Lio finished his morning oatmeal just in time. Jossen appeared in the mess hall doorway and boomed, "Breakfast needs to be done in ten. Report to the muster room."

"Not so loud," Duhar whimpered. His head was cradled in his hands.

Onfenka shoved a glass at his elbow. "Hydrate."

Half his friends looked like freshly microwaved death after their night at Starmesa, but Lio couldn't stem his own energy. He hopped up from the table, offered to clear up the remaining dishes, and made a great stack of them before turning to the wash station.

"You are too fucking chipper," Aziri snapped behind him. 

He had no retort. Because it was horribly true, and if he weren't so happy, he'd want to kick himself. He scraped the dishes off to load them into the steam rinse. Starmesa had worked magic for him. Somehow, someway, Ravi had relented, and they'd picked up as if it were Ferdi's all over again. Except that everything about it was better, because now he had an inkling of how incredible Ravi really was. With any luck, that wasn't the last night they spent together in Opalina, because he was suddenly full of ideas of how to spend his free hours.

Dishes running and table swiped clean, he followed his muttering, hobbling crew to the muster room. They settled into seats just as Ravi swept out of his office, looking as though he had managed a full night of sleep. Very much not as though he'd spent half that night gasping Lio's name into a pillow.

"Morning, everybody."

"Morning, Com," Yorune cried.

Duhar jerked from his slump. "Please, can all just agree to whisper?"

"Sorry, Duhar," Ravi said. "It's back to work today, Opalina. I wanted to give everyone a run down of the next couple weeks. Good news is that our improved resumes mean more commendations possibilities open up—" Lio fought the insatiable grin that was trying to sneak free when Ravi's gaze landed on him.

Ravi cleared his throat and took a large step away from the muster room table. "So. That's good, and will give us some work to do until dispensations come up in two weeks. I'd like to sign up for another competition, but the next one is a ways out, so we'll return to training after everyone gets back from the break." He nodded to Jossen, who approached the front of the room. "Our subal has found our next commendation task. He'll take us through the details."

"Thanks, Com Endessen." Jossen took over, droning on about what sounded like it would be a fairly mundane task. Something about collecting desert specimens for an Enlightenment lab, which sounded as if it was going to be very boring. Lio kept his gaze fixed on the subal for as long as he could. Which turned out to be approximately four seconds before he needed to look at Ravi.

The dispensation break was a week long. Ravi had already made it clear he planned to stay at Opalina. Lio conveniently forgot to file his dispensation paperwork, which meant he would stay, too. He just had to figure out how to break it to his mother that he wasn't returning for the break, and then he'd be able to have Ravi all to himself at the outpost.

The light from the imager Jossen was using shimmered across Ravi's sun-darkened skin. He looked rapt, completely attentive, completely unperturbed by any magnetic pull of desire. Lio, who was doing his best to be magnetic, sat taller in his chair and imagined his will was a compulsion beam radiating out to his quarry. Any second, it would work and Ravi would be forced to look at him, be lost in his gaze—Teres kicked his ankle under the table.

Compulsion beam failure due to enemy interference. He hauled his attention back to Jossen, who was discussing the intricacies of desert rocks. Or something.

The task, when they finally got started on it, turned out to be both quite simple and very challenging. All they had to do was walk around in the desert scanning for very particular rocks. But the challenging part was that they had to walk around in the desert scanning for very particular rocks. The promise of a long, dull day sprawled before them. Add insult to injury, Jossen split them into groups to cover more ground, and he didn't pair Lio with Ravi, and so he spent the whole, Ravi-less day without even a single chance to stare at his com bending over to inspect rocks.

By midday it was too hot for the work, and they piled back up to Opalina with the task only half complete. Jossen told them not to worry, they could take another crack at fulfilling the lab's required numbers tomorrow. No one was pleased.

Half the crew limped away to the showers immediately, the rest shambling into the mess hall. Lio pretended he needed something in his room, and then doubled back to the muster room. Fortuitous that the door was unlocked. The First Goddess must approve of his plan.

He slid through into the muster room and around the table. Slouching against the frame of the door to Ravi's office, he let a little smile play across his lips and rapped his knuckles against the door. It slid back and he leaned forward, too eager, and nearly smacked his face into Jossen's.

"Alior?" The subal frowned at him. "Do you need something?"

"Ah, just"—he stood up straight, peering past Jossen to see Ravi eying him from behind the desk—"needed to speak to the com, actually." Jossen took a step back to let him into the office.

Ravi eyed him from behind the desk. "Jossen and I need to go over the plan for tomorrow, Lio. Is this urgent?"

Lio nodded slowly. "Very. Very urgent." Ravi was being absolutely no help, and doing a terrible job of playing along.

"I could come back in a few minutes, Com," Jossen ventured.

Lio scooted past him into the office, smiling. "That would be so appreciated." He grinned as the subal finally got out of the way, and the muster room door slid shut on Jossen's fading footsteps.

He spun back to Ravi. The com's face was expressionless, but Lio had strategies to make him look much, much more relaxed. He padded around the corner of the desk to Ravi's chair. But before he could lean in and trap him in the seat, Ravi stood.

"Hi." Lio reached up to twine his arms around Ravi's neck, until Ravi gently broke free of his hold and put a step of space between them. "

He shook his head. "That's...not how this can work, Lio." His voice was very quiet, but steady. Certain.

"Oh." All of his giddy, foolish joy drained out of him. "Sorry. I thought—" He didn't know what he'd thought. His cheeks flushed, and the only thing in his head was the overwhelming feeling of an overeager puppy being gently set back to the ground.

"It's not that I don't want to," Ravi said carefully. "But I care about doing this job well. I can't be kicking my subal out of a meeting so I can mess around with you. It's irresponsible."

That was a word he was overly familiar with. It conjured about ten thousand disapproving faces. He forced a smile. "You're right, of course. I wasn't thinking."

Ravi propped himself against the desk, examining him for an uncomfortably long time. "You know I'm not...it's not that I'm annoyed, right? I wasn't trying to—"

"No, no, it's fine." He backed to the door. "Sorry for interrupting. I'll see if I can find Jossen." And then he fled, letting the door shut out the sight of Ravi's frown.

He located the subal and sent him back to have a responsible conversation with his highly responsible com. And then he walked slowly back down the tunnel. What was wrong with him? He'd gone running in there like a lovesick teenager, and Ravi had given him a perfectly rational response and tried to be kind about it, and now he wanted to curl up in his bed. And possibly sniffle a bit. He slumped against the nearest wall and tried to wrangle his chaotic emotions.

Goddess, this was absurd. Ridiculous as it was, it felt as if he'd been rejected. He had been rejected, but very gently and with good reason, which probably should make it feel better? It had been too long since he'd ventured anywhere near the territory of trying to keep things going with someone else for longer than a night. He didn't even know if he should be trying to do that with Ravi. Maybe they were supposed to have talked about it already, and the fact that they hadn't meant that he shouldn't even be attempting—

"Lio?" Teres paused at the entry to the lounge, her arms full of snacks. "What are you doing?"

"I'm—" He stepped off the wall and scrubbed at his eyes. "Having an overreaction. What are you doing?"

She marched down the hallway toward him. "Listening to Aziri trying to make sense of that Mastali text from Yorune. He's making a mess of the translations, and getting pissed off about it because Orvaska's pointing out all his errors." She peered down at him. "You alright?"

"Yes." He hesitated. He wanted to confide in her. But he couldn't do that to Ravi. "Want help carrying those?"

Teres dumped half the snack bars and packets into his open hands, and they turned for the lounge together. Yorune, Orvaska and Aziri were crowded around a crate, snapping at each other. Or rather, Yorune was trying to make helpful comments while Aziri and Orvaska did all the snapping. He and Teres deposited the snacks nearby, and he plopped onto a crate listlessly.

"Look," Orvaska pointed at a word. "This should be 'harvesters,' not 'bringers.' And this bit is 'shapers,' not 'shakers.' You are incorrect."

Aziri's knee bounced impatiently. "That doesn't make any sense! Storm harvesters? And what, you're telling me the rest of this text isn't about Mastali tech, it's about their landscaping preferences?" 

 "I am telling you what the words mean. Because you translated it as North-Othen Vashyan, and this is from Othen-on-the-lee."

"Could be interesting, actually," Yorune ventured. "What are the Mastali landscaping preferences?"

Orvaska frowned, tilting his head sideways. "This says...platter? No. Large dish."

"Large dishes?" Aziri shouted. "You're mocking—"

"I'm reading!" Orvaska thundered back.

Teres grinned and knocked into Lio's knee. "So good to see them working together," she murmured, over the ongoing noise. He summoned a thin smile.

Yorune calmed them both down to an affronted rumble, but the debate slid past Lio without meaning. His thoughts kept curling in on themselves. It shouldn't matter so much that Ravi had politely asked him not to go any further. Was it that he was so out of practice with longing for someone that even temporary disinterest from them was damning?

Across from him, Teres was watching him. If he sat moping for too long, she wouldn't let go of it easily, and he didn't have the concentration to pull off a convincing change in mood. Murmuring something about a shower, he hurried out of the lounge and back to his room. If she knocked, he'd pretend he was asleep.

In the quiet of his room, there was nowhere to run from his thoughts. He rearranged his crystals in height descending order, spritzed his plants, and flopped onto his bed. He and Ravi had been perfect last night. He must have made a misstep. There was something he wasn't seeing. If his subconsciousness was shrieking at him, it would explain the near-tears catastrophe state. He needed to talk it out with someone, but Ravi was obviously out of the question. It was too risky to bring it up to anyone on the crew as a hypothetical. And everyone else who knew him outside of Opalina would just try to tell him what they hoped he wanted to hear. Well. Not everyone, precisely.