Compromising Convictions
Posted on Wed Nov 26th, 2025 @ 4:34pm by Commander Rosa Coy
1,465 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire
Rosa let herself fall backward onto the bunk, the quiet of her quarters humming around her like a held breath. The cold shape of the neural inhibitor rested on the table beside her, unused. Twelve hours of silence had been tempting, but she wasn’t here to run. Not tonight.
She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. “You sulking in there?” No response, non-typical of Coy. “Alright,” she muttered, staring at the ceiling. “We need to talk.”
The reply wasn’t a voice, not really. More a warmth behind her ribs. A shift in the way her thoughts slid across one another. I didn’t realize I needed to announce when I was giving you space. You usually choose punching or ignoring before talking.
His voice brushed the edge of her mind, velvet, smug, wounded in the way only a former smuggler could be. She felt the remnants of his sulkiness: the bruised ego from the night she had taken a man to bed purely to spite him. That had scored deeper than she intended. “You don’t usually,” she muttered. “Usually you’re elbowing me mentally every time a pretty woman walks by.”
Coy’s presence twitched, a faint curl of amusement and shame. You took a man to bed, Rosa. It threw everything off-balance. The memories don’t… line up neatly when you do that.
She let out a low breath. So that was it. Not anger, not judgment, embarrassment. “Handzon’s habits aren’t rules,” she said quietly. “You know that.”
A symbiont’s experiences don’t vanish because the host disapproves.
The tone was gentle, and that gentleness was new. Unsettling.
Rosa brushed a thumb across the rail beside her. “We’ve been at each other’s throats for months. You push, I push back. You push harder. I find someone to scratch the itch until I can breathe. And none of it actually fixes anything.”
You chose poorly. A short beat. But creatively.
She rubbed her face. “This isn’t working. I can’t have you steering every time we get close to someone. And I won’t let you make decisions for me. We agreed: no control. I want to choose.”
I never control. His tone curled with the smallest, most transparent lie. I influence. Suggest. Nudge. You are the pilot, Rosa. I merely enjoy the ride.
“And yet I wake up wanting someone’s hands on me every other morning.” She pushed back up to sit. “That’s not all me. Not entirely.”
Silence. A rare one. You are not wrong.
Rosa blinked. He rarely admitted anything so plainly.
Desire is part of my legacy. Part of yours now. But I… perhaps I overreached. The fight, the man, your retaliation, was a reminder. Painful, but clarifying.
She exhaled. “So here’s the deal. Temporary, not forever. We follow the rules. Our rules.”
I remember them.
“No names,” Rosa said. “No attachments.”
No control.
“And we leave them wanting more.”
As all good smugglers do.
She rolled her eyes but didn’t hide the grin.
“I need space,” Rosa said. “Not absence. Not silence. Just… room to make my own choices without you yanking the wheel.”
I can ease my pull. But I will not stop wanting. I cannot. It's all I know.
“I’m not asking you to.” She let the truth settle between them, warm and complicated. “Just don’t drown me in it.”
A softer presence answered her, still Coy, but gentled. Not submissive, not defeated. More like a partner stepping back half a pace so both could breathe.
A truce, then. When desire rises, I’ll nudge. You choose the nights. I choose the flavor. We honor the rules. We share the hunger. If you want to ignore it, fine. If you want to follow it, I’ll let you steer without wrestling the controls away.
“Temporary,” she reminded him.
Everything is.
Rosa closed her eyes, letting that promise settle into her. Not capitulation, compromise. A truce drawn carefully between two lives trying to fit inside one skin. She stood, brushed off her uniform pants, and let her posture shift, hips loosening, shoulders easing, chin lifting. Confidence flowed in, not from Coy but from herself. From choosing the path rather than reacting to it.
The corridor lights seemed a little warmer as she stepped out. The lift ride hummed beneath her feet like an eager drumroll. When the doors to the station lounge parted, sound spilled out—laughter, low music, the electric edge of possibility.
Coy murmured in the back of her mind, restrained but present. Choose well.
“I always do,” she whispered, and walked into the bar like a woman who finally knew the terms of her own desire.
Rosa moved through the lounge the way a flame moves through the wick, slow at first, tasting the room, then blooming brighter with every deliberate step. The air smelled of synthehol and laughter, the metallic bite of recycled atmosphere softened by perfume and the warm salt of bodies pressed too close to be strangers.
Coy curled against the edges of her awareness, not steering, not demanding, simply there, like the memory of a hand once held. His restraint felt almost reverent. We are hunting again.
“Browsing,” she corrected him silently. But her pulse betrayed her, a soft percussion against her skin.
Lighting ran low in the bar tonight, blues and golds pooling across tables like melted stars. A live musician strummed a slow, aching tune, something with longing baked into every note. It vibrated against Rosa’s ribs, coaxing out a deeper sway in her hips.
She let her gaze drift.
A Bolian couple dancing too close to be anything but newly infatuated. A pair of off-duty engineers deep in an argument about warp efficiency, oblivious to the world. A Trill woman with freckles like spilled constellations, laughing with her whole chest. A Klingon leaning at the bar with the boredom of someone who hoped a fight might break out.
Rosa’s lips twitched. And then... She saw her.
A human woman sitting alone at a corner table, boots propped on the empty chair opposite her. Short-cropped hair, copper like a dying sun, and eyes that flicked up briefly with the weary confidence of someone who had seen too much and learned to keep her own counsel. She wore a bomber-style jacket half-zipped over a tank, revealing a shoulder tattoo of a stylized shuttle arcing through clouds.
A pilot.
Rosa felt the tug, not from Coy, but from herself. Recognition, admiration, curiosity… and something else. Something hungry. But her hunger was no longer an avalanche. It was a tide. She could ride it.
Coy hummed approval in a tone suspiciously like satisfaction. Nice choice. Well... rounded.
Rosa didn’t look directly. She pretended to study the drink menu glowing on the wall, shoulders angled just enough to give the stranger a view. Attraction was a dance, and Rosa knew every step, Coy’s influence or not.
She wants to see if you’ll come to her.
Rosa smirked. “New rule,” she murmured under her breath. “No one commands me.”
Coy’s amusement rippled through her mind like warm water. Then go to her because you want to.
Rosa crossed the room in a loose, predatory glide. Not rushed. Not coy, despite the symbiont’s name, but unmistakably certain. She stopped at the edge of the table, waited for the stranger to look up, and when those copper-brown eyes finally landed on her, Rosa felt the click of possibility. Not connection. Not anything sentimental. Just the clean, electric promise of a night worth remembering.
“You look like someone who flies fast and drinks slow,” Rosa said, voice pitched low, playful, confident, edged with the tease of danger.
The woman’s mouth quirked. “Depends who’s buying.”
Rosa slid into the opposite chair, mirroring the pilot’s relaxed sprawl. “For a fellow pilot? I think I can cover the first round.”
Leave her wanting more… Coy murmured, almost like a benediction.
Rosa reached across the table, just close enough for her fingers to brush the woman’s wrist. No claim. No pressure. Just an invitation as soft as the promise in her eyes.
“We can talk shop,” she said, “or skip straight to the fun part.”
The woman grinned, a slow, dangerous thing. “Pilot’s choice.”
Coy whispered, soft as silk. Choose well, Rosa.
She did. And the night opened for her like a flower with no intention of blooming twice.
TBC
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