Chapter Text
Rylee’s faithful favorite bra, that beautiful once-white-but-now-off-grey T-shirt bra with fraying straps and threadbare cups, the bra that had seen her though grad school and her academic career and her career as a teacher and everything that happened both before and on the Hail Mary, finally gave up on an alien planet.
Rylee tried emergency surgery to resuscitate it. It didn’t work. Her stitches were good and strong, but the strength of them pulled apart the fraying stitches she had done back when she was teaching middle school in order to keep the bra intact just a little longer. There was kind of no getting around it at this point. The fabric itself was coming to pieces, the years upon years of wear finally catching up to the cheap, mass-produced polymer.
That had never mattered to Rylee, and so she mourned the bra’s death as if it was her best friend. In a way, it kind of was. It was the most comfortable bra Rylee had ever worn, and by the time she had realized that the department store where she had bought it unthinkingly had stopped producing them. Part of its comfort had probably been because of how much she wore it, the fabric itself molding perfectly to her body over decades of use. She hadn’t ever seen the appeal of buying a different one: every other bra she tried was scratchy and stiff and uncomfortable compared to her favorite. Why fix something that wasn’t broken, she thought? When she had woken up on the Hail Mary, the bra had been a comfort to her, a catalyst for several memories of putting it on over mornings that spanned most of her adult life.
But there was no saving it now. Despite Rylee’s best efforts, her bra lay in pieces on her floor, never to be worn again.
Rocky immediately knew something was up when Rylee didn’t leave her bedroom that morning, even though she didn’t have a class to teach that day. Simren had probably let her in, probably busy in the garden and completely unaware of the tragedy that had unfolded just inside their little house. Rocky found Rylee collapsed on the floor of her bedroom in front of the remains of her beloved bra, tiptoeing slowly into the room in her xenonite enviro-suit.
Grace okay, question? she asked.
“No,” said Rylee. She pointed to the scraps of fabric between them. “Look what happened.”
Understand, said Rocky, solemnly. Grace small clothes break. Grace cannot fix, question?
“I tried,” said Rylee. “It’s not gonna happen.”
Rylee’s love for that one bra had kind of been her undoing. It was the only suitable bra for her that had been packed on the Hail Mary. Ilyukhin had obviously not had anything useful, and while Rylee’s chest was small, Yao had been even smaller and had preferred military-issue sports bras so tight that Rylee couldn’t get them on over her shoulders.
Rocky can make stronger, said Rocky, inspecting the shredded fabric. Eridians have similar fabric. Use to make clothes for sick Eridians. Rocky modify fabric, and give to Grace to make new small clothes.
Rylee perked up, even as doubt sank into her mind. She was good at fixing things with a needle and thread, but making a garment from scratch was an entirely different ballpark. “That’s a good idea,” she said, “but I don’t know how to make a new one.”
Ask Simren, said Rocky, simply. Simren make many new clothes. Modify Grace clothes to fit. Good at make things with fabric.
That was true, Rylee thought. She looked past Rocky to the open front door, wondering if asking would be too much of an imposition. Simren was only about as busy here as Rylee, but while the two of them got along well it seemed like a bigger step to ask her to use her free time to do a favor for Rylee. “I’ll ask her,” she said, hoping she could work up the nerve.
Good! said Rocky. She scooped up the remains of Rylee’s bra, stuffing them into the storage pocket on the outside of her enviro-suit. Rocky make fabric. Grace ask Simren.
---
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Simren, as soon as Rylee stepped into the garden.
“Nothing,” said Rylee, closing the gate awkwardly behind her. It felt so wrong to be wearing a shirt with no bra underneath, even though Rylee knew there was no reason for it to be uncomfortable. It wasn’t like she really needed much support to begin with. But after so many years wearing the same stupid bra, she felt practically naked without it.
Simren leaned on the shovel she was using to dig new rows in the freshly-engineered soil. “You’re standing weird,” she said. “Like, hunched over.”
Simren was one to talk, Rylee thought. Simren’s posture was only just starting to straighten out to something in the realm of healthy, which Rylee knew was because of that awful submarine they had rescued her from. Working in the garden seemed to help, but it hadn’t been enough to entirely relieve the hunch in her shoulders. Rylee crossed her arms under her chest. “My bra broke,” she muttered. “I’m not used to not wearing one.”
“Oh,” said Simren. “Want me to take a look at it? I might be able to do something about it.”
Rylee shook her head. “No, it's, like, done-done. The fabric itself was fraying.” She leaned back against the gate, arms still tight around her ribcage like a shelf for her breasts. “I was wondering if I could ask you a favor, though.”
Simren leaned the shovel against the wall. “Yeah?”
“Rocky said she can get some fabric to make a new one, but I might need some help with the actual putting it together,” said Rylee. “If it’s not--I dunno, if you’re okay with it, but if not then that’s--”
“Sure,” said Simren. She dusted dirt off her hands, shaking sweat off her head as her hair waved gracefully around her shoulders. It had been impossible to ignore, even when Rylee had been pulling her out of a blood-soaked submarine, how pretty Simren was, and it was even more noticeable now that she was cleaner and healthier and quite a bit happier. Rylee watched her as she switched out her tool-holding hand for her multipurpose hand, the xenonite pieces of her prosthetic clicking easily into place, and motioned towards the gate. “No problem. In the meantime, you can borrow one of mine if you want.”
“Oh!” said Rylee, hopping up from in front of the gate. “Okay! Thank you!”
“I made this one out of some of the jumpsuits,” Simren said, gesturing to her own chest as she led the two of them out of the garden and back into the house, “but I still have my old one. It’s a little shittier, but hopefully it’ll work until I can fix you a new one.”
“That’s fine,” said Rylee. Normally, she wouldn’t have entertained the thought of wearing a bra that wasn’t her own, but she was starting to suspect that anything would be more comfortable than nothing. Simren led them both into her own room, across a short hallway from Rylee’s, and started rummaging in her drawers as Rylee allowed herself a brief look around.
The living situation in the little house in the biodome was a strange one, even to Rylee who had shared a spaceship with an alien for years. Simren and Rylee existed in a strange sort of limbo between colleagues, roommates, and close friends, the boundaries of intimacy in the shared space less like borders and more like poorly defined chemical gradients. It was weird for Rylee to go into Simren’s room, but sometimes it wasn’t, and sometimes it was weirder for Rylee to knock before coming in. Sometimes they sat on opposite ends of the couch when they watched movies, and sometimes they lay practically on top of one another. Simren would lean her weight into Rylee when she woke up, her strong arm around Rylee’s shoulders as she made them both breakfast, but other times Simren wouldn’t even tap Rylee’s arm to get her attention. It was all very confusing, but somehow it felt incredibly natural. Simren’s room was both an unfamiliar space, and also as comfortably familiar as Simren herself.
Most of the plants that weren’t edible or especially useful lived here in Simren’s room, in xenonite pots and with irrigation tubing connecting them in long, thin loops that were tacked to the walls and ceiling. Other than that, the room was fairly sparse--a bed taken from the Hail Mary dormitory in one corner, a set of shelves borrowed from the Hail Mary lab in another, and little else to speak of. She had no curtains over her window, and nothing on the walls beside the tubing for her plants. Rylee was interrupted from her looking by Simren pressing a bundle of thick black fabric into her arms. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Rylee, quickly. “Just looking at the plants. How are they doing, by the way?”
“Fine,” said Simren. She gestured at Rylee, at the bra in her hands. “Go ahead.”
Rylee unfolded the bra, and her heart did a weird sort of flip-flop, a combination of disappointment and amazement and cheek-reddening interest all hitting her at once. Disappointment, because there was no way this bra was going to fit her. Amazement, because Simren’s preference for loose tops and sweaters had clearly been a camouflage for what she had going on underneath. And just thinking about what she had to look like to fill out a bra of this size had Rylee’s cheeks prickling. “Um,” she said, a little stupidly, looking up at Simren and doing her level best to maintain eye contact.
“I can leave, if you want,” she said. “Or you can go to your room.”
“No, it’s okay,” said Rylee. She had to at least try. Without really thinking, she pulled her T-shirt up and over her head.
“Oh,” said Simren. Rylee looked up to find Simren very much not making eye contact with her. Rylee felt her face flush even redder, the blush probably creeping down her neck and across her chest where Simren’s eyes seemed to be locked. “I get it.”
“Yeah,” said Rylee, her voice coming out a little squeaky. Part of her wanted to cover herself up, but a much stronger part of her wanted to let Simren keep looking, the weight of her focus making Rylee’s skin prickle in a surprisingly pleasant way. Eventually, she held the black bra up in front of her chest, as if to demonstrate. The band was only a little wider than what Rylee would normally wear, but the rest of it was not going to work at all. Thick straps of black cloth crisscrossed each cup, looking more like a harness than a typical bra, and the space that each cup left was enough to fit at least double what Rylee had. Simren seemed to snap out of it once Rylee brought the bra up over her nipples, actually shaking her head as if to clear her mind before looking Rylee in the face again.
“Yeah, um,” she said. “The one I made has adjustable straps. You should wear that one.”
Before Rylee could react, Simren was pulling her own sweater up and over her head, and wow. Rylee realized that she had never actually seen Simren change, and that she must have been incredibly distracted by the other problems (like the teeth growing out of the woman’s face and her missing arm) when they had first pulled her into Armando’s care on the Hail Mary. The bra she was wearing was clearly the same yellow as the Hail Mary jumpsuits, sewn neatly into place with tight, even stitches and secured with the thick straps of the jumpsuit belts. It held Simren’s breasts in place perfectly, only a short line of cleavage peeking over the top. Rylee barely had a moment to take in the sight before her before Simren was unfastening the bra at the sides and over the shoulders, and then Rylee felt like she might need to sit down as Simren pulled it off.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed before. Simren’s tits actually bounced as they were let go from the bra, recoiling like weights on elastic strings and swaying gently with every movement Simren made. Her areolas were so wide, almost as wide as the palm of Rylee’s hand. When both breasts came to rest, they lay gorgeously across her chest with the swell of each one just softly touching in the center of her sternum, nipples pointed out and slightly down. If Rylee could touch them, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to fit one fully in her hand. She knew she was staring, heat pooling low in her pelvis, but she didn’t have anywhere near enough willpower to tear her eyes away.
“Here, let me,” said Simren, and then Rylee’s arms were getting maneuvered into the arm holes of the yellow bra, Simren adjusting her by the shoulders to slip the bra on over her head. It fit like a loose tank top, and Rylee finally came back to her senses once Simren stepped behind her to adjust it. She pulled the straps around the ribs and shoulders tight, until the band was snug and the fabric was pleasantly secure. The fabric was warm from Simren’s body, and as Simren ran a hand over Rylee’s chest to check the fit, she had to bite her tongue hard to keep an incredibly embarrassing sound from escaping her. Simren cleared her throat with a nod, pulling her hands away. “Okay. Yeah. That works.” She pulled the black bra over her head and squeezed her breasts into it from below, the muscles of her flesh arm and the servos in her xenonite arm working hard to wrench it into place. “Let me know when Rocky has the stuff, and I’ll make a better one for you.”
“Uh-huh,” mumbled Rylee, who had just noticed the smell--the salty tang of sweat mixed with the Hail Mary’s clinical deodorant, surrounding Rylee like a lust-inducing cloud. Her legs felt ready to give out. “Thanks.”
Simren grabbed her sweater, fumbling a little as she pulled it on. “No problem. I’m, uh. I’m gonna get back to work, so.”
She backed out of the room, and Rylee was quick to throw her T-shirt back on as she followed her. Her heart was beating so loudly that she could hear it kicking against the back of her ribs, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if Simren couldn’t hear it too.
Simren left through the front door, and after a moment of consideration, Rylee ducked though the door to her own bedroom, stripping off her pants and underwear with a little more force than necessary, as much out of frustration as anything else. Best to take care of business now, she thought, one hand slipping down past tufts of soft pubic hair to the place where her vulva parted while the other hand ran over the sweat-damp fabric of Simren’s bra as she sank down onto the soft mattress of her bed. It didn’t need to mean anything, she thought, mouth going from dry to wet at the memory of Simren’s gorgeous nipples, fingers moving with more urgency now. She didn’t let herself worry, barely let herself think.
That, she decided, was a problem for future Rylee to deal with.