“Oh for fuck’s sake,” July said. “You’re trying to bring a fucking stray home. What the fuck are you going to do, Bramble, tuck a wanted corporate fugitive under a blanket on your couch for ever?”
“Vanished! Vanished into the crowds!” they said — briefly rolling back out of the booth to peek down into the habitation deck, where July had things embarrassingly spot-on.
July threw her hands up. “We need job money to pay for the bribes for shit like this!”
“La-la-la, never said nothing that could be subpoenaed!” July knew the smile on Bramble’s face, even through the dither. She put on her most horrific, cold, corporate scowl.
“You are ridiculous,” she said, and hung up. Bramble giggled, clamping on to the thick rim of the console desk — knocking important switches and dials out of place — pulling themselves back in as their head danced through the air.
Bramble tried to compose themselves, to the miniature degree they could. Taking slow, extended strides to buy the few seconds they needed not to burst. Roxanne, for her part, wasn’t brimming with so much starshine. “Did it— go okay?” she asked.
It would have been easier to accept ‘No’ because they had made a deal for if the answer was ‘Yes,’ but— “Yep! Budget won’t be pretty. Need to find something to pick up the slack, and I’m guessing nothing you’ve misappropriated is very profitable.”
Bramble slid behind the kitchen counter, the benefits of recommissioning a vintage hauler were evident, off-the-job. Sure, July could hawk on runaway shuttles with her chaser-boat, but you spent most of your time in-fucking-transit — and half that pinging bounty boards to accept your bids. Bramble though had generous space, for a quad of refurbished domestic modules. And their stove — working or not — wasn’t a fold-out, July.
“Probably not.” Roxanne toyed with her third portion of chocolate cereal — no cereal is healthy, Jul, so fuck it! — Phillip bravely guarding the empty bowls. “It’s in my head, but until I see the ninth-gen nanofabricator you’ve stashed you’re out of luck. And— if I’m honest—”
“—the point is stop making autonomous, artisanal weapons for increasingly paranoid colony management corps— yeah.”
Bramble wrapped their hand around the shaver, and Roxanne could see it, quickly scrambling for something to bother them with.
Bramble winced. “Rox, about our deal?—”
“Hey-can-you-check-the-file-register?” Roxanne stretched out her hand, offering the entertainment viewscreen’s remote. She must’ve caught up on six different shows now, those she’d missed in years of indentured, isolated absence from the world. She’d saved her favourite for last but— “I can’t find the final season! And I don’t know how to query because net was… not allowed.”
Bramble tumbled onto the couch and only accepted the remote when she took the shaver — they had run prisoner exchanges at gunpoint that had been less tense.
(And when Bramble had stumbled, semi-intoxicated, into Roxanne’s cell — making her scream till she realised Bramble was crying — they’d ran their hands through her hair, till too many strands of it, withered and greying, broke off in their grasp.)
So they’d made another deal — because Bramble was totally not, very willingly, exploitable like that — wherein Roxanne would let Bramble reset her hair and Bramble would let her stay, for 'a while.'
(“I just keep making more mistakes. My whole fucking life, Rox.” Roxanne eyed the plastiglass slide, failing to close itself. “Cos it don’t matter how small they get, or that there ain't no way not to make them—” She didn’t move, just— held them and Phillip close.)
Roxanne rotated the shaver nervously in her grasp, while Bramble feigned a few entries that should bring her season up. They knew it wouldn’t, and hadn’t yet had the heart to tell them it had been cancelled, for the ‘promotion of anti-familial heterodoxical relationships.’
Aka, the censors got tired of stopping the show’s gazillion, obvious lesbians from kissing.
“Nah, nothing.” So Bramble made them swap, bringing their hand to a slipping blanket and propping it back over her shoulder — other hand running over her scalp. “I could always check the market at the next port? It’s a golden age of piracy out there. Can’t censor an unregistered micro-card. And they can only confiscate so many of them.”
They still had fourteen episodes to figure it out. Maybe they’d find the comic out there — the one that was supposed to finish it — if one of the creators had gotten bored enough to sneak out a copy. It had spent two years pending review from the Regional Colonial Ministry for Public Works — the Family Values Committee definitely holding a grudge.
They flicked the motorised beast on and Roxanne tensed in a picosecond — oatic fluid spilling out onto the already well-stained coffee table — Roxanne slowly trying to peel forward out of Bramble’s tangling. Fuckers really did mess with her on this. So they complied, hands retreating, and dialled to a slower speed but did not turn it off.
“You do wanna grow it out, right? Nicely, and all that. Cos fuck yeah I can braid it for you, parents made me do it for twenty years.” She nodded hesitantly. “I can grab some product at the next stop too? I’ll ask my partner — in business — for recs.”
Roxanne pivoted, brought up her shoulder as she did. It would’ve masked half her face if Bramble wasn’t peering two-feet over her, even pressed down into the seat cushions.
“And you’d get ribbons? Like the uh—” She nodded over to the screen, where every magic girl had different colours of them, bound up in elaborate do’s. “I know it’s stupid, but I kinda miss doing stupid shit — I don’t want another fuckin’ labsite-appropriate buzz.”
“I can get ribbons — if one last time’s okay?” They rubbed her shoulder gently. “Hey! Can totally bump our fuzzies then.” joked Bramble, playing piano across their own head.
“Oh-my-god, don’t even make me think about that. It has been too long. But really it's been— so nice talking to, being talked to, you know, like a person.” Roxanne mirrored them with a curious hand, and looked up to Bramble. “Fuck it — why not.”
Brambled hovered at the bannister — noting the borged-up mercs departing for a colony riot — while they rubbed the plastiglass band on their ring finger. It wasn’t like July didn’t know it was there, but Bramble liked pretending it was more transparent than it was.
“Hey, foster-failure, he he,” July teased, leant-to with a contrasting confidence. They nodded to Bramble’s ship, mercs lurking uncomfortably close. “Doesn’t look any different to me.”
“Well, it is still on your books,” Bramble admitted, grasping their whole hand now. They hadn’t quite asked for permission, when they started running fake bounties through the co-op’s records, to launder Bramble’s rebellion-scented Units.
“You know I know how to handle it.” She’d had this conversation a dozen times now but it’d been… three years since she’d seen them in-person. “I do know how to handle it, Bram.”
As far as July acted, and filed, nothing had changed. She did her own bounties and Bramble was just buying in to avoid the bureaucratic nightmare that is solo-trading.
“How many you found now?” she asked, baiting them into info-dumping their nerves away.
“Six-teen— as of last week. Incredible salvage engineer — found parts for my stove! They’ll find the right cell for him, like, cell as in different to—”
What’s in your ship, Jul.
They cut themselves off, still an unsure timbre to their voice begging why am I doing this? “We’ll never find them all, of course, but you gotta try, you know?”
Why aren’t you?
“Good. Good. It’s good to hear.” Ju wanted the topic to change, quickly, because she didn’t have the answer and bluntly, this arrangement was way better than what they had before. “Hey, Bramble, best job you ever had? Slim pickings as it is.”
“Best job? Not counting her, of course.” It was such a good one Bramble never told it while July could have disciplined them for it. “So I get this, like, dragoon squadron of mean girls. And they’re running this, like, multi-colony pub crawl and drunk out of their minds. So—”
July spied a miniature camera awkwardly pressing against one of Bramble’s ship’s portholes, and silently checked none of the mercs had spotted it, while letting them ramble on.
“—One of their daddies, ultrarich off indenturing all the other patrons in every-fucking-bar, is getting pissed about travel expenses and thinks I’m cheaper than ransom insurance, so I’m dragging them chain-gang style to the fucking brig.”
They turn to face July, laugh-lines spreading in recollection.
“And the best part? This one girl — cries her eyes out for hours — a week later she puts out a bounty on herself. Rigged the board so I was the only one bidding on her.”
“Oh god, Bramble.” July hadn’t heard this particular story, but she knew the type.
“Yep.” Their hands reached forward over the railing, grasping at the air in disbelief. “Wanted to hook up with me — handcuffed in the damn cell.”
“Fucking tourists—” And July couldn’t help but ask, sickened with curiosity. “—so did you?”
“Oh fuck no. Definitely did not. Totally an ethics violation.” Definitely did. Totally felt guilty after. Maybe less when she demanded, immediately post-coital, to be dumped home — not even one cuddle. Fucking tourists. “But— Ju?”
July folded herself straight. “Bram?”
“It’s never like that — is it? You never get a real bastard, not really. Flicks make you out like frontier justice, law where there ain’t none and it’s… not. It’s just more corpo-order and more…. unlucky people. Shuffling ‘em back to the places hurting them — cos you tell yourself where the fuck were they gonna go? Tell yourself they’ll make it out okay. Tell yourself—”
“Bramble. You know we ran things — how I run things.” They hadn’t meant to make July feed bad, she was just the only one who understood this. There was an awful silence. Bramble checked on the ring, still clear. “Fine— Bramble— you gotta say, so say it.”
They dabbled closer to Jul, peering down the insides of her frames.
“You— you tell yourself you aren’t making it worse. But even if that was true, you’re never making it better, either. And now many of them—” The ring flashed black — an electrochromic response to its partner band coming into range.
“—How many of them— were like her?” July had been processing the question too, counting blessings she was counting a bumper coffer for bribes now, thanks to Bramble. And— “Wow. She has been eating good.”
Roxanne rushed up to Bramble, waving the tiny spycam. "Hey July, hey Brammy!" she mumbled cheerfully, reaching up on her tippy-toes while Bramble bowed down, rubbing their heads together. After a few moments she retreated, blushing, to let them finish.
And she was a lot bigger than when July had seen her last — all in the right places, as Bramble had said. Often. On every single records call.
“Oh. Oh yeah. She does— uhh— has.” Bramble was waving back, and July could see the dumbest, most devoted smile on their face. “Wait till you see the dinner she’s cooked. I don’t even know half of what’s in it, except that it's fuck-off spicy. Honestly on the food budget, I wish I could be like you were for me, on ship stuff — alas I could never dare to fuck with that.”
She put a hand on their shoulder, drawing them back to cold, indentured reality. “You’re making it better, Bramble. And— I am too. It’s just— harder to see, I promise.” The colonies brewed more than wine, made more tools than that surrendered to their masters’ tithes.
“Yeah. Totally,” they said. That half-hollow blend of trusting and not quite believing.
July grabbed and swivelled them round. “Now, are you gonna let your wife ruin my tastebuds? Or had we only settled on you doing that to my business model?”
