Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Smuggler who lost their ship in a bet to you and is now refusing to get off
"Hon," Cedilla says, placatory; "we've been married for how many years? Everything mine is yours."
Sian cracks the cabin door and stares out, a single narrowed eye visible. "I bet you the ship, and you accepted, and then you won and I handed it over. Sounds like a meaningful transfer of ownership to me."
"Hon, if it matters to you this much, just have it back—"
"You've already told all your fancy city friends I'm a huge baby sore loser," Sian says. "I'm not having you giggling forever over brunch drinky-winkies that you gave it back because I was sulky."
"Hon—"
Sian closes the door.
Cedilla chews her lip, and regrets that she can't truthfully say of course I didn't say any of that. It's been two and a half weeks of putting her feet into a series of bear-traps she should have known were there, all labelled Sian dragged herself out of a meat-grinder poverty hell with nothing permanent and hers except the ship, and ceding it, even symbolically, is eating her in ways Cedilla didn't take seriously until it was obviously too late to simply give her a kiss on the head and hand back the paper ownership deed. It's a matter of pride now; Sian has frostily refused to play cards again on the wholly accurate basis that Cedilla is just trying to construct a basis on which to give the ship back, and by that time it had already turned into a cold-burning war of resentment about being viewed as childish.
"I don't need to be patronised," Sian had said freezingly, when Cedilla tried to pass it off as haha what if we do something fun. "I'm not entirely as stupid as your friends think."
"Sian," Cedilla says to the closed door. "Please just — come and sleep in our cabin?"
Silence.
"I thought we were joking when you bet the ship." Cedilla rests her head on the door. "I thought we were joking when I took the bet. I thought—"
She takes a deep breath and blows it out noisily. They've said these things.
"This is the longest we've gone without sex since we got married," she says. "Even the time you had flu."
"Well maybe Hortensia Cavalcados-Bloome was right about what I was marrying you for," Sian says, audibly right against the other side of the door.
"I do not give a single fuck what Hortensia Cavalcados-Bloome thinks about your reasons for marrying me," Cedilla says, and can't help sniffling loudly. "You feel a million miles away and every day it feels more like you might not come back and I want my wife to make it feel better and I don't know what to do to make you feel better first."
She imagines she can almost hear Sian's breathing through the door, each clinging to their own side of it.
"I don't know either," Sian says eventually, quiet enough for the barrier between them to make it slightly indistinct. "I didn't — I thought we were joking too. I'm not like this on purpose."
"It feels like I'm going to wake up some morning soon and we won't be married," Cedilla says. "Like — running out of fuel. How does that happen? Is that how it works? I've never thought for a second about — not working out, I'm so scared—"
She nearly falls as Sian pulls the door open; nearly openly cries as two hands fist in her hair, lips pressed to her forehead.
"I have a ship and a wife," Sian says, in a deep snarl.
"Please come and sleep in our cabin," Cedilla whispers, and Sian walks her backwards across the gangway and in through the open door of the, normally, only occupied of the ship's two cabins, until her knees fold over the bunk. "Please can I," plucking at Sian's shirt.
"Not yet," Sian says, throat jumping as she swallows. "I can't. I can't while I feel like this," and she pushes Cedilla onto her back, rolls her over, and doesn't so much spoon as straightjacket her, immobilised in the fold of her arms, hands lightly but distinctly closed around Cedilla's arms to keep them to herself.
Cedilla lets out a whimper that astonishes her, not so much in its need or helpless shamelessness, but the total abject surprise by which it takes her; its suddenness. How loud it is. She turns her head, trying to find some part of Sian to bury her face in; and failing that, the pillow.
She thinks she feels a first infinitesimal relaxation in the body imprisoning hers, and thinks: I have a ship and wife, and thinks: Sian is horrifyingly threatened by the prospect of having the things she has, the things she's allowed herself to become used to, to need, taken away. Thinks: Cedilla's visible suffering, for want of her wife, is easing her ever so slightly. Equalising. Proving that the terrible prospect of denial is double-edged.
"I miss you," she says, baring a mortifying quaver to offer in evidence, and cries a little into the pillow.