Three Steps Past Triton (J2, NC17) Part 5
Now they're back in the Hub, the feel of the ship changes. Always the way. Crew get messages from home, pick up on the news of the day. It’s a year since they had news; more’n two since it was new news. They’re hungry, and switching their minds to other lives. Most of this crew’ll go off to home planets, pick up different jobs, never work together as this unit again. Jensen’ll try to hold on to some, keep their comms and offer them jobs in the future, when he next swings by recruiting. Some, for sure, he’ll see again. Still this has the smack of the end of a school year, graduation and moving onwards. Sorry to see some go, but it's needful. Jericho wants his own ship; Jensen’s doubtful he’s ready, but he’s more’n well fixed for a second’s berth, deserves more than Jensen can offer just now.
Jensen’s courted from the moment he gets in range. The Corps know him now, know his preferences. They’re expecting him to pick up another big job from the outset, recrew, check out the job and be off in days. An exploratory mission beyond Helios has charm, but the money’s shit and the ship’s flakey. Likely won’t be coming back, and Jensen’s not the guy for that trip. Not nowadays. Though in truth he would have been, maybe even the last time he swung through the Hub. Back to the outer belt, always an option; heavy cargo runs required for every planet and moon. Even Demetrius, so they must’ve got the auto miners working again. Good to know.
Jensen’s oddly shy, though. The black beckons, but he’s been facing down the need to face his fears, lately. Set foot on land. Give himself some time.
Two weeks seems a fair allowance. And after that, he books himself captain of a three month trip barely beyond Hub limits. Ain’t much more than the freighter work he used to hate, but a light job feels more natural. Wack thinks he’s gone space crazed. Nix rolls her eyes and tells him he’s settling down, old man. She books onto the Demetrius run, takes Jericho with her. Good luck to ‘em. Jensen hopes his name won’t bring ‘em down too far in the eyes of their new crew.
He’s feeling good, till the day he tells Jared his plans. “Oh, okay. Good luck,” says the kid.
“What?” Jensen blinks. There’s a hollow, somewhere in his midsection, that he recognizes from bad old times. It went away, sometime over these past two years, and its return signals the bad times are returning.
“I told you,” Jared’s smiling and sunny with it. “Got to find my sister, make sure she’s well fixed.” So much makes sense, and Jensen shoulda thought of that. Could have made time in his schedule for Jared to seek out the last of his family, though they agreed way back that if she has a good home he’ll need to go in careful, not shake her up needlessly. “Got some other stuff to do. I want to set foot on land. Gonna get into the planets. Visit home system, see it for myself, you know?”
The kid’s avoiding his eyes, a little. Jensen notes it, but the gnawing hole inside leaves no spare attention for investigations. “I- I thought you’d be comin’ with me,” he says.
“Did you want me to?” says the kid, challenging.
“Well, yeah.”
“Next time, ask,” says Jared, and wanders off, still smiling. He shouts out behind, “Maybe someday we’ll fly again, yeah? But this situation you got going? Something needs to change.”
It’s not a fight. It’s not even exactly the end; they have another week together before they dock at Jared’s old home station, and they both take full advantage, bruised and sex-sore and exhausted by the time they make port. But inside Jensen there’s a whirl of hurt and not wanting to ask. Is it Demetrius? Is it me? Am I not enough for you? Was I only ever a way off station? None seems right. The ring of truth ain’t in the air. But something is, and it’s goodbye.
*
At the station, Jensen stands hesitating on the gangplank, pretending to see the crew off after all the unloading’s completed. Shakes hands, offers goodwill. Kisses Jared full-on in view of half of the guys, but there’s no laughter nor cheer, because seems like nobody on the crew knows the why of their parting any more than Jensen does.
Jared comes running back, after pretty much everyone’s gone. Jensen’s heart gives a bump, but the kid’s towing a smaller kid, a redheaded girl, and this ain’t a romantic reunion at all.
Jared jerks his head at the whores’ lineup, in the usual place, draggled and spread now that the crew have been through collecting their choicer morsels. “Tick asked me if maybe you had a place for his kid sister, on your next trip? She’s too young for the life.”
Which is the truth and a half, kid’s barely fourteen by looks, and terrified by eyes. Jensen nods, and claps a hand on her shoulder. “Sure, why not? Short trip, shit pay, but plenty to learn and a safe berth.”
He sounds awkward. Paternal, even. Couldn’t be further from his offer to Jared, many moons before. He has no designs on the girl - Kai - except to get her out of here. Maybe this is Jensen’s future, rescuing whores and teaching them to fly. (It don’t sound so bad, oddly, if there were a way to make it a life without starvation.)
Jared nods, gives Jensen a warm hug, like he gave to Wack twenty minutes before. “I know you’ll take care of her.” And he runs off, out of Jensen’s life. Jensen doesn’t have so much as a comm contact for him, let alone a knowledge of his plans. That’s it.
“Uh,” says Jensen, looking at the girl. Inside, he’s breaking up, but what’s the good of showing? Also, he knows squat about girl kids and he’s got nowhere to put this one for a week till his ship shows up for loading. So there's things to be sorted, and at least he knows how to do that. “I guess, come with me? Find us some rooms, get you kitted out-“
“You okay?” says the girl. She sounds less childish than he’d expect.
“Not really,” he says, honestly. “You?”
She looks back at the whores, at her brother who wanted her to get away from the pimps, at the station she knows - and then forwards, at the captain she don’t know from shit. “No. Not so much.”
They work it out.
***
Three months later, Jensen has a plan. A plan with Wack’s approval. A plan born of the endless talking that comes from a short run in crowded space, everyone on the bridge together all of the time as the hectic flow from near port to near port traffic takes them over. Jensen’s remembered why he’s in the deep black from choice. He’s taught Kai pretty much all he can of the simpler parts of shiprunning, and got more than his fair share of work out of her nimble fingers on the grips.
And, oh yeah, he bought a ship.
It’s the Impala, from back when, a good cargo ship with a good service history, and when Jensen heard she was marketed, seemed like someone was trying to tell him to get his thumb out his ass. Maybe in a voice that’s a mite familiar to him, too.
Six months to wait yet while she’s refitted from her latest trip into the deepest black, and that means Jensen has six months to kill on land or someplace he can be useful. Not incidentally, he has Wack and Kai to house, too. Guys on his own payroll, first time ever. Shipowning captaincy always was for fools, and Jensen’s surprised the dragging costs don’t chafe more. They don’t, though. Feels good, to know he can keep his people at his side. He sends a comm to Nix, for whenever she’s back in range. Some year, maybe they'll coincide, and she’ll sign up with him too. Maybe they will be a family, of ill-assorted sorts, the way she dreamed.
Maybe Jensen’ll drive his ship into the backside of Styx like so many before, and his maiden independent captaincy voyage will be everyone’s last. He could bankrupt, though his advance cargo bookings are sweet enough already, small Corps looking for toeholds. He could get murdered for Demetrius, though it’s been over a year since the last time someone tried, and he’s starting to think that maybe the Hub’s not so angry with him now. Politics has moved on. There’s a bloody war on Cengiz, and the Corp M&A activity has been so rife the newsfolk can barely keep abreast. Demetrius, just possibly, is turning into the past.
Meantime, the Impala’s a future, whatever else it is.
Thinking futures means thinking Jared, apparently inevitably. Jensen pretends, on the way back from his godawfully short three month trip, that he’s up for anything, go anywhere, so long as he’s back for the Impala’s release from dock. In fact, he’s booking up a berth on Jared’s old home station, just for a while. He doesn’t suppose the kid’s still there, but some of his old friends will maybe know where he’s headed. Of all the people Jensen knows in the verse, Jared’s perhaps the most inaccessible right now. Kid don’t even have a comm, or not one that Jensen knows of. How in hell’s a body supposed to stand that?
It’s a stewing, difficult brew in Jensen’s head, that he ain’t sharing with anyone, and he’s still a week off station and getting his ass into gear, when the most unexpected thing in the world happens to him.
It’s late at night, and his comm bleeps. Not business. Not a friend. It’s his father’s signal.
Nearly ten years since he laid eyes on the old man, and in the interim he has become just that. Must be near seventy now, and Green Acres sun and wind’ll age you the way space don’t ever, quite. Jensen’s shaken, just from the still avatar announcing a message. What in hell he’ll have to say- And then he knows. Someone died, right? The stiff necked old bastard is fair enough to tell Jensen that much. Mom, probably.
So he’s braced, when he plays it, braced for bad. What he gets is-
Jensen? Got your boy here. Might want to swing by and collect him before you head off again. Out.
*
Jensen spends a long night puzzling at that, trying to read it any way that makes any kind of sense. In the end, Wack and Kai track him down on the bridge to ask what’s got him so bedazzled and eye-bagged. Jensen’s confused enough to play the comm to them.
“Well?” he asks. Kind of desperate. Your boy could mean anything, couldn't it? He's seeing mirages from wanting too bad.
Wack eyes him like he’s gone plum insane. Kai says, quietly, “Jared went to see your folks. And now it’s time for your next job, I reckon he or they or everyone thinks it’s time you fetched him back.”
Which, yeah, it’s hard to read any other way in sober truth, but it still fits nohow into Jensen’s world. “You know he was doing this?” He asks impartially, gets two blank headshakes back.
“But,” says Kai, “He told me you fixed lives. Like his life, and Lizi, and Jericho, and all. Told me you’d fix mine.” Must have been a speedy conversation, on station, but perhaps that’s all Jared needed.
Jensen’s kind of choked. He ain’t a fixer, he’s a wrecker. The verse knows it for true. He maybe tries to fix but- Well, look at Demetrius. Try to fix, break it worse. That’s his way.
And yet, Wack’s nodding. “Yeah. That’s Ackles all over. Guess Jared’s fixing to fix your life now, Captain. ‘Bout time someone did.”
Which baffles Jensen even deeper.
*
It’s a week before he can even hire the 'hopper to get home, trailing Wack and Kai like ducklings in his wake, because they won’t be left, dammit. It ain’t exactly the homecoming he imagined, as he pilots the light little craft down the familiar pathways of Arcady space. Take the turn after Pine Falls and there’s Green Acres on its orbit, just as he recalls. The large northern continent, western end, and follow the river inland till the plateau emerges. The Ackles ranch, like he remembered.
New fencing in place across his old preferred landing ground, and they’ve rebuilt the old barn in yellow so he almost doubts his own memory for a moment, but he lands up neatly behind the calving pens (empty, this season, or he wouldn’t be such a foolish spacer - he ain't wholly lost the ranch boy's memories in the black).
Figures come out of the house. Older, yet familiar, figures, moving a little slower than he remembers. But then, hard to tell from his father’s message whether Jensen’s welcome here, nowadays, or whether he just wants the chattering ex-whore off his land.
Likely the first, is his crew's opinion, but Jensen’s wary.
He can hear steps behind him on the off-ramp; Wack and Kai treading fast in their haste to be on land for the first time in years. (Ever, probably, for the girl. Jensen didn't stop to ask her.)
But Jensen’s attention’s drawn to the barn, and the guy exiting. Big and tanned, and ripped as hell. Dressed in cast-offs that barely cover him decently, which is just like the kid and shows nothing much has changed. Mouthwatering, as a matter of fact, and there’s a lot Jensen would be doing just about now if not for parents and kids and general onlookers (a bunch of dogs, too, he notes, and really knows he’s home now). So he saunters, only, though anyone timing him would find he covered the ground damned quickly for a saunterer, and he winds up in front of Jared faster than his brain had time to catch up.
“Don’t do that again,” he says. It’s fierce. Jared blinks at him, worried-looking, and Jensen realizes he might need to clarify. “I bought a ship.”
“What?” says Jared, and Jensen notes that he’s making no sense at all. Stops, swallows, tries again.
“Don’t ever leave me again. Please. You don’t have to - I bought a ship. It’s my home. Yours too, if you want it. If you-“ Jensen’s getting anxious, though it can’t be more than seconds before Jared grabs him. Lifts him right off the ground, damned new muscle impressive as hell, Jensen notes, before it all turns to reunion and kissing.
"You bought us a ship," says Jared, a time or twenty. "I never thought-" But kissing always takes the place of completing that one.
After a little, there’s a cough behind them. A cough Jensen recalls well, from being caught in this exact barn's predecessor, with his hand down Petey Cross’s pants. “Sorry, Dad,” he says, automatically, as Jared sets him back down.
It ain’t the first thing he expected to say to his father, after the last time, but maybe it’s the right thing.
“No, no, you go right ahead,” says Pa Ackles, and there’s humour in the air where Jensen wouldn’t have expected it. “Heard you’d been parted too long.”
But there’s more that needs saying, and it might as well be done quick. “Pa, Mom- I’m real sorry about Demetrius, and all that.” Nowhere near enough to make up for a decade of parenting the verse's worst, for sure, but they called him here for Jared, and that's more than something. Jensen feels 18 again, and not in a good way.
His father turns reddish, his mom looks at her feet. It’s his father who speaks, though, the way things usually go with the Ackles clan. “Well, son. We mighta been hasty in that department. Jared’s set us straight, or so he maintains. Might be there’s faults all around.”
Which is closer to absolution than Jensen ever expected to hear, and as true a summary as you'll find outside the covers of a history book. It'll do. He shakes his Pa by the hand, and kisses the top of his mother’s head. She’s smaller, more bent and much greyer than he expected. It’s a wary homecoming, but not a bad one for all that.
Talk flows that day into night, talk of all kinds. Catching up on ten years of missed family, his brother and sister well settled and near, the way his parents wanted. Introducing Wack and sharing space stories. Learning Jared’s sister’s fate - a good one, and a contented, though Jared looks a mite wistful, like he knows she’s moving away from him forever. Jensen says to Jared, comfort in passing, “Make our own family, can’t we,” with a jerk of the head towards Wack and Kai, and catching his mother’s eye wonders why she’s smiling through tears. Seems like a moment for more kissing, anyhow, even if he didn’t intend for it to be so meaningful.
Later, Jensen finds himself talking to his Pa about business plans and what it means to run an independent ship and not be in hock to one Corp each trip. About ideas for maybe running overmanned in areas to teach extra kids about space, the way he did for Kai and Jared, so there’s a way into the black for kids that the Corps will never touch. They won't all make it, but it'll be a new life for some.
Pa Ackles, nodding owlish as the welcome home cider takes its toll, says, “Yeah. Learn by teaching, always the best way. It’ll make your hands better crewmen, you know. And those poor whore kids need any help we can offer.” Jensen recognizes the words, from somewhere deep back in his memory, and remembers scared, bruised farm hands his Pa took on more’n once, from backgrounds no one would say were pure. Damn. There’s more of the old man in him than he remembered.
“Jay do okay for you?” he asks, casual-like. He can't picture Jared with cattle for long, but the kid looked mighty comfortable by that barn all the same.
“Not bad,” says his Pa, nodding, just as casual in return. “Got yourself a good one. Hard worker, and cheerful. Space crazy, mind. But I guess you need that. We never did understand you and the black, you know.”
Past wounds ain’t all healed in one evening, but it’s good. It’s a start.
Jensen’s soon enough ready to hit the hay. Shoves back from his seat, stands and turns, before a silence around the table, and a sudden memory of the yawning years nobody expected him to come home jerks him into realization that 'his bedroom' likely ain’t his bedroom now. There’s a paralysed silence, before Jared says, “I’m out back, behind the barn, if-“
Which brings a whole 'nother reason for paralysis, parents and Jensen facing implied fucking the way they never had to, way back. “Uh. Yeah. That’s- good? Mom, you got somewhere Kai can bed?” Wack’ll be shipboard. He doesn’t do bricks and wood frames, and the earth makes him unsettled.
There’s a little to and fro before all is fixed, but it’s not many minutes before Jared’s showing Jensen to the hands’ quarters, empty now in the off-season.
“So,” says Jensen, tiredly. “We need to talk?”
“Yeah,” says Jared, smiling, “You want the short version?”
“Hell, yes.”
“I wanted to set foot on a planet. Or a moon. And I knew this one had good people. So I sent a comm, dropped your name, asked if they had work so's I could try my hand at moonside life.”
“They knew?” Jensen had assumed Jared wormed his way in before the big reveal. Not a frontal assault.
“Oh, sure,” says Jared, like it’s natural. “They wanted to hear news. Don’t mean they forgave you or nothing - I had to talk ‘em round some. But they missed you. And I told them, about stuff. Tonio, the armada that wasn’t. Me, too, where I came from. They got it. They’re not small minded. Just took some telling. And I let it drop over weeks, you know. Not too up in their faces.” Jared grins. "I was sneaky."
Jensen considers. There’s a whole bunch that could be said about that, and likely there will be. But he’s out of emotion, just now. “Weeks, hmm? How’d you like the work?”
Jared stares a moment. Grins. “I fucking hate cows, Jen. You were so right.”
“Back to the black, then?” Jensen asks it, light and teasing, suddenly sure what’s real here.
“If you’ll have me,” is the answer, a little less sure than it should be in return. Jensen grabs onto Jared, turns them so they’re face on.
“Ain’t sure I even want the black without you,” he says, and feels Jared’s breath judder in recognition of just what that means. “Can’t sleep, can’t captain worth spit-“ Exaggeration, but he’s been off, all right, and Wack's corrected him more times than is comfortable, lately. “Best thing I ever did was give you a chance.”
Jared faces off with him. “I ever say thank you? For saving my life, and all that?” A thousand times, Jensen thinks, though maybe the words never got said out aloud. “I had to do something for you in return, make it more than you saving me always. Make your life better.”
You do, thinks Jensen, and maybe it shows in his face, because they’re kissing properly, and not with parental eyes on them.
“C’m on,” he says, at last, separating mouths with reluctance. Slings his gear inside the door of the hands’ quarters and grabs Jared’s hand. Feeling ten years younger, maybe more. “Want to show you somewhere.”
It takes them maybe fifteen minutes, where Jensen used to do it in five, but a lot of that is the kissing and the inconvenience of walking with someone’s hand in your pants. By the time they get to the top of the small steep rise in the ground, frustration’s nigh unbearable for them both and Jensen’s regretting the sentimental urge that sent him here. It’s been three months, dammit. He got used to Jared, present and immediate, whenever the urge took them.
But hell, homecoming and making a (largely silent, but real) vow to have and hold this guy for so long as they can have it - that’s a whole lot of big and symbolic for a single day. It needs marking.
“Here,” he says, in the middle of the wooded clearing where the stars shine brightest of all. Jared looks up, right away.
“Oh, hell, yes,” he says, “Gonna fuck you right here, Jen, where the stars can see.”
Couldn’t be further off their first meet, in the enclosed starless hold of a space station, one undergrown whore to one washed up traitorous space captain. And yet, it’s still Jared and still Jensen, even if the kid is grown and tanned and the captain no more carrying the whole weight of the world as a cold stone in his guts.
When Jared kneels to get his mouth round Jensen’s dick, it’s like no time has passed at all. Like Jensen’s transported from the station to this place in a moment of mercy, flipped from hell into fantasy happiness. When his knees give out, he sinks down to ride Jared, slowly seating himself with an uncertainly familiar stretch and burn. Three months is too long.
"Don't ever leave me again," he says. "I need this."
Jared rises up to meet him. "Yes, Captain. Me too."
They’re both facing the stars, this time, faces tilted upwards as Jensen rocks them both to heaven.
(When they get there, they yowl loud enough between them to put a bird to flight, and make Jensen more than glad they ain’t in his old small bed, waking his Mom and Pa. Romance is quite the thing, but he’s a practical man at heart.)
***
"I fuckin' hate cattle," says Kai, nursing her blackened toes.
"We all do," says Jared, darkly, from within the hopper. But quietly, because Pa Ackles is heading their way. Jensen appreciates the care, though if his pa didn't work out that spacers and livestock don't mix in the past hectic calving months on Green Acres, he's a dumber soul than Jensen believes.
"You'll be headin' off, then," are the first words his father says. Because nope, he's no fool, and Wack's landing back in the hopper says loud enough that Jensen's on his way out.
"Yes, sir," says Jensen, with a wider grin than may be respectful. "Impala got out of first works six days back. Got to get up there, get on my ship, see her fitted right before we get underway proper. Need a clear two weeks, minimum, for crewing and last bookings and such."
Jared says, proudly, "We got 86% cargo filled already, and that's without hustling hard. Jensen knows that market," which is sweet, and all, and makes Jensen duck his head and rub the back of his neck, and hope to hell this is not a day when Pa Ackles is in a teasing mood.
"Heck, it ain't that hard. Six systems without a full on Corp presence? Muse Archipelago may be lightly populated yet, but it's colonizing now. Someone's gonna want a toehold, and soon. Testing the water, sharing the risk. Makes good sense to take a share in a new indie ship." That odd 6% is Jensen's own stake in the cargo, or his and Wack's and a tiny fraction Jared's to be more precise. First steps, maybe, to being a Corp all their own, or at least to risk and profit outside the hands of the bigger Corps. Likely he'll take on more crew with their own little stake in this voyage or the next. Trying to make their own way, a little different to the norm.
And the Muse is new ground, opposite end of the verse from the Belt, Hell's Gate and Jensen's old mistakes. Which feels at least as needful as any finances.
"You'll be gone a while, boy," says his Pa, which is simple truth. Eighteen months is a best guess, but it's wild out there, could take double if they get unlucky. "You keep in touch. Your mother worries." Which is seemingly true, given how she's fluttered around her prodigal son these months. Makes Jensen angry, sometimes, to think he might not have ever been outcast if she'd had her way. Jared's hand smoothes between Jensen's tight shoulderblades now. A conversation for the past, or the future. But not for a goodbye day, for sure.
His father's carrying on, somewhat oblivious, or so it seems. "I hear this is a new route for you. You gonna get lost, out there in the black?"
"I hope so," says Wack, missing the mood. "That's the fun part." Pa Ackles's frown deepens.
"Naaww," says Jared, blinking over-romantical to cut the chill of that. "My Captain's the best damn nav pilot you could wish for." He grins, and Jensen elbows him unromantical in the gut in turn. When he can speak again, Jared adds, "Also, we got ourselves a local gal piloting alongside, so's we know where the moons are and which way's up."
They have indeed, and more. Half crewed already through nothing more than Jensen broadcasting opportunities, and Wack hitting up a few old friends. It's more confirmation that Ackles's crew is known for flying as much as rebellions these days. Give Jensen another two years out, in fresh sky, and maybe some more of the shadow will lift. Maybe he'll return the comms from that damned persecuting historian who wants to understand the Demetrius rebellion. She's not far off the mark, judging by her messaging. He might just want to help her, and others, understand, given time. But that's a ways off.
Jensen bids a proper goodbye to his mom, and a backslapping farewell to his Pa. They're sending him off Green Acres-style, with pretty much three full steer carcasses, something both Jared and Kai are more'n a little twitchy about sharing hopper space with. But it's symbolic of family love, and it's good meat besides, so Jensen ain't rejecting it. As they leave the ground, he's just hoping they get to the fit out yard on schedule and the Impala's freezers are functional. Or else it's gonna be steak till it comes out of their ears, for everyone on the damn yard crew.
Jensen's Pa had one last word for him, private. "You find any more kids in need, ones that ain't suited for the black - maybe send 'em my way? We need young people hereabouts. It's too quiet, on Green Acres."
Arcady Ackles, the Destroyer of Demetrius. Or some kind of do-gooding social worker, rescuing fallen men and women and shipping them off to the black, or else home to his Pa for milk and ranch work. Jensen ain't exactly in love with either of those depictions, but he'd rather the latter if pressed. And it's a connection with home, where once there was nothing.
If his steps were set on this virtuous path by complicated calculations mixed with simple lust, for an overgrown kid with hopeful eyes and silver smears proclaiming his profession? Well, that part worked out okay. Jensen takes the controls from Wack, and sweeps the ship out of the Arcady system. A mite different to the last time he left, in shame and anguish. And from all the times before, glad to be quit of the clinging earth he hated. This time, he knows he'll visit back, and gladly, but he also knows he's headed home.
Jared's voice sounds in his ear. "Captain?"
"Mmhm?" Jensen turns his head to the copilot seat, catches the kid's grin.
"I ever tell you how you look immensely fuckable when you're piloting?"
"Now and again," says Jensen, laughing.
"Or that I stocked up well on silver slick, while I was home? Just the way you like it. Gonna paint you up and fuck-"
Their headsets explode with Kai and Wack's views on that promise being shared just here, in a small space and the presence of crewmen and dead meat.
Jensen just laughs. "Well, that's damned convenient, ain't it? Now, hush and hold on, kid. I'm gonna show you new stars."
