Upon Vestia: Chapter TWENTY

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Heny stood there and listened as the two spoke, her heart beat rising. She had visited him a couple of times but found it too painful with eveything going on.

"You're the brawn?" Luka teased. "I think you look pretty anyway."

---

Matt snickered. "I agree, for the good of their parents honest. Not because they're cute and snuggly."

James considered that. "Okay, I can go with that. You really think I look pretty?" He fluttered his eyelashes at her.

~~
"Definitely. We're only being selfless people," Ellie said. She looked down at Danika, sleeping on her lap. "Awwww, look at them though." They were waaay too cute, oh my gosh.

Luka laughed. "sure, why not?" Silly James.

---

Matt nodded. "yeah..." he looked thoughtful. "Ellie? Do you really think Thalia's bad for me?" It was bugging him okay?

James looked pleased and sat back to watch the knights, two of whom were preparing for the first match. "Good, I like being pretty," he joked.

~~
Ellie looked at Matt uncertainly. "Well I mean, like you said, I don't know Thalia that well, but she always stuck me as being domineering and having anger issues, which is like, usually not a good sign in a relationship."

"maybe you can catch the eye of a princess, they're rich right?" Luka nudged James teasingly, smoothing out the awkward heavy dress and settling to watch the show.

---

Matt nodded. "She's not really THAT angry, she usually calms down pretty fast after the initial ridiculous threat." Matt corrected himself "not that she threatens me, usually it's someone who's pissed her off by like.. I dunno, teasing her about something. " He frowned, yeah, Thalia did take herself a bit seriously. "She's passionate and I like that, and I guess I kinda.. find dominating women crazy hot." He looked sheepish. "But.. if she actually tried to seriously hurt me? It's not like I can't get away. I'm not THAT stupid. But she won't, for all she's moody as hell, she's not violent really. I mean sure she threatens to break people's legs but I don't think she'd actually do it. " He paused. "I'm not really selling this am I?" He chuckled. "Trust me Ellie, Thalia's not a bad person. She's all kinds of messed up but we all are, and I guess... I guess I kinda.. like being with someone who's just as fucked up as I am. I trust her completely and uh.. I worked out a while ago how to get my own way... " He snickered, ahh yes, Thalia was actually very easy to manipulate. Was it bad that he found that kinda funny?

James nodded. "Yeah, and they don't cover their faces in helmets like these knights are doing, so you can tell if they look hideous," he said. "Although I don't know what I'll do if my bride is prettier than me."

~~
"Yeah Matt, if you say so," Ellie said a bit doubtfully. She didn't think what Matt had just said about Thalia sounded very good, and she didn't think withholding sex to get what you wanted from your significant other sounded terribly healthy either. "Look, just remember if you reach a point where you want out, we'll help you."
She added after a moment, thinking about Matt's remark about not being that stupid, "Oh, and also getting stuck in bad relationships isn't just something stupid people do, anybody can get stuck. Anybody."

Luka snorted. "You're weird James."

----

Matt shook his head. "I'm fine Ellie, honest." He looked at her earnestly. "I wouldn't be marrying her if I didn't want to."

James smiled. "Maybe. I blame twenty years in a space station."

~~
Ellie didn't think it was as simple as Matt made it out to be, but she decided there was really no way to argue the point. "Okay Matt, I'm glad things are good for you."

Matt nodded. "Thanks." He didn't totally believe she meant that. He sighed. It was rough, knowing the people you loved didn't much like one another or worse, they thought you were doing something horrible. "If anything was going on..." he reasoned. "Esk and Kay would notice and call me on it."

Ellie sighed. "Maybe. Kay's been kinda distracted though, and I know some people really admire Esk's deductive skills, but I don't know him that well." She shook her head, "Look Matt, I don't know what to say here. I'm not trying to make you miserable or something, I'm just not as able to be happy with Thalia as you want me to be. I'm sorry. I'll try talking to her, but I dunno. I'm sorry."

Matt nodded. "Yeah, I know. Just.. for my sake can you just like.. pretend? " He looked away. "You can't hide much from Esk, unless it directly involves him. He's weirdly good at reading people but he still manages to be totally oblivious to the whole concept of people not actually hating him. it's weird." Yay diverting subjects.

--

"Maybe." Luka shrugged. "So which one are we rooting for?" She pointed to the knights.

"I've been trying to pretend," Ellie protested, "you were the one who asked me about it again." She shook her head, frustrated. This was so stressful, ugh, and she was just messing things up more.

~~
"Uhhh, the one with the bull on his shield. He reminds me of Tala, the way he's built," James said. The guy he was referring to really was huge and probably very muscular under his armor, and he rode a massive horse. "Just look at him!"

Matt ducked his head. "Sorry..." he mumbled, and went back to petting the dragons.

---

Luka nodded, watching the guy with admiration. "He should completely crush the other guy." She pointed, the other knight was about half the size. "so long as the little one doesn't know how to use his opponent's size against him. "

Ellie reached up to pat Matt's shoulder. "Your brother is bizarre," she told him, returning to his earlier attempt at a subject change. She tried to silence her thoughts, realizing the babies could probably hear them. Poor things.

~~
"Just sit on him and boom, fight over," James agreed. "I bet he's not like those wimpy Terrans we saw in that porn film, either."

Matt nodded slowly. "yeah.. he is..." His heart didn't really sound much in this. He looked miserable.

---

Luka started snickering at the mention of the porn. "you know, for someone with no sex drive you really do like to bring things back to sex a lot." She told him with a smile.

Ellie sighed. Yep, she'd made things worse. "I'm sorry," she told him again.

~~
James laughed. "Back in the old days I did it to make Terrans nervous. Now it's a habit I guess. Oops."

"I know you are." Matt shook his head. "I just.. i'm tired of it. Nobody's ever actually genuinely happy for me, nobody trusts my judgment, it's always just Oh Matt's fucked up again." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't... Let's talk about something else." There he went, unable to actually talk about his problems. Diverting, as usual.

---

"Did it make them nervous?" Luka asked. "I mean, they designed you guys with.. you know... the parts. " Seems hypocritical to her to design a sex robot then be freaked out when said sex robot offered you sex. Like, wth? Disturbing.

Ellie blinked rapidly, trying not to burst into tears, which would so not be okay right now. "Right. Things to talk about. Uh, uh, we still need to deliver those tablets to the medics, don't we?"

~~
"Well you know, it's like people," James said. "You don't hang out with the creepy sex maniacs, you want to hang out with normal people who aren't fixated on one topic." He nodded sagely, "And there's a difference between offering someone sex, and making crude jokes and innuendos while maintaining creepily extended eye contact."

Luka snorted. "you ARE good at the innuendos and the seriously inappropriate songs." She agreed. She was pretty used to that sort of crudeness though, Fleet pilots and cadets were hardly polite or proper.

---

Matt frowned, he felt guilty for upsetting Ellie. Man, she looked like she was going to cry. He nodded quickly. "yeah, we never gave them those. We.. should totally do that."

James smiled. "It's fun to make the Terrans nervous. And since you seem cool with it, I guess I keep doing it out of habit, although not as creepily as I used to."
The knights charged each other and their lances struck each others' shields hard. The smaller knight was knocked from his saddle immediately.
"YEAH!" James cheered.

~~
"They'll be happy for an offering of inexpensive tablets, it'll be awesome," Ellie said. "Definitely." She looked away to wipe her eyes hastily. She was fine, dammit, just fine!

"ooch, that looked like it hurt." Luka cheered the big knight and shrugged to James. "It's no worse than anything the other cadets came out with, particularly the guys. "

---

"yeah, plus we babysat so they should be extra super pleased with us right?" Matt continued trying to divert, his voice still sounded a little hollow but he was trying.

"Yeah, I'm not that terrible," James agreed. He watched the smaller knight scramble to his feet and get out of the arena while somebody went to lead his horse away. "I always try to act all nice around Dawn though, she just has this aura, man."

~~
"Exactly. They'll be super grateful." Ellie forced a moderately convincing smile onto her face. "Do you remember where they are? Cause I don't." Oops.

"She's very... innocent." Luka agreed. "It's kind of strange, especially for a medic. I dunno, maybe it's all an act and she's really secretly a total pervert?" She snorted with laughter at the thought.

"uh... " Matt wracked his brain. "Nope... Maybe Vestia remembers." He looked up at the camera. "What'd we do with the shopping we did?"

"Who knoooows," James said mysteriously. "She's so sneaky about it if she is."

~~
"Oh yeah," Vestia said, "I stuck the tablets in a storage closet when you dropped them off before running off to whatever you guys were doing. Want directions to them?"

Luka nodded. "She's a.. what was the term? Odd duck?" She chuckled. "nice though." She was rather fond of Dawn, she'd never really had female friends before.

---

Matt nodded. "That'd be awesome." He looked down at the sleeping dragons. "We.. uh.. should probably drop these guys off with someone though."

"Exactly," James agreed. "A very odd duck."

~~
"Yeah." Ellie considered their options, "I'm sure Starr is still exhausted, Shane probably is too, we can't make the hawk girls babysit cause they're basically kids themselves." She frowned, "Hmm, we need more babysitters."