to see if my captain can put his money where his mouth is..."

A tiny chime came from the handheld. Leo waggled his finger again, then picked up the terminal. The text on it was an inter-crew chatlink, and it was in all bold, flashing, and bright red.

DO IT, COWARD

Leo made a face.

"What is it?" Tessa asked.

"All of my girlfriends are maniacs," Leo said, shaking his head. He chose, at this moment, to ignore that his bragging had gotten him into this position. That was a reflection forfutureLeo to deal with.

"So, you're chickening out?" Tessa asked, her hands lifting up, planting to either side of her head.

Leo regarded her, his eyes even. "You do know..." he hesitated, then brought up a notepad function on his terminal. "...this is very unprofessional." He said, out loud, while holding up the terminal. He had typed the note in large glowing green text:They're totally watching you from the bridge.

Tessa's eyes flicked up, then back down. "It's not a navy."

She reached back, her finger grabbing onto the edge of her zipper. Leo thought that he shouldreallyput his foot down and stop this. Tessa had a bad habit, he was fairly sure now, of never knowing when to back down. It had gotten her far, far, far too much Devonian pussy for her to give it up until she got smacked hard in the nose for it - and while Gillian's rebuke had been the first lesson...well, human psychology never responded to just one lesson. The proper thing to do was to firmly put a stop to this and to go take a very cold shower.

...ah, it's a six month flight, I can handle one fuck up,was what flitted across Leo's brain.

He stood up, then reached back and started to unzip his own uniform. He rolled his shoulders, and for a moment, admired the new muscles that he had gotten - the nice thing about joining the spacy wasn't just the fact he got to work in space and, thus, essentially had a gun aimed at his head to exercise. It was that they had gotten human metabolic management down to a science and could fine tune your biology to the exact, most perfectly functioning balance for your particular individual self. For Leo, this had turned his already fairly toned body into the taut musculature of a gymnast, and without him even needing to do much more work.

No, most of that work had been done by lab techs, and as he always thought when he looked at his arms and his chest, he made a mental note to send them a thank you. Glancing over, her saw that Tessa was taking her own uniform off with a brusqueness that bordered on professional - save, of course, for the cocky grin on her face. Her metabolic treatments, combined with a natural aptitude towards pumping iron, had made her shoulders broad and slabbed with fat and muscle, giving her the bodybuilder's look that Leo had sometimes wished he could attain - but genetics just hadn't worked out that way. Her breasts were larger than either Bolide or Midnight or Gillian's, giving her a totally stacked look that worked with the fact she was also broad and tall. Her hips cushy belly was exposed next, and then she caught his eyes.

Her grin was even more mocking. "Ready to chicken out?"

"Nice piercings," he said, winking at her and flicking his gaze down to her breasts - she had two little studs, one per nipple. They glittered bright gold, like a solar panel's edges.

Tessa rocked her hips, then shoved her uniform the rest of the way down and her girlcock sprang free. Estrogen, as usual, had altered the shape and general texture of her cock in ways that Leo was not well versed in trans women enough to really pin down - though, she clearly wasn't upset about sporting her member. Leodidknow enough from his sex ed course that trans women had varied and complex relationships with their privates - some were fine with them, some wanted to get surgery, and most didn't really want you thinking about them, beyond...say...situations like this.

Still-

"Hah!" Tessa laughed. "I knew you'd chicken out, you-"

Leo dropped his uniform the rest of the way and casually let his cock slap against the puddle of orange-red fabric that was now draped across the cold table. He wasquitehard at the moment, a pure rush of raw, feral pleasure that left his grin so wide he was shocked his head didn't have a hinge on it. The expression of shock on Tessa's face?

Worth every single demerit that was going to get him.

"Holy shit," she breathed.

"You were saying?" Leo asked.

"Holyshithow does that..." Tessa laughed and flushed. "Okay. Uh. Wow."

"I mean, some parts of you are bigger."

Gillian's voice behind Tessa caused the big girl to jerk - and slam her head directly into the edge of the door frame. Tessa spun around as Leo started to tug his uniform back up - but before Tessa could even make a move, Gillian stepped into the doorway. She was grinning up into Tessa's gaze, her hand hidden by Tessa's very large, very shapely ass. Leo found himself unable to stop admiring that ass as Gillian purred.

"You know, it's not about the size of the rocket, it's about her Delta-V, right?" Gillian said. "Do you know how long I had to train Big Dick Johnson over there before he could even get me to cum? Six months."

"Hey-" Leo started.

"Sorry, honey, it's true," Gillian said, grinning past Tessa's shocked body at him. "...in your defense, I kindathoughtthose might be orgasms at first. Also, you did learn!"

Leo, his hand on his zipper, blushed and shook his head. "Okay, okay, I think we've all had enough being college idiots for toda-"

"A date," Gillian said. "You, me, him." She nodded past Tessa to Leo. "Next off shift." She winked, then turned and walked up the curving corridor and around the bend. Tessa slowly turned back, and pumped her fist as she grinned at Leo.

"Hah! We did it, Cap!"

Leo laughed. He couldn't help himself. He spread his hands. "The power of teamwork, chief engineer," he said.

He paused a perfect beat.

"Put on your damn pants."

***

***

Bolide beamed at Leo as he slid up behind her at the navigation console. Navigation in a spaceship was both excessively complex and, also, deeply boring. The long slow burn that was bringing them up to their full cruising speed was going to keep going for another few days and, in that time, Bolide had needed to doexactly nothing, because she had programmed in the burn that she was going to be doing in advance. But still, something bad might happen, so, she was here - keeping an eye on the navigational data while also managing the telescopic arrays built onto the nose of the false Endeavor. This was the hardest part of the training. Leo was fairly sure that once they were doing actual science, taking in the data from deep space telescopy would be fascinating.

As it was, it was taking a bunch of makework down. Since, again.

Fake ship. Fake data.

"What's up, Captain?" Bolide asked.

"I have to talk to you about your ex," Leo said, in his most serious captainly voice.

"Oh," Bolide said, ears drooping under the combined weight of her mood and the centrifugal gravity.

"Yeah," Leo said, then shuffled around in the tiny bridge to take the drone operator control chair. He swung it around so he could rest his chin on the back of it. "Tessa thinks that he might have joined a radical Terran supremacist movement."

"What!?" Bolide jerked up so hard and so fast she nearly caught her horns in the overhead control console - a danger that every Devonian in the spacy knew existed and, yet, overhead control consoles remained so damn useful that no one ever proposed taking them out. Fortunately, she tilted her head before she jabbed any important buttons. "That cracked nozzle! That...that...that...chatbox!" She clenched her hands, her face flushing so much she turned nearly purple. Leo put his hand on her shoulder.

"Do you want me to contact Civil Protection? They can send a therapist to him," he said, hesitantly. He was a bit leery about that - CP Therapist was one of those running jokes of the Human Union in that anyone who needed one would kick them out, and anyone who didn't need one would kick them out too. There was very little a CP Therapist could do, but it was the least he could think of.