Our Mrs. Sakurai
Title: Our Mrs. Sakurai
Rating: PG-13 for language and adult stuff~
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Matsumoto Jun of the unresolved sexual tension variety; Sakurai Sho/Horikita Maki; Nino/Meisa; Aiba; Becky
Summary: "But Captain Sakurai, I'm your wife."
Notes/Warnings: So some kind soul on the sakumoto drabble-a-thon asked for a Sho/Jun version of the sci-fi show Firefly. Then I accidentally created an entire universe for it, so this won't be the last story in the series. And timeline-wise, this is far from the first story in the series. Some drabble writer I am, huh? Please keep poking me if you do end up liking this because I'd like to continue writing in this AU-verse. This one's an all too obvious ripoff of the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds.
And a note to people who follow this fic journal. If you're not happy with LJ's formatting changes, feel free to follow/bookmark me instead at Archive of Our Own. I'm doing my best to crosspost, so if you prefer the layout better there or just want LJ to die in a fire, here's my page! Thank you so much for all your continuing support and happy holidays!!
http://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters
3009 CE
Fifth moon of the planet Inari
Town of Sweetwater
It wasn't every day that a settlement threw a party for them, but Sakurai Sho supposed that they were rarely heroic enough to deserve it.
Sho liked to take jobs on the small, scattered moons orbiting Inari. They were good people, decent people, and they worked hard. The crew wasn't always fond of these dusty moons, though. They'd been terraformed centuries earlier when the tech hadn't been entirely up to snuff, leaving them barren in some places, even less than barren in others. The Empire didn't care much for these failed experiments though, nor the people who tilled the hard soils there, which meant that the crew of Arashi could do jobs there without interference.
The problem with the jobs here was the money. Arashi always seemed to need money, Sho knew. Her engine was always a day away from breaking down for good, and it always needed spare parts that had long since gone out of production, making the remaining ones all the more expensive. Then there was fuel to consider, food for the crew, and other expenses. But the people here couldn't pay in coin most of the time, offering a few head of cattle or stones from their mines they'd have to trade in elsewhere.
But Sho liked the Inari moons, and that was that.
Today had been a small enough job, scaring off some down on their luck thieves who'd been trying to raid the settlement of Sweetwater of all their pigs. All Sho had had to say was "pig thieves" and Aiba had sprung into action, declaring that Sweetwater wouldn't go pig-less under his watch.
Thieves frightened and pigs rescued, the crew of Arashi settled down in the torchlight, feasting on Inari-style moonshine and roast pork. Okay, Sho thought, not all the Sweetwater pigs were sacred. But they were damn tasty.
Some of the crew, of course, had not had much interest in joining the celebration. And by some he meant one person. And by one person he meant Jun.
Sho downed the rest of his cup of moonshine, glaring into the fire pit in the village square. Ever since Jun had rented out one of his shuttles a few years back, he'd been nothing but a thorn in Sho's side. He didn't fraternize well with the crew, his prickly temperament always reminding Sho of the people he'd gone to school with (though that had been another life entirely). And Jun didn't like places like Sweetwater, always grumbling about the dust ruining his fancy clothes.
Yeah, Sho thought, as one of the village girls refilled his cup. Being a whore must be a real challenging life.
Even now Jun was probably in his shuttle doing whatever it was he did in there when he wasn't hosting a client. Burning candles that cost more than a month's worth of protein meal supplements. Plucking out every hair on his arms and legs with solid gold tweezers. Practicing the sounds he'd make while someone sucked him off...
"Captain, I've never seen anyone drink so angrily before," Meisa teased him as she and her husband wandered by, drinks in hand.
He looked up at her and tried to smile. It was still hard to think of Meisa as a married woman, especially considering the man she'd decided to shack up with. Even then Nino had his possessive little hands around Meisa's middle.
"Come on now, Sho-chan," Nino said. "We're heroes, and you look like someone just shot your dog."
"I don't have a dog," Sho pointed out.
Nino sighed. "Well, don't stay out too late. The longer we keep those cows in the hold, the more shit we're going to have to scoop after we drop them off."
Sho was too drunk to yell at Nino for trying to order him around, and he waved them off. It had been a lot easier when it had just been him and Meisa, the two of them against the world. But then again, the two of them against the world hadn't gotten Arashi off the ground - that had taken someone to keep her running, someone to fly her, someone to pitch in on jobs, and apparently someone to fuck the right people to get them through the patrols at the Awaji Belt.
He was thinking about Jun again. He needed to not do that. Instead he tried to think of the cows in Arashi's cargo hold, imagining the price they'd fetch in the Inari markets the next day. The village girl who'd refilled his cup was by his side again.
"Some more, Captain Sakurai?"
He nodded. "Sure, got anything stronger?"
"No, I'm sorry."
He watched Nino and Meisa wander back off toward the ship to turn in for the night. He'd lost track of Becky and Aiba at some point, but they probably hadn't wandered far if they had cows to coo at inside the ship. He'd never understand his mechanic or his mercenary's need to shower every animal they met with affection.
"Well, just fill it up," he told the village girl as the firelight started to grow hazy. "And have some yourself."
The girl smiled at him, taking the cup from his hands and taking a sip. "As you wish, Captain."
--
When Sho woke in the morning, lying on his back in the hard-packed dirt of Sweetwater's main drag, he regretted the moonshine. His mouth somehow tasted like anchovy-flavored cotton, and he was too miserable to even try throwing up. He slowly shuffled to his feet. Celebrating to this extent was not the behavior of a ship's captain, especially one who had cows to haggle in a few hours.
He sighed, stumbling to his feet. When had he become a person who had cows to haggle?
Sweetwater was empty as he trudged along to the outskirts of town where Nino had landed. They'd fly down planetside, dump the cows, and then he could spend the rest of the day sleeping off the misery he'd inflicted on himself. He could hear the noisy mooing even with the cargo hold's door up, and he jammed his fist against the call button outside.
"Gooooood morning, this is acting captain Ninomiya Kazunari, how can I direct your call?"
Sho pinched the bridge of his nose. "When I'm off ship, Meisa is acting captain and you know it."
"Rough night, Sho-chan?" Nino's voice came buzzing back over the intercom.
"Open the damn door, or you're shoveling all the shit with your hands."
Without another word the door came noisily down, filling Sho's nostrils with the scent of cow dung, and he nearly threw up in the dirt. But his headache won out instead. He stumbled up the open metal door and onto the ship, his ship. He was already up the steps of the hold, heading to the catwalk above that led to the crew quarters when the intercom sounded again.
"Captain, I'm still reading the cargo hold as open. Couldn't even press a button and help me out?" Nino joked.
"Shut up!" he shouted over the sounds of all the mooing cows, and Nino activated the switch himself from the bridge, locking the ship up tight.
He leaned over the rails, surveying the cargo hold below. Fifty stinky, skinny cows. It wouldn't fetch them a real decent price, not with the kind of cattle Inari itself could boast. They'd maybe have enough to put a down payment on the coupling Becky said they needed to keep the gravity drive going for another year. Maybe enough to buy some higher quality fuel rather than the cheap stuff they got from their connection at Sakura Sands Depot. Maybe they should have asked for some pigs.
"Cows huh?"
Sho jumped at the sound of Jun's voice. He hadn't even heard the man approach, dressed as he was in his "slumming it" attire. For his clients Jun dressed in traditional kimono, as a way of recalling a bygone era. When there'd still been a Japan. And an Earth. But while on the ship, Jun chose simple shirts and loose slacks, what Aiba usually described as "Jun-kun's pajamas." But even the craftsmanship on these clothes was better than what Sho had owned even when he was young and wealthy and trapped.
Jun leaned against the rail, mirroring Sho's pose with his ridiculous amount of grace. Sho would never understand the man, he was sure of it. Raised from childhood all so he could be someone's plaything. Love was a game to the Companions groomed in the temples of Omoikane, nothing genuine about them. No matter how much Jun tried to explain about his stupid tea ceremonies and shamisen playing, those were all just preludes to fucking. Jun's job was, simply put, to fuck people for money. And Sho hated it.
"Yes, cows," Sho answered him. "We'll be on our way to Inari."
"And after Inari?"
Sho scratched the miniscule amount of stubble that had sprouted on his chin overnight. "Haven't thought so far ahead."
Jun's grip on the rail tightened in anger, though Sho couldn't see it in his face. Jun had spent far too many years training his emotions to let it ever show in his face when he didn't want it to. "We've been out here for two months. Bit difficult to find work, you know."
Sho could barely hear Jun's complaints over the sound of the damn cows. "Plenty of people on the outer planets are looking for love, Matsumoto."
He knew Jun hated working out here in the "middle of nowhere." The planets outside the Awaji Belt were poorer, outside of The Empire's direct control and standards. They weren't people looking for Jun to brew them some tea and recite poetry. They were just desperate people looking to forget their miserable lives for a few hours and get laid by a real high-class Companion once in a while rather than the prostitute in the local brothel.
"I have a friend on Tenjin asking for me," Jun said. "Surely there's work to be had on Tenjin."
"Friend" was, of course, Jun's code word for one of his repeat clients. Sho shoved back from the rail, boots stomping on the catwalk as he walked away.
"I'll take it into consideration. If you'll excuse me, I've got a ship to run."
--
When Sho returned from the cattle ranch with money in tow, Aiba was sweating up a storm and complaining noisily. Nino was sitting in a plastic lawn chair, watching him go in and out of the cargo hold with the shit-covered shovel.
"You were both supposed to clean the hold while I was gone," Sho grumbled, watching Nino sip some lemonade through a straw.
"I'm supervising," Nino assured him. "Masaki, you missed a spot! Huge cow pile, right next to the empty fuel barrels!"
"I'm going to beat you to death with this thing!" Aiba screeched as he stepped through more dung.
"Then who would fly the ship, idiot?"
"I didn't think that far ahead!" Aiba shouted.
Sho sighed and headed back up into the ship. "Well hurry up, both of you. Got places to be."
Not that Sho had actually decided where to go, not after Jun had tried to make his decisions for him. When he returned this time, the Companion was nowhere in sight, probably locked inside his shuttle (or more like Sho's shuttle that he just so happened to be renting) pouting. Maybe if Sho raised the rent, then Jun would leave. Jun could find some other sucker to fly his ass all over the system.
Of course, thinking about an empty shuttle was difficult. Because of the lost income, Sho told himself, not because of Jun himself.
He gave their earnings over to Meisa, the only member of the crew he trusted with their money management. It helped that she was their best marksman and could kill a man in many different and creative ways. He made Becky's day by promising her the new coupling, and he was feeling pretty good as Nino lifted off from Inari.
He'd told his pilot to head for the Belt, but at the slowest speed possible without traveling backwards. He was hoping one of their usual customers would call in Arashi's services before they got close to the Belt and thus close to where Jun actually wanted to go. The cargo hold was empty once again, and Sho inhaled happily. Opening up the hold briefly after they'd broken atmo had cleaned out the stench, but it had knocked a few of the barrels over in the supply cage that weren't bolted down.
He hopped down the steps, tugging the cage open. They were running a bit low on supplies, but they really needed another job before they could stock up since most of the money was going to be spent by his mechanic at their next port stop. He righted the barrels one by one, jumping back with a rather girly scream as one of the barrels talked.
"Excuse me?"
He blinked at the barrel. Barrels didn't talk.
"Excuse me?" came the voice again. It was female and now there was a knocking from inside.
Sho hurried forward, pulling the top off to reveal someone trapped inside. It was a young woman, maybe the same age as Meisa with short black hair and a simple blue dress on. A stowaway? On his ship?
He held out his hand to her nonetheless, helping her to climb out. "Ma'am, how did you get in there? And how long were you in there? It's dangerous!" If the young woman's barrel hadn't been inside the cage with the other supply stock when they'd opened the cargo door, she could have been whooshed out in the middle of space and long dead. Had she been in there since they'd left Inari? Since they'd left Sweetwater?
She looked exhausted and was near tears. "I needed to be near you, Captain Sakurai."
He stared at her, at her small heart-shaped face and sweet brown eyes. "I'm sorry, do I know you?" She burst into tears for real then, and he panicked, holding up his hands. "Whoa, whoa, what's wrong? What did I do?"
"I'm supposed to be with you, we are promised! Have you forgotten me?"
"I...what?" He gently set his hands down on her shoulders. He'd never heard of a sobbing stowaway before. Most people who jumped planets by sneaking onto ships were escaping the law. "Please don't cry. Please? Just tell me who you are, and we'll get this straightened out right away..."
She looked at him with utter devotion, confusing him all the more. "But Captain Sakurai, I'm your wife."
He heard footsteps on the catwalk, and within seconds Meisa was down the stairs and at his side. "Captain...what's going on?"
"I...don't know."
The girl looked at the floor, shaking and sobbing, and Sho felt like the worst human being imaginable. A wife? Why did he have a wife? How did he have a wife? "I am Captain Sakurai's wife," the girl explained to Meisa with a shy smile. "From Sweetwater. It was the arrangement..."
"The arrangement was cows!" Sho protested, voice coming out in a horrified squeak. "I don't buy people!"
"I wasn't bought. We were married, you and I...you said so last night," she continued. "That we'd be together forever on your ship!"
How much had he had to drink last night? The girl was starting to look a little more familiar. She'd been the one filling his cup with that nasty moonshine. He looked to Meisa for help, and his first mate kept looking between him and the stowaway bride with the look Sho may have hated the most in Meisa's arsenal: pure amusement.
"Meisa, get Nino down here."
Meisa nodded, walking over to the intercom. "Attention, this is Meisa," her voice came echoing throughout the hold. "I need everyone to come to the cargo bay immediately."
"Everyone? I said Nino," Sho complained.
But Meisa only kept smiling as Sho continued to panic and his apparent wife stared at her shoes. Becky was there first in her pink, grease-stained overalls followed by Aiba, smelling considerably better after a post poo-shoveling shower. Nino went to his wife's side, and they immediately started whispering. Jun arrived last though his shuttle was the closest to the cargo hold, gliding down the steps with confusion in his eyes.
"Nino, I need you to head back to Sweetwater. Turn us around, right now."
Becky gave Sho a shove. "Hey, you didn't say we were taking on passengers. I could have had a room ready for her!"
"She's not..." Sho started, blushing furiously, "she's not a passenger..."
"Then who is she?" Aiba asked. "She's cute."
Meisa cleared her throat. "Everyone. I'd like you all to meet Mrs. Sakurai."
Sho sighed as Nino started choking in laughter, Aiba and Becky gasped, and Jun's eyes narrowed and darkened. "You got married?" Becky cried.
"No!" Sho screamed.
"I'm sorry if I displease you, Captain Sakurai," the woman said sadly.
"You don't displease me!" he grumbled. "Nino, bridge, now."
"What, are you trading her in for a younger model?" Nino joked.
"No! We were never married! I don't even know who she is! She's nothing to me!"
The girl's crying only got louder, and Becky hurried to her side, wrapping an arm around her. "Sho, what is your problem?" Becky chided him, and the others all gave him dirty looks.
"What's with all of you? I don't know this girl! She's probably just a stowaway!"
The girl collapsed with another heaving sob. "You said you wanted me to have babies with you!"
With that, Jun turned around and headed back up the stairs to his shuttle without another word as Becky and Aiba desperately tried to calm the poor stowaway down.
He narrowed his eyes at Nino. "Nino, turn this ship around. That is a direct order."
"Can't do that."
"Why the hell not?"
He leaned in close. "Imperial ships, closing in on the Inari moons. Just heard it over the comms. Turns out one of our pig thieves was on the Empire's most wanted list so they're on their way to pick him up and maybe see who else is wandering about Sweetwater and the surrounding area. So unless you'd like to take us back right into the middle of the Outer Planetary fleet, I suggest we stay on course."
Of all the luck, Sho thought angrily. Aiba came over, wrapping an arm around Sho's shoulders. "You dog, you," Aiba cheered him, trying and failing at winking. "And old-fashioned, too! Let me see the Mark of Matrimony."
"The who in the what now?" Sho asked in confusion, and then Aiba was tugging on Sho's shirt.
"Hey! Hey, get your hands off me!"
But Nino cried out in surprise. "Whoa, what the hell is that?"
Sho looked down, seeing the elaborately painted starburst just over his heart. That hadn't been there yesterday, but he hadn't changed his clothes yet that day. It must have been done when he was drunk or asleep. What the hell was it? Who'd been doodling on him?
Aiba smiled. "I didn't know people even did this anymore. It was already out of style when my parents got married."
"Aiba, what the hell are you talking about?"
"It's the Mark of Matrimony, part of the Inarian wedding customs. The wife paints her hopes and dreams on her husband's heart, and he does the same to her."
Sho narrowed his eyes. He really didn't enjoy this new knowledge of the customs on Aiba's backwater home planet and its surrounding moons. "I don't remember painting anything on this girl..."
But sure enough, Meisa and Becky started screaming in laughter. They'd turned the girl towards them, and she'd allowed them to peek down her dress. "Oh my god, what is this supposed to be?" Meisa laughed.
"He told me it was a cow," the girl explained. "He did it very quickly..."
"You drew a cow on her?" Nino asked. "What an asshole."
Sho was dumbstruck, still staring at the painted design on his own body and wanting to scrub it off immediately. "I don't...I don't remember..."
"It looks like a monster!" Becky cried. "It's scary!"
"Scary," Meisa agreed.
Aiba smiled. "You exchanged Marks of Matrimony. So the only other thing you had to do was share a drink..."
He narrowed his eyes at the shy girl, suddenly remembering handing her his cup the night before. It was her. "You..."
"We are husband and wife," she said shyly. "My only hope is to show you kindness and love."
Sho turned back to Aiba, tugging his shirt back down. "Okay, now tell me about some Inarian divorce customs."
His "wife" finally couldn't bear it any longer, running away and up the steps, as far away from him as she could get while the females on his crew stared daggers at him.
Aiba looked rather sheepish. "Divorce, huh...I, uh, I guess I could send my mom a message..."
"We can't go back to Sweetwater, not for a few days at this rate," Nino reminded him. Even he was looking at Sho like he was a cruel piece of shit.
"Fine," Sho said, "Becky, go make her a room, give her every damn courtesy. But she is not my wife, and I don't think any of this is funny."
The shuttle door was still closed when he made it to the top of the steps, and he clenched his jaw as he stomped off for his quarters. First, he'd wash the evidence of his sham marriage away. Then he'd look for the (hopefully) soon to be ex-Mrs. Sakurai.
--
He found the girl in the engine room, crouched in the rear near Becky's numerous crates full of tools and gadgets. She looked up at him with those big, innocent eyes, and he felt worse. Aiba was already on the comms with his mother in his quarters, but their conversations tended to be lengthy. Sho doubted that Aiba would even remember to ask her about the divorce rituals.
Sho sat down on the floor a few feet away from her. She seemed so sweet, so tiny and perfect. Not the best kind of wife for a person like him. "Look, I'm...I'm very sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier. It's not what I'm really like, I was just...surprised."
She nodded. At least she'd stopped crying. "You aren't going to kill me, are you, Captain Sakurai?"
"What?" he exclaimed. "No!"
She seemed happy with that answer. "I'd heard that some husbands who did not like their wives were inclined to kill them and find a new one..."
He blinked a few times. Just what the hell did they teach the kids in the Sweetwater schools? Wait, did they even have schools there? "Well, you don't have anything to worry about. I'm not in the business of hurting women. First things first, though. What's your name? You'll be our guest here while we uh, get things straightened out, and I can't just call you 'wife,' can I?"
She smiled brightly at him, and it lit up her whole face. She really was pretty cute, if young, and he could see himself drawing a cow on her if he was drunk enough. Sho wasn't a really well-behaved drunk to begin with.
"You can call me anything you like, Captain Sakurai..."
"Uh, please just call me Sho. You're not my crew or anything..." Not that his crew ever addressed him properly either.
"My given name is Maki. But if it would please you to call me by another appellation..."
"Maki," he said quickly, cutting her off before it got any creepier. His mother had certainly never acted this way toward his father, not that he'd been around a lot of other married couples. "Welcome aboard Arashi, Maki. But I'm going to be honest with you. We aren't married. I don't have a conscious recollection of any of this happening, and I don't think it's fair to you. Aiba-kun's going to look up some customs so we can annul this situation before you get hurt any further."
She accepted this with a dimming of her smile. "Very well, if it would truly please you to divorce me..."
"It's not about pleasing or displeasing me," he said uncomfortably. This girl simply did not belong on their ship with ridiculous people like them. With someone like him. She was too innocent. "Becky's made up a room for you. Please let us know if you require anything else. As soon as things clear up in Sweetwater, we'll bring you back. No harm done."
"Am I not to stay in your quarters? With you?" She looked down shyly. "You are my husband until this situation is cleared up. It is my duty to be faithful to you until it is not, right?"
He turned away, blushing. It had been a while since he'd had...well, anyone in his life. And here was walking temptation, claiming to be his wife and wanting to satisfy his every need. Wanting to, not being paid to. He shook his head of that thought. This had absolutely nothing to do with Jun. Why was he even thinking of Jun at a time like this?
"I have to go...do some stuff. I'm sure Becky will find you and show you around, okay?"
He bolted. Maybe if he locked himself in his quarters for the next few days, he could forget that Maki even existed. But with his luck, he only made it halfway to the crew quarters before Jun found him.
"Bring her back," Jun said immediately, his eyes cold and calculating.
"You think I didn't tell Nino to do that immediately? Empire brass are floating around out there. I don't need an inspection, don't need anyone poking around with our ident cards. Meisa and I can't afford..."
"Well, isn't that just your issue, Sakurai? It has nothing to do with that girl," Jun said. "Give Nino the ship, we stay on the shuttles, let him fly her back, and if anyone boards, they have nothing to find."
Sho narrowed his eyes. "You think you have all the answers, do you? You think a person like you has the right to tell me what to do with my own ship?"
Jun cocked his head. "Excuse me? A person like me?"
He'd gone and put his foot in his mouth again, but Jun always got him so riled up. Jun wanted to tell him where to fly. Jun wanted to tell him what to do with his accidental wife. Since when was Jun someone who knew what was best for Arashi?
He refused to back down, stepping forward until his dusty boots were nearly stepping on Jun's silken slippers. "A renter. My crew can offer suggestions. But you're a passenger. And if you don't like the way I run this ship, then you're free to leave at any time. Maki goes home when I say she can go home."
"Well, aren't you just the gallant sort, Sakurai. The ideal husband." Jun smiled then, a cruel, twisted sort of smile that he probably never showed his clients. This wasn't part of the performance. This was a smile he saved for Sho. "I apologize for speaking out of turn with you, then. I'm just trying to help you think with your head and not with your dick."
And with that, he walked away. Sho waited until he was in his quarters to punch the bulkhead in his rage, hissing at the sting that arose in his knuckles.
--
He made it almost a full day without seeing Maki again. The girl was extremely curious, Meisa had said. She'd never been out of Sweetwater in her life, so she'd spent the whole morning with Nino on the bridge while he showed off all his piloting skills. At least that explained why the ship had been swaying so much when he was asleep.
Now she was occupied with Becky, learning how the ship worked. Maybe Maki would go on to become a pilot or mechanic herself, Sho hoped. Anything but a pig farmer. Sho headed for the kitchen for lunch, jumping back as Maki appeared in front of him with a smile.
"There you are, Sho-san," she said sweetly. She'd changed out of her drab blue dress and into something of Meisa's. At least that was Sho's best guess - it was a plain enough dress, but it hugged the girl's curves in a way that Becky's denim and overalls never would. Sho tried not to look at the way the fabric stopped just a few inches below her bottom as she turned to walk to the stovetop. He'd have to have a word with Meisa about that before they returned her to the more conservative residents of Sweetwater.
"I was just coming for something to eat," he announced, trying to ignore the way his heart started beating faster. She's not really your wife, he told himself. You have no right to look at her that way.
But then he smelled the food. His mouth watered as Maki set down several plates before him. Chilled soba noodles, his favorite, along with some grilled pork, rice, and miso soup. Nothing but meat and carbs, a man's meal. Maki smiled again as she poured out a beer for him. "I asked Meisa-san what kinds of food you liked. She said you liked everything though."
"I do," Sho admitted, seeing the juices running off of the pork and onto the plate. "Did you really make all this yourself?"
"I'm happy to cook for you," Maki said cheerfully. "If there's anything else you want, don't hesitate to ask. You have lots of delicious things here."
He thought of what Jun had said to him yesterday. How easily he could probably return Maki without much fuss. Why was he keeping the girl around when there really was a solution? Was he really just thinking with his dick? Did he just want to be the one to bring her back out of some misguided attempt at chivalry?
She sat across from him. "Please eat. You're so big and strong, Sho-san, I'm sure you can eat all of it."
If any of the crew was around, they'd probably be laughing hysterically. All they ever did was look for ways to make fun of him. Well, if he was only going to be praised for a few days, it couldn't hurt to take advantage of it. He lifted his chopsticks anyway. "Well, I'm going to eat then!"
Maki was washing dishes, and he was almost full when Nino and Meisa came wandering in. Nino's eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the sheer number of plates and bowls sitting in front of Sho at the table. "Do I smell miso soup? Is that all homemade?"
Meisa herself looked shocked, eyeing all of the pots and pans near the stove. "Did you really eat all that yourself?"
"Man, I could go for some real homemade food," Nino said with a sigh, looking mournfully at the soba Sho was slurping down. "Did she make those noodles from scratch?"
Sho nodded with a smile.
Meisa patted Sho on the head. "Must be nice to have your own little obedient slave girl to cook and clean for you, Captain."
Sho swallowed his noodles and scowled at her. "She made it of her own free will, okay? She's not a slave girl."
Maki came back to the dining table looked embarrassed. "I'm so sorry, Sho-san. I didn't make enough for your friends." She smiled shyly at Meisa. "But everything's still out if you'd like to cook for your husband."
Meisa's face went from amusement to rage in a second flat, and Nino broke the tension with an embarrassed laugh. "Haha," he said, sidestepping away before his wife cracked him over the head at the thought of being nothing more than his personal chef. "They sure do teach them differently in Sweetwater, huh, honey? I'm not really that hungry."
Sho drank his beer, emptying the glass uncomfortably. It had been nice of Maki to cook for him, but with the contemptuous look Meisa was now shooting him, it would probably be the last time he could let Maki do so. Maki took the glass away along with the empty plates before Sho could lift a finger.
Even Nino raised an eyebrow at that. Sho stared the pilot down. "Can you guys stop looking at me like I'm taking advantage of her? She's just a nice person," he hissed just for their hearing.
Meisa was still angry for reasons Sho couldn't understand. "When are we turning around?"
"Just checked the usual channels," Nino said. "Incident out near Raijin's fourth moon's got the fleet's attention and they've moved on ahead of schedule. So whenever you'd like to go..."
Sho got up from the table in a huff. "Then turn the damn ship around. Happy?"
He busied himself the rest of the day by taking an inventory of the cargo hold with Becky, stomach full of the best meal he'd ever had. Having a wife wasn't so bad. But his married life would soon come to an end, wouldn't it?
--
Sho was usually a heavy sleeper, waking up in the morning oftentimes facing the opposite way he'd laid down. Or on the floor with all his clothes off. So he didn't wake until he felt the covers disappear and another body lie down on top of his own.
"Yaaaaah!" he screamed, flailing with his hand for the light panel on the wall next to his bunk. He blinked wildly as his eyes adjusted to the light, finding Maki in his bed with him. "Maki-chan, what the hell are you doing?"
She moved off of him to sit beside him, and that's when he noticed that her clothes were missing. She instead wore one of the long sleeved dress shirts he saved for jobs on the more elite planets in the system. He pulled the covers back up over himself at the sight of her bare legs sticking out from underneath his own clothes.
"Nino says we'll be back in Sweetwater by morning," she said sadly. "I just...it could have been so much worse, you know, Sho-san? By rights you could have thrown me out the airlock if you were displeased with me, but you let me stay. You housed me, fed me, even let me see your beautiful ship."
Nobody had ever really described Arashi as a beautiful ship before, but Sho was beyond caring about things like that when there was a half-naked innocent girl in his bed, and he hadn't had sex in ages. "Maki-chan, is there something wrong with your room? Do we need to move you somewhere else?"
"I thought I'd be fine in here. It's our last night together as man and wife, and I feel as though I've failed you entirely," she said, tears brimming in her eyes. "I'll get back to Sweetwater, and they'll just marry me to some awful man who keeps pigs. He won't treat me the way you do, Sho-san. The men in Sweetwater, they're so rough and mean. They take what they want from their women, and they never say thank you."
"Maki, you can't be in here," Sho managed to squeak out as she started to drag her thin fingers up and down his arm, making the little dark hairs there stand on end. "We're not actually married. And Aiba-kun told me that so long as you remain...innocent that you'll receive no punishment from the village elders..."
"What if I don't want to remain innocent?" she asked him seriously. "You've taken me from the only place I've known, a place I thought I was doomed to stay forever. You've shown me the stars, Sho-san. You've shown me that life can be adventurous."
They hadn't exactly done any adventuring since Maki had been on board, but Sho had been pretty awed by space travel the first time he'd done it as a boy. She kept looking at him, slinking closer and popping open the top buttons on the shirt.
"I don't care if they never marry me off again," she whispered to him, bringing her fingers to his face. He noticed the shimmering gloss on her lips. Had she borrowed makeup from Meisa or Becky? "None of them will compare to you. My sweet, beautiful captain."
"Flattery," he said in a high-pitched voice before clearing his throat. "Ahem, flattery is not going to get you anywhere. I'm very sorry. I'm not as great as you think I am..."
She pressed her hand over his mouth. "Ssh," she whispered seductively. "I'm not wise in the ways of love, Sho-san, but I can see that you have a kind heart. I'll agree to our annulment and I'll never bother you or contact you again. But please, all I have known and dreaded for years is my wedding night. But I don't have any dread if it's you."
"Mmfhmm," he mumbled in protest against her hand. Jun had been right all along, much as Sho was loath to admit it. Maki smelled sweet, and her skin was so soft. She was untouched. Virgin territory.
"Make love to me? Please?" she asked him, moving to straddle him. "I can tell how badly you want to."
He shut his eyes tight. "Just...don't tell the others?"
She ignored his plea and kissed him straightaway, hard and with a surprising amount of tongue for someone who said she was unwise in the ways of love. He resisted at first, but with her writhing on top of him it became impossible. He kissed back, tasting the odd stinging flavor of her lip gloss, unable to hold in his own sigh. It had been too damn long and with a ship carrying a newlywed couple and a space hooker, it had only compounded Sho's loneliness.
He started to feel lightheaded though, something most kisses weren't prone to do to him. Not even really good ones. He felt his body start to go numb, and that's when Maki broke their kiss, backing away with a smile she shouldn't have been capable of. Not some shy young virgin from Sweetwater.
He brought his fingers to his lips. The lip gloss. "You...you..."
"Men," was all Maki said with a smirk as Sho passed out cold in his bed.
--
The loud slap woke him up, and Sho opened his eyes to see Meisa standing over him in her pajamas. "You complete fucking idiot!" she berated him, and Sho moaned. "No, you don't get to whine about this, get your ass up, Captain."
Behind his first mate he could see Nino holding an ice pack to his head. "Clever little thing," Nino complained.
"The hell's going on here?" Sho asked, and Meisa tugged him out of the bed, not even giving him time to grab his shirt and pants. He entered the corridor in just his boxer shorts, and the other crew had assembled.
Nino gestured to the bridge. Or where the bridge should have been, but instead the door was completely shut. And there was no override from the outside. "Your wife's kind of evil," Nino said. "Hit me over the head and left me on the floor outside. I don't know where she's flying us but it's not to Sweetwater."
"Son of a bitch," Sho muttered. They'd all fallen for it - hook, line, and sinker. Maki wasn't some cute young woman from Sweetwater - she was a con artist.
Sho ignored his lack of clothes, heading instead for the engine room. But that was where he found another shut door and a forlorn looking Becky, Aiba tending to a wound on her head as well. "She got both of you?" Sho complained.
"Not me, I was sleeping," Aiba said. "Came out when I heard the engine room door shut, and by then Maki-chan was sealing herself up on the bridge."
Becky took a good long look at Sho from head to toe and smiled. "Evening, Captain."
"Like what you see?" he grumbled. "Becky, how did this happen?"
Becky sighed. "Because your wife..."
"Look, she's not my wife!"
"Whoever she is, she's going to fly us straight to some scrap trader," Meisa complained. "Sho, do something, damn it!"
They couldn't control the ship from the bridge, and they couldn't get into the engine room and stop the ship from there. No wonder Maki had been so curious about how Arashi worked. He paced the floor, his feet cold and the rest of him likewise.
It was then that they were joined by the remaining member of their crew. Well, their passenger, not crew, Sho reminded himself. Jun approached in his slippers, holding a jar. He eyed Sho even more than Becky had. "I found something that could help."
Sho suddenly had the urge to cover his crotch with his hands but he refrained. "And what could you possibly have that would help? What is that? Fancy Companion lube? Incense? We're not going to drive her out with the smell or anything."
Jun just walked past him. "Becky, you got a butane lighter? I only have regular matches."
"I do!" she said, then gestured to Aiba. "Aiba-kun, my cabinet, third drawer on the left. Don't you dare peek at my underwear."
He got to his feet and saluted her. "I make no promises!" he said and hurried off to Becky's quarters.
Sho, Meisa, and Nino followed Jun to the sealed shut bridge door. "The hell is that stuff?" Sho asked hesitantly as Jun unscrewed the lid on the jar and started smearing a stinky green goop all along the edge of the doorframe. "Are you breaking my ship?"
"I'm going to save your damn ship," Jun replied huffily. "Since you apparently had better things to do tonight."
"She drugged me, okay," he admitted quietly, and Jun only stared at him in thinly-veiled contempt. Sho ignored the little snort of laughter that Nino and Meisa let out behind them.
Aiba finally came running back with the lighter. "Here you go, Jun-kun."
"Towel," Jun said, and when everyone stared at him, he sighed and wiped his hands off on Aiba's shirt.
"Hey, come on," Aiba complained.
Jun took the lighter. "It needs the butane's chemical composition to react with it. Stand back."
He flicked the lighter on and held it against the goo before jumping back, nearly colliding with Sho. Everyone watched in awe as the goo sparked briefly before melting through the metal along the doorframe.
"You're paying to replace that door," was all Sho was able to grumble out before the bridge door unsealed, and Meisa charged in with her sidearm.
Maki, clearly shocked that they'd been able to get inside the room so quickly, was easily subdued by Meisa while Nino hurriedly wrenched the controls away.
"Nino, get us back on track," Sho declared, though he supposed he didn't sound very forceful standing around giving orders in his underwear.
Nino took control of Arashi once more, and Meisa hauled Maki out of the room. She smiled at Sho. "Aww, you're no fun," Maki said, her attitude completely different from the innocent act she'd been putting on.
"Nope," Sho said. "I'm definitely no fun."
She glanced down at his body and then back up into his eyes. "A real shame, too. But I had a timetable."
"Well, not anymore. Meisa, any good ideas about where to put her? We don't exactly have a brig, huh?"
Meisa roughly dragged Maki along with her. "I can always jam her back in her barrel."
"Is that any way to let someone talk to your wife?" Maki asked him, and Sho scowled.
"You're lucky I'm a nice guy, Maki. I could just airlock your ass," he said. "Meisa, make sure you padlock the shit out of that barrel."
Meisa pulled Maki down the corridor, Becky and Aiba cheerfully heading after them. Becky most likely to help Meisa with the fancy locks they'd have to use to seal Maki up and allow her to keep breathing, and Aiba because he'd probably get off on seeing the ladies shoving another female in a barrel.
That left him and Jun alone. Just what he didn't need, now that the man had saved all of them. His passenger had just saved the crew.
"Need to go put some pants on, Captain?" Jun asked pointedly, screwing the lid back on his jar of mystery goo.
"No, I'm good," Sho answered all too quickly, crossing his arms over his bare chest. It wasn't like Jun hadn't seen a mostly naked man before. "So why do you have that goop anyhow?"
"I have a lot of helpful things. You never know when you need to get out of a tough situation," he said with an enigmatic smile.
"Lot of customers try locking you in their towers? Trying to keep you all to themselves?" Sho asked him.
The Companion stared Sho straight in the eyes. "Well, they're not always towers. Sometimes they're spaceships. Good night, Captain."
He padded off to his shuttle then, leaving Sho alone in the corridor.
--
Sho took the lid off the barrel, and Maki immediately shivered. "Where the hell did you bring me?" she complained.
Sho allowed her to stand up and get out of the barrel. Of course, he didn't trust the woman any further than he could throw her, but he was the man with the gun, and she was the woman who'd spent the best part of the day in a barrel with just a bottle of water.
"Kinda chilly, honey, I'm so sorry," Sho said. "What a bad husband I've turned out to be."
He tossed her a heavy coat and a few protein meal supplement bars. She let them hit the snowy tundra and scowled at him. "Tsukuyomi?" she complained. "But this planet is like the butthole of the universe. It's so cold here! Nobody's going to find me!"
"That was the idea," Sho said.
"Why don't you just kill me?" she asked him.
"Why didn't you just kill us?" he shot right back, and she didn't say anything. "Well then, you're a resourceful little thing. I'm sure you'll find someone else to swindle. Maybe a polar bear."
He could hear Arashi firing up behind him and he kept his pistol trained on her as he headed back for his ship. "And if you ever try to con me or my crew again, don't expect the same kindness. Take care now, I hear the ice storms at midnight are a real bitch."
She cussed him out with all sorts of colorful language as he boarded, hitting the button for the cargo bay door with a satisfying punch. "Nino," he said, pressing the button for the intercom, "let's get the hell out of here."
He looked up and saw Jun staring down at him from the catwalk.
"Set a course for the Awaji Belt. Let's look for some work on Tenjin this time."
Rating: PG-13 for language and adult stuff~
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Matsumoto Jun of the unresolved sexual tension variety; Sakurai Sho/Horikita Maki; Nino/Meisa; Aiba; Becky
Summary: "But Captain Sakurai, I'm your wife."
Notes/Warnings: So some kind soul on the sakumoto drabble-a-thon asked for a Sho/Jun version of the sci-fi show Firefly. Then I accidentally created an entire universe for it, so this won't be the last story in the series. And timeline-wise, this is far from the first story in the series. Some drabble writer I am, huh? Please keep poking me if you do end up liking this because I'd like to continue writing in this AU-verse. This one's an all too obvious ripoff of the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds.
And a note to people who follow this fic journal. If you're not happy with LJ's formatting changes, feel free to follow/bookmark me instead at Archive of Our Own. I'm doing my best to crosspost, so if you prefer the layout better there or just want LJ to die in a fire, here's my page! Thank you so much for all your continuing support and happy holidays!!
http://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters
3009 CE
Fifth moon of the planet Inari
Town of Sweetwater
It wasn't every day that a settlement threw a party for them, but Sakurai Sho supposed that they were rarely heroic enough to deserve it.
Sho liked to take jobs on the small, scattered moons orbiting Inari. They were good people, decent people, and they worked hard. The crew wasn't always fond of these dusty moons, though. They'd been terraformed centuries earlier when the tech hadn't been entirely up to snuff, leaving them barren in some places, even less than barren in others. The Empire didn't care much for these failed experiments though, nor the people who tilled the hard soils there, which meant that the crew of Arashi could do jobs there without interference.
The problem with the jobs here was the money. Arashi always seemed to need money, Sho knew. Her engine was always a day away from breaking down for good, and it always needed spare parts that had long since gone out of production, making the remaining ones all the more expensive. Then there was fuel to consider, food for the crew, and other expenses. But the people here couldn't pay in coin most of the time, offering a few head of cattle or stones from their mines they'd have to trade in elsewhere.
But Sho liked the Inari moons, and that was that.
Today had been a small enough job, scaring off some down on their luck thieves who'd been trying to raid the settlement of Sweetwater of all their pigs. All Sho had had to say was "pig thieves" and Aiba had sprung into action, declaring that Sweetwater wouldn't go pig-less under his watch.
Thieves frightened and pigs rescued, the crew of Arashi settled down in the torchlight, feasting on Inari-style moonshine and roast pork. Okay, Sho thought, not all the Sweetwater pigs were sacred. But they were damn tasty.
Some of the crew, of course, had not had much interest in joining the celebration. And by some he meant one person. And by one person he meant Jun.
Sho downed the rest of his cup of moonshine, glaring into the fire pit in the village square. Ever since Jun had rented out one of his shuttles a few years back, he'd been nothing but a thorn in Sho's side. He didn't fraternize well with the crew, his prickly temperament always reminding Sho of the people he'd gone to school with (though that had been another life entirely). And Jun didn't like places like Sweetwater, always grumbling about the dust ruining his fancy clothes.
Yeah, Sho thought, as one of the village girls refilled his cup. Being a whore must be a real challenging life.
Even now Jun was probably in his shuttle doing whatever it was he did in there when he wasn't hosting a client. Burning candles that cost more than a month's worth of protein meal supplements. Plucking out every hair on his arms and legs with solid gold tweezers. Practicing the sounds he'd make while someone sucked him off...
"Captain, I've never seen anyone drink so angrily before," Meisa teased him as she and her husband wandered by, drinks in hand.
He looked up at her and tried to smile. It was still hard to think of Meisa as a married woman, especially considering the man she'd decided to shack up with. Even then Nino had his possessive little hands around Meisa's middle.
"Come on now, Sho-chan," Nino said. "We're heroes, and you look like someone just shot your dog."
"I don't have a dog," Sho pointed out.
Nino sighed. "Well, don't stay out too late. The longer we keep those cows in the hold, the more shit we're going to have to scoop after we drop them off."
Sho was too drunk to yell at Nino for trying to order him around, and he waved them off. It had been a lot easier when it had just been him and Meisa, the two of them against the world. But then again, the two of them against the world hadn't gotten Arashi off the ground - that had taken someone to keep her running, someone to fly her, someone to pitch in on jobs, and apparently someone to fuck the right people to get them through the patrols at the Awaji Belt.
He was thinking about Jun again. He needed to not do that. Instead he tried to think of the cows in Arashi's cargo hold, imagining the price they'd fetch in the Inari markets the next day. The village girl who'd refilled his cup was by his side again.
"Some more, Captain Sakurai?"
He nodded. "Sure, got anything stronger?"
"No, I'm sorry."
He watched Nino and Meisa wander back off toward the ship to turn in for the night. He'd lost track of Becky and Aiba at some point, but they probably hadn't wandered far if they had cows to coo at inside the ship. He'd never understand his mechanic or his mercenary's need to shower every animal they met with affection.
"Well, just fill it up," he told the village girl as the firelight started to grow hazy. "And have some yourself."
The girl smiled at him, taking the cup from his hands and taking a sip. "As you wish, Captain."
--
When Sho woke in the morning, lying on his back in the hard-packed dirt of Sweetwater's main drag, he regretted the moonshine. His mouth somehow tasted like anchovy-flavored cotton, and he was too miserable to even try throwing up. He slowly shuffled to his feet. Celebrating to this extent was not the behavior of a ship's captain, especially one who had cows to haggle in a few hours.
He sighed, stumbling to his feet. When had he become a person who had cows to haggle?
Sweetwater was empty as he trudged along to the outskirts of town where Nino had landed. They'd fly down planetside, dump the cows, and then he could spend the rest of the day sleeping off the misery he'd inflicted on himself. He could hear the noisy mooing even with the cargo hold's door up, and he jammed his fist against the call button outside.
"Gooooood morning, this is acting captain Ninomiya Kazunari, how can I direct your call?"
Sho pinched the bridge of his nose. "When I'm off ship, Meisa is acting captain and you know it."
"Rough night, Sho-chan?" Nino's voice came buzzing back over the intercom.
"Open the damn door, or you're shoveling all the shit with your hands."
Without another word the door came noisily down, filling Sho's nostrils with the scent of cow dung, and he nearly threw up in the dirt. But his headache won out instead. He stumbled up the open metal door and onto the ship, his ship. He was already up the steps of the hold, heading to the catwalk above that led to the crew quarters when the intercom sounded again.
"Captain, I'm still reading the cargo hold as open. Couldn't even press a button and help me out?" Nino joked.
"Shut up!" he shouted over the sounds of all the mooing cows, and Nino activated the switch himself from the bridge, locking the ship up tight.
He leaned over the rails, surveying the cargo hold below. Fifty stinky, skinny cows. It wouldn't fetch them a real decent price, not with the kind of cattle Inari itself could boast. They'd maybe have enough to put a down payment on the coupling Becky said they needed to keep the gravity drive going for another year. Maybe enough to buy some higher quality fuel rather than the cheap stuff they got from their connection at Sakura Sands Depot. Maybe they should have asked for some pigs.
"Cows huh?"
Sho jumped at the sound of Jun's voice. He hadn't even heard the man approach, dressed as he was in his "slumming it" attire. For his clients Jun dressed in traditional kimono, as a way of recalling a bygone era. When there'd still been a Japan. And an Earth. But while on the ship, Jun chose simple shirts and loose slacks, what Aiba usually described as "Jun-kun's pajamas." But even the craftsmanship on these clothes was better than what Sho had owned even when he was young and wealthy and trapped.
Jun leaned against the rail, mirroring Sho's pose with his ridiculous amount of grace. Sho would never understand the man, he was sure of it. Raised from childhood all so he could be someone's plaything. Love was a game to the Companions groomed in the temples of Omoikane, nothing genuine about them. No matter how much Jun tried to explain about his stupid tea ceremonies and shamisen playing, those were all just preludes to fucking. Jun's job was, simply put, to fuck people for money. And Sho hated it.
"Yes, cows," Sho answered him. "We'll be on our way to Inari."
"And after Inari?"
Sho scratched the miniscule amount of stubble that had sprouted on his chin overnight. "Haven't thought so far ahead."
Jun's grip on the rail tightened in anger, though Sho couldn't see it in his face. Jun had spent far too many years training his emotions to let it ever show in his face when he didn't want it to. "We've been out here for two months. Bit difficult to find work, you know."
Sho could barely hear Jun's complaints over the sound of the damn cows. "Plenty of people on the outer planets are looking for love, Matsumoto."
He knew Jun hated working out here in the "middle of nowhere." The planets outside the Awaji Belt were poorer, outside of The Empire's direct control and standards. They weren't people looking for Jun to brew them some tea and recite poetry. They were just desperate people looking to forget their miserable lives for a few hours and get laid by a real high-class Companion once in a while rather than the prostitute in the local brothel.
"I have a friend on Tenjin asking for me," Jun said. "Surely there's work to be had on Tenjin."
"Friend" was, of course, Jun's code word for one of his repeat clients. Sho shoved back from the rail, boots stomping on the catwalk as he walked away.
"I'll take it into consideration. If you'll excuse me, I've got a ship to run."
--
When Sho returned from the cattle ranch with money in tow, Aiba was sweating up a storm and complaining noisily. Nino was sitting in a plastic lawn chair, watching him go in and out of the cargo hold with the shit-covered shovel.
"You were both supposed to clean the hold while I was gone," Sho grumbled, watching Nino sip some lemonade through a straw.
"I'm supervising," Nino assured him. "Masaki, you missed a spot! Huge cow pile, right next to the empty fuel barrels!"
"I'm going to beat you to death with this thing!" Aiba screeched as he stepped through more dung.
"Then who would fly the ship, idiot?"
"I didn't think that far ahead!" Aiba shouted.
Sho sighed and headed back up into the ship. "Well hurry up, both of you. Got places to be."
Not that Sho had actually decided where to go, not after Jun had tried to make his decisions for him. When he returned this time, the Companion was nowhere in sight, probably locked inside his shuttle (or more like Sho's shuttle that he just so happened to be renting) pouting. Maybe if Sho raised the rent, then Jun would leave. Jun could find some other sucker to fly his ass all over the system.
Of course, thinking about an empty shuttle was difficult. Because of the lost income, Sho told himself, not because of Jun himself.
He gave their earnings over to Meisa, the only member of the crew he trusted with their money management. It helped that she was their best marksman and could kill a man in many different and creative ways. He made Becky's day by promising her the new coupling, and he was feeling pretty good as Nino lifted off from Inari.
He'd told his pilot to head for the Belt, but at the slowest speed possible without traveling backwards. He was hoping one of their usual customers would call in Arashi's services before they got close to the Belt and thus close to where Jun actually wanted to go. The cargo hold was empty once again, and Sho inhaled happily. Opening up the hold briefly after they'd broken atmo had cleaned out the stench, but it had knocked a few of the barrels over in the supply cage that weren't bolted down.
He hopped down the steps, tugging the cage open. They were running a bit low on supplies, but they really needed another job before they could stock up since most of the money was going to be spent by his mechanic at their next port stop. He righted the barrels one by one, jumping back with a rather girly scream as one of the barrels talked.
"Excuse me?"
He blinked at the barrel. Barrels didn't talk.
"Excuse me?" came the voice again. It was female and now there was a knocking from inside.
Sho hurried forward, pulling the top off to reveal someone trapped inside. It was a young woman, maybe the same age as Meisa with short black hair and a simple blue dress on. A stowaway? On his ship?
He held out his hand to her nonetheless, helping her to climb out. "Ma'am, how did you get in there? And how long were you in there? It's dangerous!" If the young woman's barrel hadn't been inside the cage with the other supply stock when they'd opened the cargo door, she could have been whooshed out in the middle of space and long dead. Had she been in there since they'd left Inari? Since they'd left Sweetwater?
She looked exhausted and was near tears. "I needed to be near you, Captain Sakurai."
He stared at her, at her small heart-shaped face and sweet brown eyes. "I'm sorry, do I know you?" She burst into tears for real then, and he panicked, holding up his hands. "Whoa, whoa, what's wrong? What did I do?"
"I'm supposed to be with you, we are promised! Have you forgotten me?"
"I...what?" He gently set his hands down on her shoulders. He'd never heard of a sobbing stowaway before. Most people who jumped planets by sneaking onto ships were escaping the law. "Please don't cry. Please? Just tell me who you are, and we'll get this straightened out right away..."
She looked at him with utter devotion, confusing him all the more. "But Captain Sakurai, I'm your wife."
He heard footsteps on the catwalk, and within seconds Meisa was down the stairs and at his side. "Captain...what's going on?"
"I...don't know."
The girl looked at the floor, shaking and sobbing, and Sho felt like the worst human being imaginable. A wife? Why did he have a wife? How did he have a wife? "I am Captain Sakurai's wife," the girl explained to Meisa with a shy smile. "From Sweetwater. It was the arrangement..."
"The arrangement was cows!" Sho protested, voice coming out in a horrified squeak. "I don't buy people!"
"I wasn't bought. We were married, you and I...you said so last night," she continued. "That we'd be together forever on your ship!"
How much had he had to drink last night? The girl was starting to look a little more familiar. She'd been the one filling his cup with that nasty moonshine. He looked to Meisa for help, and his first mate kept looking between him and the stowaway bride with the look Sho may have hated the most in Meisa's arsenal: pure amusement.
"Meisa, get Nino down here."
Meisa nodded, walking over to the intercom. "Attention, this is Meisa," her voice came echoing throughout the hold. "I need everyone to come to the cargo bay immediately."
"Everyone? I said Nino," Sho complained.
But Meisa only kept smiling as Sho continued to panic and his apparent wife stared at her shoes. Becky was there first in her pink, grease-stained overalls followed by Aiba, smelling considerably better after a post poo-shoveling shower. Nino went to his wife's side, and they immediately started whispering. Jun arrived last though his shuttle was the closest to the cargo hold, gliding down the steps with confusion in his eyes.
"Nino, I need you to head back to Sweetwater. Turn us around, right now."
Becky gave Sho a shove. "Hey, you didn't say we were taking on passengers. I could have had a room ready for her!"
"She's not..." Sho started, blushing furiously, "she's not a passenger..."
"Then who is she?" Aiba asked. "She's cute."
Meisa cleared her throat. "Everyone. I'd like you all to meet Mrs. Sakurai."
Sho sighed as Nino started choking in laughter, Aiba and Becky gasped, and Jun's eyes narrowed and darkened. "You got married?" Becky cried.
"No!" Sho screamed.
"I'm sorry if I displease you, Captain Sakurai," the woman said sadly.
"You don't displease me!" he grumbled. "Nino, bridge, now."
"What, are you trading her in for a younger model?" Nino joked.
"No! We were never married! I don't even know who she is! She's nothing to me!"
The girl's crying only got louder, and Becky hurried to her side, wrapping an arm around her. "Sho, what is your problem?" Becky chided him, and the others all gave him dirty looks.
"What's with all of you? I don't know this girl! She's probably just a stowaway!"
The girl collapsed with another heaving sob. "You said you wanted me to have babies with you!"
With that, Jun turned around and headed back up the stairs to his shuttle without another word as Becky and Aiba desperately tried to calm the poor stowaway down.
He narrowed his eyes at Nino. "Nino, turn this ship around. That is a direct order."
"Can't do that."
"Why the hell not?"
He leaned in close. "Imperial ships, closing in on the Inari moons. Just heard it over the comms. Turns out one of our pig thieves was on the Empire's most wanted list so they're on their way to pick him up and maybe see who else is wandering about Sweetwater and the surrounding area. So unless you'd like to take us back right into the middle of the Outer Planetary fleet, I suggest we stay on course."
Of all the luck, Sho thought angrily. Aiba came over, wrapping an arm around Sho's shoulders. "You dog, you," Aiba cheered him, trying and failing at winking. "And old-fashioned, too! Let me see the Mark of Matrimony."
"The who in the what now?" Sho asked in confusion, and then Aiba was tugging on Sho's shirt.
"Hey! Hey, get your hands off me!"
But Nino cried out in surprise. "Whoa, what the hell is that?"
Sho looked down, seeing the elaborately painted starburst just over his heart. That hadn't been there yesterday, but he hadn't changed his clothes yet that day. It must have been done when he was drunk or asleep. What the hell was it? Who'd been doodling on him?
Aiba smiled. "I didn't know people even did this anymore. It was already out of style when my parents got married."
"Aiba, what the hell are you talking about?"
"It's the Mark of Matrimony, part of the Inarian wedding customs. The wife paints her hopes and dreams on her husband's heart, and he does the same to her."
Sho narrowed his eyes. He really didn't enjoy this new knowledge of the customs on Aiba's backwater home planet and its surrounding moons. "I don't remember painting anything on this girl..."
But sure enough, Meisa and Becky started screaming in laughter. They'd turned the girl towards them, and she'd allowed them to peek down her dress. "Oh my god, what is this supposed to be?" Meisa laughed.
"He told me it was a cow," the girl explained. "He did it very quickly..."
"You drew a cow on her?" Nino asked. "What an asshole."
Sho was dumbstruck, still staring at the painted design on his own body and wanting to scrub it off immediately. "I don't...I don't remember..."
"It looks like a monster!" Becky cried. "It's scary!"
"Scary," Meisa agreed.
Aiba smiled. "You exchanged Marks of Matrimony. So the only other thing you had to do was share a drink..."
He narrowed his eyes at the shy girl, suddenly remembering handing her his cup the night before. It was her. "You..."
"We are husband and wife," she said shyly. "My only hope is to show you kindness and love."
Sho turned back to Aiba, tugging his shirt back down. "Okay, now tell me about some Inarian divorce customs."
His "wife" finally couldn't bear it any longer, running away and up the steps, as far away from him as she could get while the females on his crew stared daggers at him.
Aiba looked rather sheepish. "Divorce, huh...I, uh, I guess I could send my mom a message..."
"We can't go back to Sweetwater, not for a few days at this rate," Nino reminded him. Even he was looking at Sho like he was a cruel piece of shit.
"Fine," Sho said, "Becky, go make her a room, give her every damn courtesy. But she is not my wife, and I don't think any of this is funny."
The shuttle door was still closed when he made it to the top of the steps, and he clenched his jaw as he stomped off for his quarters. First, he'd wash the evidence of his sham marriage away. Then he'd look for the (hopefully) soon to be ex-Mrs. Sakurai.
--
He found the girl in the engine room, crouched in the rear near Becky's numerous crates full of tools and gadgets. She looked up at him with those big, innocent eyes, and he felt worse. Aiba was already on the comms with his mother in his quarters, but their conversations tended to be lengthy. Sho doubted that Aiba would even remember to ask her about the divorce rituals.
Sho sat down on the floor a few feet away from her. She seemed so sweet, so tiny and perfect. Not the best kind of wife for a person like him. "Look, I'm...I'm very sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier. It's not what I'm really like, I was just...surprised."
She nodded. At least she'd stopped crying. "You aren't going to kill me, are you, Captain Sakurai?"
"What?" he exclaimed. "No!"
She seemed happy with that answer. "I'd heard that some husbands who did not like their wives were inclined to kill them and find a new one..."
He blinked a few times. Just what the hell did they teach the kids in the Sweetwater schools? Wait, did they even have schools there? "Well, you don't have anything to worry about. I'm not in the business of hurting women. First things first, though. What's your name? You'll be our guest here while we uh, get things straightened out, and I can't just call you 'wife,' can I?"
She smiled brightly at him, and it lit up her whole face. She really was pretty cute, if young, and he could see himself drawing a cow on her if he was drunk enough. Sho wasn't a really well-behaved drunk to begin with.
"You can call me anything you like, Captain Sakurai..."
"Uh, please just call me Sho. You're not my crew or anything..." Not that his crew ever addressed him properly either.
"My given name is Maki. But if it would please you to call me by another appellation..."
"Maki," he said quickly, cutting her off before it got any creepier. His mother had certainly never acted this way toward his father, not that he'd been around a lot of other married couples. "Welcome aboard Arashi, Maki. But I'm going to be honest with you. We aren't married. I don't have a conscious recollection of any of this happening, and I don't think it's fair to you. Aiba-kun's going to look up some customs so we can annul this situation before you get hurt any further."
She accepted this with a dimming of her smile. "Very well, if it would truly please you to divorce me..."
"It's not about pleasing or displeasing me," he said uncomfortably. This girl simply did not belong on their ship with ridiculous people like them. With someone like him. She was too innocent. "Becky's made up a room for you. Please let us know if you require anything else. As soon as things clear up in Sweetwater, we'll bring you back. No harm done."
"Am I not to stay in your quarters? With you?" She looked down shyly. "You are my husband until this situation is cleared up. It is my duty to be faithful to you until it is not, right?"
He turned away, blushing. It had been a while since he'd had...well, anyone in his life. And here was walking temptation, claiming to be his wife and wanting to satisfy his every need. Wanting to, not being paid to. He shook his head of that thought. This had absolutely nothing to do with Jun. Why was he even thinking of Jun at a time like this?
"I have to go...do some stuff. I'm sure Becky will find you and show you around, okay?"
He bolted. Maybe if he locked himself in his quarters for the next few days, he could forget that Maki even existed. But with his luck, he only made it halfway to the crew quarters before Jun found him.
"Bring her back," Jun said immediately, his eyes cold and calculating.
"You think I didn't tell Nino to do that immediately? Empire brass are floating around out there. I don't need an inspection, don't need anyone poking around with our ident cards. Meisa and I can't afford..."
"Well, isn't that just your issue, Sakurai? It has nothing to do with that girl," Jun said. "Give Nino the ship, we stay on the shuttles, let him fly her back, and if anyone boards, they have nothing to find."
Sho narrowed his eyes. "You think you have all the answers, do you? You think a person like you has the right to tell me what to do with my own ship?"
Jun cocked his head. "Excuse me? A person like me?"
He'd gone and put his foot in his mouth again, but Jun always got him so riled up. Jun wanted to tell him where to fly. Jun wanted to tell him what to do with his accidental wife. Since when was Jun someone who knew what was best for Arashi?
He refused to back down, stepping forward until his dusty boots were nearly stepping on Jun's silken slippers. "A renter. My crew can offer suggestions. But you're a passenger. And if you don't like the way I run this ship, then you're free to leave at any time. Maki goes home when I say she can go home."
"Well, aren't you just the gallant sort, Sakurai. The ideal husband." Jun smiled then, a cruel, twisted sort of smile that he probably never showed his clients. This wasn't part of the performance. This was a smile he saved for Sho. "I apologize for speaking out of turn with you, then. I'm just trying to help you think with your head and not with your dick."
And with that, he walked away. Sho waited until he was in his quarters to punch the bulkhead in his rage, hissing at the sting that arose in his knuckles.
--
He made it almost a full day without seeing Maki again. The girl was extremely curious, Meisa had said. She'd never been out of Sweetwater in her life, so she'd spent the whole morning with Nino on the bridge while he showed off all his piloting skills. At least that explained why the ship had been swaying so much when he was asleep.
Now she was occupied with Becky, learning how the ship worked. Maybe Maki would go on to become a pilot or mechanic herself, Sho hoped. Anything but a pig farmer. Sho headed for the kitchen for lunch, jumping back as Maki appeared in front of him with a smile.
"There you are, Sho-san," she said sweetly. She'd changed out of her drab blue dress and into something of Meisa's. At least that was Sho's best guess - it was a plain enough dress, but it hugged the girl's curves in a way that Becky's denim and overalls never would. Sho tried not to look at the way the fabric stopped just a few inches below her bottom as she turned to walk to the stovetop. He'd have to have a word with Meisa about that before they returned her to the more conservative residents of Sweetwater.
"I was just coming for something to eat," he announced, trying to ignore the way his heart started beating faster. She's not really your wife, he told himself. You have no right to look at her that way.
But then he smelled the food. His mouth watered as Maki set down several plates before him. Chilled soba noodles, his favorite, along with some grilled pork, rice, and miso soup. Nothing but meat and carbs, a man's meal. Maki smiled again as she poured out a beer for him. "I asked Meisa-san what kinds of food you liked. She said you liked everything though."
"I do," Sho admitted, seeing the juices running off of the pork and onto the plate. "Did you really make all this yourself?"
"I'm happy to cook for you," Maki said cheerfully. "If there's anything else you want, don't hesitate to ask. You have lots of delicious things here."
He thought of what Jun had said to him yesterday. How easily he could probably return Maki without much fuss. Why was he keeping the girl around when there really was a solution? Was he really just thinking with his dick? Did he just want to be the one to bring her back out of some misguided attempt at chivalry?
She sat across from him. "Please eat. You're so big and strong, Sho-san, I'm sure you can eat all of it."
If any of the crew was around, they'd probably be laughing hysterically. All they ever did was look for ways to make fun of him. Well, if he was only going to be praised for a few days, it couldn't hurt to take advantage of it. He lifted his chopsticks anyway. "Well, I'm going to eat then!"
Maki was washing dishes, and he was almost full when Nino and Meisa came wandering in. Nino's eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the sheer number of plates and bowls sitting in front of Sho at the table. "Do I smell miso soup? Is that all homemade?"
Meisa herself looked shocked, eyeing all of the pots and pans near the stove. "Did you really eat all that yourself?"
"Man, I could go for some real homemade food," Nino said with a sigh, looking mournfully at the soba Sho was slurping down. "Did she make those noodles from scratch?"
Sho nodded with a smile.
Meisa patted Sho on the head. "Must be nice to have your own little obedient slave girl to cook and clean for you, Captain."
Sho swallowed his noodles and scowled at her. "She made it of her own free will, okay? She's not a slave girl."
Maki came back to the dining table looked embarrassed. "I'm so sorry, Sho-san. I didn't make enough for your friends." She smiled shyly at Meisa. "But everything's still out if you'd like to cook for your husband."
Meisa's face went from amusement to rage in a second flat, and Nino broke the tension with an embarrassed laugh. "Haha," he said, sidestepping away before his wife cracked him over the head at the thought of being nothing more than his personal chef. "They sure do teach them differently in Sweetwater, huh, honey? I'm not really that hungry."
Sho drank his beer, emptying the glass uncomfortably. It had been nice of Maki to cook for him, but with the contemptuous look Meisa was now shooting him, it would probably be the last time he could let Maki do so. Maki took the glass away along with the empty plates before Sho could lift a finger.
Even Nino raised an eyebrow at that. Sho stared the pilot down. "Can you guys stop looking at me like I'm taking advantage of her? She's just a nice person," he hissed just for their hearing.
Meisa was still angry for reasons Sho couldn't understand. "When are we turning around?"
"Just checked the usual channels," Nino said. "Incident out near Raijin's fourth moon's got the fleet's attention and they've moved on ahead of schedule. So whenever you'd like to go..."
Sho got up from the table in a huff. "Then turn the damn ship around. Happy?"
He busied himself the rest of the day by taking an inventory of the cargo hold with Becky, stomach full of the best meal he'd ever had. Having a wife wasn't so bad. But his married life would soon come to an end, wouldn't it?
--
Sho was usually a heavy sleeper, waking up in the morning oftentimes facing the opposite way he'd laid down. Or on the floor with all his clothes off. So he didn't wake until he felt the covers disappear and another body lie down on top of his own.
"Yaaaaah!" he screamed, flailing with his hand for the light panel on the wall next to his bunk. He blinked wildly as his eyes adjusted to the light, finding Maki in his bed with him. "Maki-chan, what the hell are you doing?"
She moved off of him to sit beside him, and that's when he noticed that her clothes were missing. She instead wore one of the long sleeved dress shirts he saved for jobs on the more elite planets in the system. He pulled the covers back up over himself at the sight of her bare legs sticking out from underneath his own clothes.
"Nino says we'll be back in Sweetwater by morning," she said sadly. "I just...it could have been so much worse, you know, Sho-san? By rights you could have thrown me out the airlock if you were displeased with me, but you let me stay. You housed me, fed me, even let me see your beautiful ship."
Nobody had ever really described Arashi as a beautiful ship before, but Sho was beyond caring about things like that when there was a half-naked innocent girl in his bed, and he hadn't had sex in ages. "Maki-chan, is there something wrong with your room? Do we need to move you somewhere else?"
"I thought I'd be fine in here. It's our last night together as man and wife, and I feel as though I've failed you entirely," she said, tears brimming in her eyes. "I'll get back to Sweetwater, and they'll just marry me to some awful man who keeps pigs. He won't treat me the way you do, Sho-san. The men in Sweetwater, they're so rough and mean. They take what they want from their women, and they never say thank you."
"Maki, you can't be in here," Sho managed to squeak out as she started to drag her thin fingers up and down his arm, making the little dark hairs there stand on end. "We're not actually married. And Aiba-kun told me that so long as you remain...innocent that you'll receive no punishment from the village elders..."
"What if I don't want to remain innocent?" she asked him seriously. "You've taken me from the only place I've known, a place I thought I was doomed to stay forever. You've shown me the stars, Sho-san. You've shown me that life can be adventurous."
They hadn't exactly done any adventuring since Maki had been on board, but Sho had been pretty awed by space travel the first time he'd done it as a boy. She kept looking at him, slinking closer and popping open the top buttons on the shirt.
"I don't care if they never marry me off again," she whispered to him, bringing her fingers to his face. He noticed the shimmering gloss on her lips. Had she borrowed makeup from Meisa or Becky? "None of them will compare to you. My sweet, beautiful captain."
"Flattery," he said in a high-pitched voice before clearing his throat. "Ahem, flattery is not going to get you anywhere. I'm very sorry. I'm not as great as you think I am..."
She pressed her hand over his mouth. "Ssh," she whispered seductively. "I'm not wise in the ways of love, Sho-san, but I can see that you have a kind heart. I'll agree to our annulment and I'll never bother you or contact you again. But please, all I have known and dreaded for years is my wedding night. But I don't have any dread if it's you."
"Mmfhmm," he mumbled in protest against her hand. Jun had been right all along, much as Sho was loath to admit it. Maki smelled sweet, and her skin was so soft. She was untouched. Virgin territory.
"Make love to me? Please?" she asked him, moving to straddle him. "I can tell how badly you want to."
He shut his eyes tight. "Just...don't tell the others?"
She ignored his plea and kissed him straightaway, hard and with a surprising amount of tongue for someone who said she was unwise in the ways of love. He resisted at first, but with her writhing on top of him it became impossible. He kissed back, tasting the odd stinging flavor of her lip gloss, unable to hold in his own sigh. It had been too damn long and with a ship carrying a newlywed couple and a space hooker, it had only compounded Sho's loneliness.
He started to feel lightheaded though, something most kisses weren't prone to do to him. Not even really good ones. He felt his body start to go numb, and that's when Maki broke their kiss, backing away with a smile she shouldn't have been capable of. Not some shy young virgin from Sweetwater.
He brought his fingers to his lips. The lip gloss. "You...you..."
"Men," was all Maki said with a smirk as Sho passed out cold in his bed.
--
The loud slap woke him up, and Sho opened his eyes to see Meisa standing over him in her pajamas. "You complete fucking idiot!" she berated him, and Sho moaned. "No, you don't get to whine about this, get your ass up, Captain."
Behind his first mate he could see Nino holding an ice pack to his head. "Clever little thing," Nino complained.
"The hell's going on here?" Sho asked, and Meisa tugged him out of the bed, not even giving him time to grab his shirt and pants. He entered the corridor in just his boxer shorts, and the other crew had assembled.
Nino gestured to the bridge. Or where the bridge should have been, but instead the door was completely shut. And there was no override from the outside. "Your wife's kind of evil," Nino said. "Hit me over the head and left me on the floor outside. I don't know where she's flying us but it's not to Sweetwater."
"Son of a bitch," Sho muttered. They'd all fallen for it - hook, line, and sinker. Maki wasn't some cute young woman from Sweetwater - she was a con artist.
Sho ignored his lack of clothes, heading instead for the engine room. But that was where he found another shut door and a forlorn looking Becky, Aiba tending to a wound on her head as well. "She got both of you?" Sho complained.
"Not me, I was sleeping," Aiba said. "Came out when I heard the engine room door shut, and by then Maki-chan was sealing herself up on the bridge."
Becky took a good long look at Sho from head to toe and smiled. "Evening, Captain."
"Like what you see?" he grumbled. "Becky, how did this happen?"
Becky sighed. "Because your wife..."
"Look, she's not my wife!"
"Whoever she is, she's going to fly us straight to some scrap trader," Meisa complained. "Sho, do something, damn it!"
They couldn't control the ship from the bridge, and they couldn't get into the engine room and stop the ship from there. No wonder Maki had been so curious about how Arashi worked. He paced the floor, his feet cold and the rest of him likewise.
It was then that they were joined by the remaining member of their crew. Well, their passenger, not crew, Sho reminded himself. Jun approached in his slippers, holding a jar. He eyed Sho even more than Becky had. "I found something that could help."
Sho suddenly had the urge to cover his crotch with his hands but he refrained. "And what could you possibly have that would help? What is that? Fancy Companion lube? Incense? We're not going to drive her out with the smell or anything."
Jun just walked past him. "Becky, you got a butane lighter? I only have regular matches."
"I do!" she said, then gestured to Aiba. "Aiba-kun, my cabinet, third drawer on the left. Don't you dare peek at my underwear."
He got to his feet and saluted her. "I make no promises!" he said and hurried off to Becky's quarters.
Sho, Meisa, and Nino followed Jun to the sealed shut bridge door. "The hell is that stuff?" Sho asked hesitantly as Jun unscrewed the lid on the jar and started smearing a stinky green goop all along the edge of the doorframe. "Are you breaking my ship?"
"I'm going to save your damn ship," Jun replied huffily. "Since you apparently had better things to do tonight."
"She drugged me, okay," he admitted quietly, and Jun only stared at him in thinly-veiled contempt. Sho ignored the little snort of laughter that Nino and Meisa let out behind them.
Aiba finally came running back with the lighter. "Here you go, Jun-kun."
"Towel," Jun said, and when everyone stared at him, he sighed and wiped his hands off on Aiba's shirt.
"Hey, come on," Aiba complained.
Jun took the lighter. "It needs the butane's chemical composition to react with it. Stand back."
He flicked the lighter on and held it against the goo before jumping back, nearly colliding with Sho. Everyone watched in awe as the goo sparked briefly before melting through the metal along the doorframe.
"You're paying to replace that door," was all Sho was able to grumble out before the bridge door unsealed, and Meisa charged in with her sidearm.
Maki, clearly shocked that they'd been able to get inside the room so quickly, was easily subdued by Meisa while Nino hurriedly wrenched the controls away.
"Nino, get us back on track," Sho declared, though he supposed he didn't sound very forceful standing around giving orders in his underwear.
Nino took control of Arashi once more, and Meisa hauled Maki out of the room. She smiled at Sho. "Aww, you're no fun," Maki said, her attitude completely different from the innocent act she'd been putting on.
"Nope," Sho said. "I'm definitely no fun."
She glanced down at his body and then back up into his eyes. "A real shame, too. But I had a timetable."
"Well, not anymore. Meisa, any good ideas about where to put her? We don't exactly have a brig, huh?"
Meisa roughly dragged Maki along with her. "I can always jam her back in her barrel."
"Is that any way to let someone talk to your wife?" Maki asked him, and Sho scowled.
"You're lucky I'm a nice guy, Maki. I could just airlock your ass," he said. "Meisa, make sure you padlock the shit out of that barrel."
Meisa pulled Maki down the corridor, Becky and Aiba cheerfully heading after them. Becky most likely to help Meisa with the fancy locks they'd have to use to seal Maki up and allow her to keep breathing, and Aiba because he'd probably get off on seeing the ladies shoving another female in a barrel.
That left him and Jun alone. Just what he didn't need, now that the man had saved all of them. His passenger had just saved the crew.
"Need to go put some pants on, Captain?" Jun asked pointedly, screwing the lid back on his jar of mystery goo.
"No, I'm good," Sho answered all too quickly, crossing his arms over his bare chest. It wasn't like Jun hadn't seen a mostly naked man before. "So why do you have that goop anyhow?"
"I have a lot of helpful things. You never know when you need to get out of a tough situation," he said with an enigmatic smile.
"Lot of customers try locking you in their towers? Trying to keep you all to themselves?" Sho asked him.
The Companion stared Sho straight in the eyes. "Well, they're not always towers. Sometimes they're spaceships. Good night, Captain."
He padded off to his shuttle then, leaving Sho alone in the corridor.
--
Sho took the lid off the barrel, and Maki immediately shivered. "Where the hell did you bring me?" she complained.
Sho allowed her to stand up and get out of the barrel. Of course, he didn't trust the woman any further than he could throw her, but he was the man with the gun, and she was the woman who'd spent the best part of the day in a barrel with just a bottle of water.
"Kinda chilly, honey, I'm so sorry," Sho said. "What a bad husband I've turned out to be."
He tossed her a heavy coat and a few protein meal supplement bars. She let them hit the snowy tundra and scowled at him. "Tsukuyomi?" she complained. "But this planet is like the butthole of the universe. It's so cold here! Nobody's going to find me!"
"That was the idea," Sho said.
"Why don't you just kill me?" she asked him.
"Why didn't you just kill us?" he shot right back, and she didn't say anything. "Well then, you're a resourceful little thing. I'm sure you'll find someone else to swindle. Maybe a polar bear."
He could hear Arashi firing up behind him and he kept his pistol trained on her as he headed back for his ship. "And if you ever try to con me or my crew again, don't expect the same kindness. Take care now, I hear the ice storms at midnight are a real bitch."
She cussed him out with all sorts of colorful language as he boarded, hitting the button for the cargo bay door with a satisfying punch. "Nino," he said, pressing the button for the intercom, "let's get the hell out of here."
He looked up and saw Jun staring down at him from the catwalk.
"Set a course for the Awaji Belt. Let's look for some work on Tenjin this time."