Lou gunned the engine of her MT-39 Rockhopper as Debbie swung on behind her with a whoop. The crowd Debbie had just escaped from clustered by the airlock’s inner door, but Lou spared them only a brief glance before the bike’s engine caught and spat out a cloud of red dust behind them as they started moving.
Debbie wrapped her arms around Lou’s waist, squeezing quickly in a hug. “I’ve missed this,” she said, more cheerfully than Lou thought was necessarily warranted for the situation.
“Missed what, barely making it out?” Lou snapped. She kept her eyes on the fiery join between ruddy Martian soil and the sulphurous sky. This area was mostly a flat crater plain, but she didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary; the plume the Rockhopper’s hoverthrusters left behind them left a clear trail for anyone to find in the dust. Only hope for it was to go fast and outrun anyone who might have decided it was worth chasing them. She didn’t think it was likely; they’d wanted information, and the shame of being tricked would help keep exactly what had been taken secret for at least a few hours, even if they had figured out the trick.
“You have to admit it’s exciting.” Debbie flung out a hand, just visible at the corner of Lou’s vision. “The dramatic rescue of our heroine by her knight in shining armor.”
“An e-suit isn’t armor, Debbie.”
“That’s not the point.”
Lou rolled her eyes, knowing her partner couldn’t see. “What is the point?”
Debbie’s hand fell back onto Debbie’s side, resting gently on her ribs. “It’s good working with you again.”
Lou exhaled slowly. The years Debbie had spent locked up on Phobos had varied between frustrating and boring. For all her other contacts and people to work with, Debbie had always been her favorite. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll give you that.” Even though she knew it was just in her head, that the e-suit meant she couldn’t possibly be feeling anything more than pressure, the place where Debbie’s hand was felt warm, especially as Debbie started rubbing tiny circles with her thumb.
Fortunately for Lou’s attention, Debbie’s other arm was still properly and firmly holding them together on the bike; if Debbie had managed to forget basic bike safety over the years she’d been in prison, Lou wouldn’t have agreed to this plan at all. She hadn’t yet had a chance to test Debbie’s word since they’d gotten back together, but since Debbie knew the consequences of lying about practical skills while on a con, she hadn’t thought it likely. Still, it was good to know that the lessons of their youth hadn’t been forgotten.
Including, she thought wryly, the ones about how much Debbie could touch her while she was driving.
Debbie’s hand crept towards her sternum, slow and teasing with its pressure. Obnoxiously easy to focus on, compared to the completely benign pressure of Debbie’s arm around her waist and Debbie’s body pressed tight against her back. By all rights, those should be more distracting. If Debbie wanted to be distracting, all she’d need to do would be roll her hips.
Lou swore in her head and leaned forward over her bike. The heat rising in her body was entirely Debbie’s fault, and the low rumble of Debbie’s laugh that she felt through her body at least as much as over the mics meant that Debbie knew exactly what she was doing. Lou tried to focus on the horizon, on the intermittent rocks, on the crater-edge she would need to climb soon. So long as there wasn’t anything unexpected, she could drive safely. The key word, of course, was unexpected.
“I thought about this, when I was in the tank,” Debbie murmured. Her fingers just trailed the edges of Lou’s breasts, making her focus on their surroundings even more of a pretense. “The scenery leaves a little to be desired, but the rest holds up.”
“Where were you thinking about?” Lou tightened her fingers on the grips, feeding more energy to the engine. They were almost going fast enough for it to start buzzing through them, not just under them. “Saturn’s rings?”
Debbie sighed, body softening a little against her. Lou couldn’t help but think of how that felt when they were unclothed, the way Debbie’s hair spread along her shoulders and Debbie’s lips caressed her shoulders. “That was a lovely trip.”
They’d spent three days camped out on a lonely asteroid in Saturn’s rings waiting for a contact to meet them. To make sure they didn’t go stir-crazy cooped up in their ship, Lou had taken Debbie riding through the rings, putting her bike’s name to the test. The memory of Debbie’s breathless laughter as they careened through dust and bounced off rocks barely half the mass of their bike was still one of her favorites—as was the thought of the sex they’d had after, Debbie’s mouth hot on her nipples and fingers filling her cunt as Saturn watching them through the windows.
Lou’s mouth was dry and her cunt was wet in a way she couldn’t pretend to ignore as Debbie kept talking, pulling her—possibly both of them—out of reverie. “No, I was thinking of the Reserves, and having the wind in our faces and only having the one layer of clothes each, no need for the thick suits.”
“These thick suits are keeping us alive,” Lou said automatically, spacer to the core in a way Debbie would never be. Then the actual content of Debbie’s words caught up to her, and she admitted, “I’ve never been to the Reserves.”
Debbie’s fingers stilled in their well-telegraphed arcs around the undersides of her breasts. “Really? I would’ve thought—”
“It never came up before.” Lou shrugged slightly, knowing Debbie would feel it more than see it. “Not everyone’s quite as... particular with their winnings as your brother is, dear.”
Before Debbie could snarl at her for bringing up Danny while they were talking about sex, however much they were keeping up the pretense of not talking about it, Lou pushed the Rockhopper to its limits, letting the engine’s rumble buzz through them. She relaxed her hips into the feeling, leaning forward just a few centimeters more, and listened contentedly to Debbie’s swearing as she realised what Lou had done. The vibrations thrummed against her cunt, not enough to do anything more than tease her, but more than enough to make her want more.
“Prat,” Debbie said, but her hand fell to Lou’s hip and started tracing a line back and forth along her iliac crest, a promise of where she wanted her hands to be.
“You love it,” Lou said, and then turned the bike to climb up the side of the crater. Every time she pulled the bike into a turn, the engine whined and pulsed through them. Debbie hissed out a swear the first time, and then settled for just barely clenching her body tighter against Lou’s on each subsequent turn. She had the sense to know that fast as they were moving, and tight as the switchbacks were, they had to be one undistracted unit for at least a little while, and Lou was very grateful for that, because she hadn’t done this so fast with a passenger in years.
Lou kept her focus on her hands and the rocks around them. The forced inability to enjoy the sensations meant her nipples were hard, almost aching, and that she wanted desperately for Debbie’s hand to move down and press against her clit. She couldn’t admit to either desire, just force that awareness to the back of her mind and let it build, like the warmth and slowly flooding wetness of her cunt. If she weren’t wearing the e-suit, there would be stains on her Rockhopper when she stood up, she knew; as it was, her clothing was a lost cause.
She swore as she skidded around a turn and the gyros barely kept them upright. Debbie’s arm cinched tighter, locking their pelvises together, and Lou kept swearing as she pulled into the last run before they’d crest the ridge. She wanted to shove Debbie up against a wall and show her teasing. It was just cruel, unfair, that Debbie could enjoy this and all she could do was make sure they got back to their ship.
They soared over the ridge and the engine’s buzz cut out, deprived of the pushback that sent vibrations into the bike. Debbie’s bitten-back moan was more than worth the almost-empty feeling that rushed through Lou, despite how she’d known that the engine would drop out. Lou laughed, arousal-fueled adrenaline surging through her fierce and wild, and Debbie pressed her hips against Lou’s, and then they hit the surface again, and Debbie let out a high whine that sent shivers through Lou’s spine and made her feel like she could come with the barest touch. She kept her own groan in her throat, yet another pressure filling her fit to burst, and turned towards their ship.
Debbie’s hips, now that she’d started moving them, didn’t still. They twitched, almost a heartbeat rhythm, maddening against Lou’s buttocks. Lou bit her lip, trying to draw her attention back to driving with the sharp reminder that not everything was about sex, but then Debbie had to go and ruin her attempt at focus by talking.
“Were you expecting this, when I asked you to come get me?”
“I didn’t think about it then,” Lou said, which wasn’t a lie. She’d thought about it while she was driving, not when Debbie had first asked.
Debbie tapped her faceplate against Lou’s shoulder, and Lou was fairly certain it would’ve been a bite if they weren’t wearing e-suits. “Did you think about it?”
“Yes.” Clipped. Keep it short. Don’t encourage—
The blocky outlines of their ship, Ultraviolet Magpie, came into view. Practical, not beautiful, but it was theirs and had been for a long time, even before they’d adopted further crewmates for the big job. Lou felt all the urgency in her body drop, seeing their end goal and knowing that soon she’d be able to do something. So Lou grinned, and asked, voice intentionally light, “Did you?”
Debbie grabbed onto Lou’s hip, hard enough through the e-suit that Lou suspected that she would’ve bruised her without the covering. “I was a bit busy at the time.”
“That’s never stopped you before.” Lou let her voice drop and sweeten, caramel-rich, the way she always talked when they were having sex. “We did that con on Ceres, and what was it you told me? ‘I’m looking at these neatly stacked platinum bars and all I can think is how satisfying it’d be for you to fuck me on them.’ Something like that, yes?”
“I wanted you to eat me out while I sat on a platinum throne,” Debbie said. Her voice went higher and breathy when she was close like this. “I still do.”
“And then there was the con on Luna, where you were at that lovely ball, and told me about how you were taking advantage of your long dress to not wear any underwear, and left me to sit and stew in that knowledge for hours until you came back.”
“Worth it,” Debble mumbled. “Especially after the jobs where you masturbate on-mic just because you think it’s hot when I’m conning everyone.”
“It is,” Lou said.
Somehow, that matter-of-fact statement shut Debbie up. Lou didn’t understand it, but that wasn’t relevant. Debbie’s fingers were tapping an insistent rhythm against her hip, the same way they did when she was waiting for the right time to begin a con. The same way they did when she was just waiting for the right time to pull Lou into an empty room and kiss her or fuck her. Lou drew her own careful, steady breaths and kept driving, gently curving around rocky debris.
Ultraviolet Magpie rose up before them as Lou rounded the last turn of the slowly growing gully. Lou skidded to a halt in the still-open hanger she used for her bike; there was a larger one, but this glorified airlock was much more useful sometimes. Before Debbie could say anything else, Lou entered the airlock sequence into her bike’s onboard computer and the outer door slid closed. With a slowly-audible hiss, air began filtering back into the room. As it did so, Lou turned off the Rockhopper and dismounted as it settled to the ground.
Before Debbie could also swing her legs over the bike, Lou turned and grabbed her hips. “I don’t think so,” she said thoughtfully. Debbie met her eyes, arousal evident in her fixed gaze even through the helmets, and Lou smiled. “I think that you like my bike too much to leave it, right now.”
“Thought you’d said that if we ever had sex on the Rockhopper you’d never be able to ride it again.” Debbie leaned back on the bike, resting her elbows on its back storage area. “Change your mind?”
“Asshole,” Lou said.
Magpie chirruped the all-clear, and Lou let go with one hand to release her helmet. She pulled it off, breathing the stale-but-still-fresher ship air, and tossed it in the corner. Then she reached up to release Debbie’s, sending it to join hers, and said, “Strip me.”
Debbie smiled and reached forward, fingers just brushing along Lou’s cheek and jaw before reaching the tight-buttoned flaps and hidden zippers of the e-suit. Lou didn’t move beyond the quickening of her breath as Debbie slid off the Rockhopper to pull the zipper all the way down to her groin. She paused there, looking up at Lou through flyaway strands of dark hair, and Lou let out her breath in a hiss and pulled Debbie up by that hair that she’d spent so much time preparing for the fancy party she’d planned on robbing, and Debbie’s gasp turned into a moan that got cut off as Lou kissed her.
In contrast to the chill of recycled air, Debbie was warm, and her cinnamon-spiced mouth opened easily for Lou’s tongue. Lou bit down on Debbie’s lip, and was rewarded with another whine, and then Debbie reached up to grab her neck and pushed back with her own tongue, hot and fierce and devouring. Lou gasped into Debbie’s mouth, reaching for air that Debbie wasn’t going to let her have, and shoved forward until Debbie was pressed against the Rockhopper, her back arching over it.
Lou slipped her fingers down to start undoing Debbie’s e-suit, and Debbie casually turned her head to nip along her jaw and up to her ear, where her teeth fastened onto the lobe and sent sharp sensation ricocheting through Lou’s nerves. Lou hissed, her hips thrusting forward against Debbie’s, fingers fumbling on the catches over Debbie’s chest.
“Has it been too long?” Debbie murmured, right into Lou’s ear. Her voice was warm, and followed by just the tip of her tongue, wet along the cartilage curve. “Dear me, I didn’t think it had been that long since we last fucked.”
Lou turned her head to meet Debbie’s eyes and then, very deliberately, slipped her hands under Debbie’s e-suit and straight onto her nipples. Then, slowly, she squeezed. The way Debbie’s eyes unfocused and her mouth slipped from a smirk into a panting gasp was deeply satisfying, and Lou maintained the pressure as she said, “Are you so sure?”
“I may have—” her hands slid onto Lou’s hips “—misremembered a few things.”
“Good to hear.” Lou pinched Debbie’s nipples one last time (for now, she promised herself) and returned to methodically removing Debbie’s e-suit, timing her motions to the heavy pulse in her cunt, which Debbie was encouraging by pulling their hips together and slowly grinding them together.
As soon as she had a hand by Debbie’s cunt, slipped carefully between their bodies, Lou turned her hand over from working the zipper to pressing into Debbie’s clit. Debbie’s hips immediately pressed into her hand, even with the layers of her trousers between them and her skin.
“Lose the suits,” Debbie said, eyes burning open and focused. “Now.”
Lou raised her eyebrows. “And if I don’t?”
Debbie snarled and pushed off the Rockhopper, forcing Lou back one step at a time until they were pressed against the airlock’s firmly closed door. “Then you’re stripping me and not getting time for yourself.”
In answer, Lou reached up to move the e-suit’s shoulders off of Debbie. She laughed and stepped back a single pace, just enough for Lou to maneuver around her. Lou breathed in her scent as she moved along Debbie’s body, removing the e-suit one limb at a time. Debbie always smelled good, but her sweat and adrenaline from a successful con always seemed sweeter. She stayed kneeling, once she had discarded the e-suit, and pressed her face to her lover’s chiffon-clothed belly, which was soft, and warm, and probably obnoxiously close to Debbie’s still-covered cunt.
Debbie’s fingers gently stroked through Lou’s hair. Even knowing it was unlikely to last, Lou smiled and let herself relax into the soft feeling, leaning against Debbie’s surety and solidity. As Debbie’s fingertips turned into the scratch of nails, Lou moaned. Goosebumps shivered across her skin, and she arched her spine, and she dug her fingers into Debbie’s hips. Above her, she distantly registered Debbie’s intake of breath, but more immediate was the clench of Debbie’s own hands, the heat rising in her as Debbie yanked her head back with her hair.
Lou breathed through the tight pain on her scalp. Meeting Debbie’s eyes—the way she was almost forced to do—she asked, “Do you want your pants off?” Her voice was almost steady, if breathier than usual, and she was proud of that.
“What do you think?” Debbie’s tone was the same as when Lou asked an obvious question while they planned a job. Sarcasm suited her.
Lou grinned—bared her teeth—opened her mouth at another tug.
“Careful,” Debbie said, sounding almost bored. “Wouldn’t want you to say the wrong thing.”
“There’s no wrong answer,” Lou snapped. Still, she moved her hands to the fly on Debbie’s very nice constellation-patterned trousers. “There’s just how much patience you have.”
“I’ve been thinking about you for the past week.” Debbie released Lou’s hair and slid her fingers along the curve of Lou’s ear instead. “I’m not feeling terribly patient, my dear.”
“You only left three days ago,” Lou pointed out, trying to keep herself focused on her own voice and her own hands, not the way Debbie’s words made her want to stand up and spin them both around and fuck Debbie up against the wall. Better to wait until she had Debbie’s pants off, she told herself. Then it would be much more satisfying.
Debbie smiled, and said, “You were gone until five days ago, and we spent those two days planning.”
Lou pulled Debbie’s pants down, let her step out of them in her elegant moon-buckled flats, and then rose back up to plant her mouth directly on Debbie’s cunt.
She pressed her tongue against the opening of Debbie’s vagina, heat overpowering the sweet-salty taste she knew she’d care about when she moved away from the warmth and tension surrounding her. She softly licked inside, feeling the shiver of Debbie’s thighs around her. Lou breathed, in and out, carefully, and tilted her head to slowly slide her tongue up against Debbie’s clit.
Debbie cursed. Lou heard one of her hands hit the wall Lou’s feet were pressed against, and felt the other return to grabbing her hair. She opened her mouth in a groan at the insistent pain arcing along her scalp and spine, looked up to meet Debbie’s eyes near-black from arousal. Lou wrapped one of her arms around Debbie’s waist, under where her shirt hung loose, reached up with the other over it to touch the bra-bound curve of Debbie’s breast. Debbie’s voice got louder, and Lou kissed her clit, flicking it gently with her tongue, just to feel the way Debbie’s hips jerked against her.
“If you fucking dare tease me more now—”
Lou moved back just enough to speak. “I wasn’t going to, but...” She turned to bite at the inside of Debbie’s thigh, wet heat against her cheek, taut muscle sweat-salty in her mouth.
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
“I’m not the one who isn’t wearing pants,” Lou pointed out. She pulled both her hands back, let them rest on Debbie’s hips and ignored the tug at her scalp as she looked up. “Is this supposed to be fair?”
Debbie loosened her grip until she was just cupping Lou’s head. “Do you want it to be?”
Lou bit her lip, tasting Debbie still on her, and settled back against her heels. The wall behind her was comforting, a grounding presence that—unlike Debbie—wasn’t intrinsically arousing in this moment. She hadn’t actually thought about it—fair wasn’t always the game they played. Fair was usually not what either of them cared about. Fun could be. Arousing always was. Dangerous snuck its way in more than she sometimes wanted to admit. But fair?
Fair was for—
For people who needed reassurance, she admitted to herself. For rebalancing, after all the crap that had been thrown their way. For making sure they wouldn’t pull shit on each other, which— was probably something they needed, after the Gala. And something they hadn’t really talked about yet.
Lou sighed, and met Debbie’s eyes, still dilated with arousal. “I think so,” she said, half-expecting Debbie to tell her that fairness was in the overall balance, not in any one act.
But instead, Debbie said, “Let’s actually clean up and do this in our room, shall we?” and offered her hand to Lou.
Unnecessary as it was, Lou gripped it and used it to pull herself upright, a lump in her throat. For a moment, she stood there, face-to-face with Debbie. Her lover’s—partner’s—face shakily masked concern, just as Lou suspected her own did. Lou squeezed Debbie’s hand and smiled gently before kissing Debbie’s cheek. “Get your pants on,” she advised. “I’m going to let Constance and Nineball know they can start the take-off sequence as soon as they’re ready.”
Debbie pressed a hand to Lou’s shoulder silently as they moved apart, Debbie to her discarded trousers and Lou to the comms. Lou breathed in deeply, centering herself enough so that she was probably not going to get teased about sounding like sex over the lossy intercoms. After a few breaths, she was both at the intercom and composed enough that she could think without sex—and her relationship with Debbie in general—pointedly making a nuisance of itself behind whatever the other topic was.
Lou activated the general ship-wide channel and said, “Ready for take-off whenever you want to be. I don’t think they followed us, but you never know.” She turned away and started securing the Rockhopper, the motions habit after so many years. Magpie hadn’t always been her ship, but the attachment points were still standard.
Beside her, Debbie neatened up the e-suits. The silence between them hung full of potential, deferred but not abated. Lou knew every step Debbie took, every motion that bared skin beneath her flowing clothes. Knew the way she smelled—her taste still on Lou’s lips—and that the silence and grace belied the coiled energy just waiting for the appropriate time.
The comms buzzed on as they exited the airlock. “Launch in about two minutes,” Nineball said. There was a pause. “Constance says I’ve gotta tell you that we’d bet on where you were gonna have sex and I think we both won but she thinks only she did, from when we checked on you.”
Debbie and Lou traded looks of exasperation. “Trust them to do this,” Lou said.
“Wonder what part they saw?” was the only response Debbie made before hitting the comms on the wall and saying, a wicked grin on her face just for Lou, “Depends on your definition of sex.”
Constance replied herself this time, just shouting “FUCK YOU” into the comms, leaving Lou laughing against Debbie as they continued down the hall to the bunkroom they generally shared.
At the door, Debbie paused, and ran her hand down Lou’s spine, nails just catching against the fabric and her skin beneath. “Shall we?” she murmured.
Lou turned towards her with a smile and said, simply, “Yes.”