Fic: The Books of my Numberless Dreams
Title: The Books of my Numberless Dreams
Fandom: SGU
Pairing: Young/Rush, mentions of Scott/Chloe
Rating: R/NC-17
Warnings: sex, fevers, anxiety, mutations, nightmares, sentient starships
Notes: Written for the h/c bingo prompt “isolation” and the longfic bingo prompt “trapped”. Follows Contact and Flamingoes and Mustard. I tried to write porn, and this happened. :|
Summary: They’re doing the best they can.
Rush has him backed up against the wall just beside the door, a thigh pushed up between his legs. He has a hand pressed against Young’s collarbone as if afraid he’ll disappear.
Their pants are open and Young doesn’t care about his back or his knee or what time of day it is. All that matters is what Rush is doing with his other hand. He’s too old to rut against a bulkhead like this - they both are - but he doesn’t care; he really doesn’t care.
Someone pounds hard on his door.
“Shit,” he grunts, head falling against the wall. “Shit.”
Rush is close; Young can tell by the way he sinks his teeth into his shoulder, by the way the hand on his chest claws, and this is really the worst timing.
No one looks for him in his quarters. That’s the point of doing this in his quarters. But Rush is growling deep in his chest, and someone is pounding on the door and shouting something he can’t quite hear….
He was wrong, the knocking wasn’t the worst. The door mechanism whirs at the worst possible time, the actual worst possible time. He only half notices, distracted by the way Rush shifts just so. Rush definitely hasn’t noticed, or maybe he just doesn’t care. He mouths up the side of Young’s neck and rolls his hips, cutting Young off before he can try to speak.
The only sound besides their breathing is stunned silence. Rush adjusts his pants and shifts so that he’s between Young and the door.
“I see the word privacy means nothing to you.”
Young makes himself look at the door, trying not to imagine the worst case scenario for who could have walked in on him having an orgasm. TJ is very carefully looking away, biting her lips. Scott looks pole-axed - but then, it’s not really Lt. Scott. Young’s best guess is Telford; who else would look for him in his quarters? Or more to the point: who else would go ahead and open the door?
“What are you doing?” not-Lt.-Scott says.
Young tries to think of an answer besides the obvious, but it’s Rush who replies, closing his pants properly and turning to face the door. Young uses the screen of Rush’s body to fix his clothes.
“Is there something you wanted?”
Not-Lt.-Scott opens his mouth - it seems he’s pulled himself together - but TJ grabs his arm and pulls. “We can talk about it in our normal conference room. Twenty minutes?”
Just that quickly they’re alone again. Rush raises his eyebrows. “Are you going to clean up or what? I don’t suppose you want to go into a meeting come in your shorts.”
Young gapes at him. “Did they bother you at all?”
Rush scowls. “I’m fucking pissed actually, but let it dry in your pants if you want.”
Rush cleans up quickly - switching to the only other shirt he had. Then he’s gone. Young tries not to grind his teeth. He takes his time; he only has one other set of underwear, and they’ve been patched with unfortunately scratchy wool.
He only turns two corners before he bumps into Rush, who’s scribbling on a piece of paper that’s falling apart at the folds. Rush doesn’t even greet him, just starts walking as soon as Young’s standing beside him. Young sighs.
Camille meets them outside the conference room. When Young raises his eyebrows at her, she shrugs. “Rush radioed me.”
The three of them were what amounted to senior staff on Destiny. It made sense; this way Young didn’t have to repeat it to Camille later.
She’s frowning at them, like something is out of place. Young opens the door.
Telford’s expression doesn’t suit Scott’s face. He doesn’t bring up the scene in Young’s quarters, except to say “You’re late.”
“By a minute and a half,” Young says. “What did we need to talk about?”
“It sounded important” Camille adds. She’s wearing a grey sweater Young’s never seen before. He tries not to smile.
The news Telford has to give is nothing to smile about. On the surface it’s nothing new - things with the Lucian Alliance are getting increasingly more frustrating. Homeworld is cracking down on security, which means
“We’re going to restrict the use of the stones to reports and emergencies only. No more seminars, no more visits home.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
There’s a brief moment of silence. Young can’t help but glance at Camille; this news isn’t going to go over well.
“Is this really necessary?” Camille says, almost on cue. “The stones are the only way we have of contacting our families. Crew members compose letters and emails and maintain contact with the world while those of us still on the ship get information and support. They’ve been a boost to the overall mental health of the crew, as well as our physical health. We’ve had a lot of success without growing and preserving a variety of food since we began doing seminars. Those seminars have been essential to improving our living conditions, and we depend on the stones to maintain contact with our families. We’ve been able to get essential advice on food preservation, weaving, construction…”
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear” Telford says. “Homeworld is concerned about the things that could happen to you without continued support. Unfortunately, the Lucian Alliance is making that impossible.”
“The more help we get from those kinds of experts - the experts that are only available to us through the use of the stones - the better our living conditions. Is there any real possibility that isolating us from our only means of support with doing anything to stop the Lucian Alliance?”
“I think we can all agree that this doesn’t sound like the best idea,” Young says, before Camille can really build up steam.
“Is there any way we can finish our schedule before this goes into effect?” TJ asks. Young can’t help but wonder if she and Camille have been planning for something like this. “At the very least we could let those people who were already due take their leave.”
“Not unless you let them all through today.” Telford shrugs. “This wasn’t my idea. I’ll try to give you a date to resume extended contact, but there’s nothing I can do right now. The best I can say is wait it out.”
Camille is working on yet another knitting project, this one vaguely purple.
“Dye?” he asks, setting his meal on the table. Today’s grey mush tastes like bananas - sandy, nutty bananas.
“The first batch,” Camille says. “I see you’re braving today’s breakfast.”
“You’re not eating?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite.”
The new restrictions on the stones, then. He wasn’t fond of it either.
“We’ll make it work,” he says. They always do.
The purple item of clothing grows incrementally larger in Camille’s hand. A few people from the nearest table share mournful memories of banana bread.
“We would have the Recreation Committee host a funeral. For the seminars,” he explains when Camille gives him a startled look.
That gets a real smile from her. “How about something a little less morbid.”
“I leave it in your capable hands.” He gives his bowl a considering look. “You know, this actually isn’t that bad.”
Lunch is a sandwich - wilted leafy greens and paste with the texture and flavor of sand, cowering in the folds of a piece of flatbread. What the seed paste lacked in flavor it made up for in nutrition, so it was becoming a major staple. Young can honestly say he’s eaten worse.
He was never quite sure to start when he went looking for Rush. This time he heads for one of the more isolated rooms, going off Eli’s mention of consoles.
“What?” Rush snaps as soon as Young opens the door.
“Lunch,” Young says. “Becker says you haven’t eaten yet.”
“So you’re a delivery boy.”
“Shut up and eat. What are you doing in here anyway?”
Rush doesn’t answer, dubiously eyeing the sandwich.
Young sits at the second console, squinting as his eyes adjust. The text is in Ancient, intercut with diagrams.
“Some things were preprogrammed into Destiny’s computers. Weapons schematics, the means to make replacement parts for certain components, instructions for some of the more complex equipment…it’s a matter of finding the information, and proving to the ship we’re ready to access it.”
“Proving to the ship?”
“You can’t be surprised. The ship was testing you.”
Young grimaces, remembering the awful dreams and general unpleasantness of Destiny’s attempt at testing him.
“Nothing like that,” Rush says, seeing the look on Young’s face. “It’s less a matter of worthiness, and more a matter of…cognitive capability. Destiny needs to know that we know what we’re looking for and that, if it cedes control to us, we’ll be able to use them properly. The ship doesn’t need to tamper with our minds for that.”
“Sort of like fitting the right keys in the right locks?”
Rush makes a face. “I suppose you could see it that way.”
Young rolls his eyes. “I suppose that’s what you’ve been working on down here. Are you going to do all of this by yourself?”
“Of course not.”
Of course not, he says, as if he hasn’t spent majority of his time doing exactly that.
“I have Eli working on plans to explore the area surrounding hydroponics; he should come to you later today.”
“Thanks for the head up,” Young mumbles.
“That’s also the reason for the bulk of the repairs we’ve done. Repairing the systems we’ve already access makes the other available to us; the affects our comfort are only secondary.”
“Bullshit. You want this place livable as much as the rest of us.”
There’s a smile tugging at the corner of Rush’s mouth. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something? Something other than irritating me?”
“I have a meeting with Telford in thirty minutes,” he admits. A half an hour to set up meetings for the next sixth months, and most likely Telford would spend twenty of that explaining that he hadn’t been able to get any of the restrictions relaxed. Just thinking about it makes him grind his teeth. “What about you? Are you going to stay down here all day or will you show up for your bridge shift?”
Not that there would be much going on up there. They were in FTL, and weren’t expected to drop out for a while.
“If I don’t?” Rush asks, taunting him. “Will you leave your meeting to drag me there yourself?”
Young shrugs. “I was thinking I’d send Eli. Or I could tell him and Chloe that you’re interested in helping with their next event. I’m sure they’d believe me.”
Young lets himself sink into the regular pattern of insults, trying to figure out what was bothering him. On the surface, it’s business as usual, but he can’t shake the current of unease he feels. And then Rush gives him a look.
It’s a terrible idea. It’s the middle of the day; they don’t have time to make out like teenagers in an out of the way conference room. Young has a meeting and Rush has a bridge shift. It’s a bad idea.
And yet here they are. Rush is on him like he wants to absorb him, like he’s afraid Young is going to be ripped away from him at any moment. Not for the first time, Young wonders what exactly Rush gets from him when they touch. He knows - he knows - that it was more than what Rush was telling him.
He forces himself to let go of his curiosity and his concern. He focuses on Rush. On the annoying things - Rush’s beard on his face, the sandy flavor that had gone from the sandwich to Rush’s mouth. On the good things - Rush a line of heat down his front, lips hands tongue teeth. Just…Rush, endlessly frustrating but less heartless than he pretended to be. And Young…Young…
Young cuts the thought off before it can finish.
It’s Rush who pulls back first, shifting so their foreheads are pressed together. “You’re going to be late for your meeting.”
“Fuck my meeting.”
Rush smiles. “I don’t think we want Col. Telford walking in on us again.”
Young closes his eyes and takes a moment to enjoy just breathing the same air. He sighs, a rueful smile on his lips. “We have got to stop doing this in the middle of the day.”
The meeting with Telford is as awful as anticipated, but they get the bulk of the work over quickly. After a round of “friendly” poking at Young’s command style, Telford finally asks the question that has clearly been itching him.
“Are you and Rush really-”
“Yes.”
Telford looks startled, but what had he expected to hear? “There’s a problem with the ship that we could only fix with our flies open”? Telford could be pigheaded, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“Rush? Are you out of your mind? He tried to kill you! He killed me!”
“To be fair, an alternate traumatized version of Rush killed an alternate version of you. That’s not exactly the same.”
Telford glares. “Don’t bullshit me, Everett. That was literally an hour into the future; he was hardly a different person. And do I really need to remind you of the number of times he’s tried to take over the ship? How can you trust him?”
He thinks about it. “I trust him with my life,” Young says. “It’s pretty safe to say I trust him with the life of the science team, and possibly with Wray’s life. I trust him to keep this ship running, because he values this ship more than he values his own life. After that…” Young shrugs and looks at the table. “I don’t know. I probably trust him about as much as I trust you.”
That remark hits right where he’d intended it to. He and Telford both know how shaky things between them are.
He sighs. “I’m fucking him, David. I’m not putting him in control of the ship. Are you satisfied?”
There’s a moment of silence. Finally, Telford says “Is he the reason you haven’t been using the stones?”
“No.”
“Then I’m satisfied. I don’t like it, but that’s…. Let’s get back to work; I have another meeting after this.”
The day had passed as slow as any other, but sleep isn’t coming. Young stares at the ceiling, not thinking about much of anything. He has something in his eye.
He blinks. There is the normal sticky sound as his eyelids touch and pull apart, then there is something else behind it, a dragging sensation. He freezes, eyes open and unfocused. He takes a deep breath, feeling the real, solid weight of Rush’s arm across his chest. The smell of vegetable oil and charcoal makes his nose itch.
He closes his eyes and opens them slowly. The extra drag is more noticeable this time. There is the normal dual sensation of eyes and eyelids touching that he experienced mostly when he was suffering a headache of overtired, and there is the second sensation a fraction of a second later. He takes another breath, slowly. Slowly.
He can…he can feel those damn sheets against his back, too slippery and too scratchy all at once. His hair tickles his neck every time Rush exhales. He can hear the hiss of the air re-circulators and the ticking of his watch, and he can feel the extra slide every time he blinks - every time. He would never have noticed it if he wasn’t on the restless edge of sleep, where every small thing became a thousand times more intrusive.
What time is it? He can’t reach his watch without waking Rush, and he needs that man to stay exactly where he is.
Young takes another slow, deep breath, focusing on the muscles expanding and contracting, the cold of the air as it makes its way into his lungs.
He needs to tell TJ. He needs to…no Rush probably knew. He swallows against the panic crawling up his throat.
He needs to calm down. He needs to sleep before he does anything else. He needs to stop. panicking.
Young closes his eyes and resists the urge to blink them open again.
He is featureless. He cannot see. His legs are broken - so much of him is broken. He waits.
The singing is constant. He calls into the void, and from every direction, a few faint replies reach his ears that are not ears. So many of the voices grow weaker.
He is alone.
But one of the songs is growing louder, growing nearer. One of the others survives and is well. Weak, perhaps, but well enough to help him.
He catalogues his injuries and he shouts.
Young jolts awake. Beside him, Rush does the same, giving the walls a bemused look.
He sits up. “Did you happen to have a dream about…singing?”
Young stares at him. “After a fashion.”
Rush goes for his clothes with a muttered curse. It’s Young’s turn to sit up, frowning at Rush while the man tries to remember which shirt was his. “What’s going on?”
“The ship,” Rush says, clearly distracted. “It must be. We can’t both be having the same exact nightmare.”
Young reaches out to grab him and misses. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“I’m not…” Rush pauses, apparently coming to the conclusion that he has to give Young something. “I’m not entirely sure. I am sure that that was Destiny affecting our dreams, and I need to find out why.”
“Do you think that it was just us?”
Rush raises his eyebrows. “I think that you would be in a better position to find that out than me.”
Young sighs and falls back on the bed, reaching for his watch. “Talk to me at…shit, 0900. Most of the crew starts waking up around six-hundred; I’ll have been able to ask around by then.”
He’s tired. He’s incredibly, ridiculously, painfully tired, and he really does not need the ship to start screwing with his head again. He cannot…. He gets up, slowly.
Rush is already gone.
TJ takes a deep breath, blinking rapidly. Young waits for her to say something now that she’s through examining him. He hates the watery brightness in her eyes.
“Are you-” She clears her throat and straightens. “You said you hadn’t noticed any change in vision? No blurriness or odd shapes?”
“Everything’s the same.” He pauses. “Excepting the obvious.”
“It’s possible that the headaches are due to eyestrain. I…it doesn’t look like it’s making a huge impact on your vision, but you should wear your glasses more. They seem to behave in the same way as your actual eyelids; we’ll add eye exams to the list of things we need to do more often.”
He nods easily. It made sense to try and stay on top of this.
“Are you okay? You seem like you’re taking it pretty well.”
Young gives her a lopsided grin. “I did my panicking last night.”
That wrings a smile out of her.
He spends another twenty minutes in the infirmary, trying to look as together as possible to ease TJ’s mind. By the time he left, she’d relaxed almost entirely.
The bridge is quiet. Camille is sketching in the command chair; Eli has his headphones in.
“You have a clean bill of health?” Camille asks with a smile.
“Clean enough to sit in a chair for a few hours. I didn’t miss anything?”
“We figured out which washing machines were functional,” she says. Then she holds up her sketchpad. “What do you think?”
It’s a picture of the forward view. It’s nice, and he tells her so, adding that she’d done a good job drawing the back of Eli’s head.
She hadn’t had any weird dreams, and neither had Eli.
Rush misses the nine o’clock meeting, which Young had pretty much expected - whatever it was wasn’t immediately dangerous, or else Rush would have hunted him down. So Young tries to stay awake and settles into the day.
There is a spear fishing group and a wood working group. They work together pretty well in one of the storage rooms. Young spends time with them, doing some heavily lifting and occasionally taking part in the spear practice. They need to see him, so he lets himself be seen.
He takes part in other things. There is a recipe contest, where the winning entry would be served to everyone. The settings on the working machines in the laundry room have to be figured out, and devices and food items have to be named. The Recreation and Moral committee have to be proud. Prizes include seashells, a nicely shaped chunk of lava rock, a clothing item of the winner’s choice, and extra liquor rations for a month.
With a particularly fancy shell, some scrap metal, and help from Brody, Young makes Camille a hair clip. He looks up from his work one day to see that Rush has trimmed his hair in the same style Young gave him what felt like forever ago. Young gets a new pair of socks.
It’s…pleasant. Monotonous and empty, and pleasant nonetheless.
He’s surprised when Rush finally brings up the dream again, but when Rush tells him flat out that Destiny has found a seed ship…well. Surprise is the last thing he feels.
Destiny, Rush tells him, has been constantly communicating with other Ancient ships, some further away than others. It’s similar to the way the ship keeps track of gates, but starkly, painfully different. The ship feels, and whether purposely or accidentally it’s been pushing its feelings at them, pushing its experiences at them.
“It explains the other dreams.”
“Others?” Young says.
The console that Rush is leaning on lights the underside of his face, like a kid holding a flashlight to tell a ghost story. The way Rush curls his fingers into fists makes Young wonder if there isn’t a ghost story playing out in his head.
“You’ve been following a course laid out for you. You’re injured, and alone, and you’re searching for something you may not survive to find. You call for help until your voice is almost gone, and you’re waiting - you’re always waiting - for your superiors to come for you.”
“Rush-” Young starts, not liking the look on Rush’s face.
“You scream for them. You know they must have fallen, you know that it’s past time, that only death would have kept them away, but you can’t stop trying. You can’t or you’ll go mad.”
“Rush!”
“And you know,” Rush is shouting now, “that there is an almost nonexistent probability that you will be heard but you can’t bear to stop, to conserve that energy instead of wasting it, because the odds are still greater than zero, and so long as it remains greater that zero you can still try. You must still try.”
“Nick!” Young grabs him firmly by the shoulders. “Nick, you don’t have to explain it. You don’t.”
At the time, Young hadn’t been able to separate those dreams from his normal nightmares. Now that he knows…. This, this entire thing is the last thing that they need. The last thing that Rush needs, that either of them needs but especially Rush, is the ship fucking with them. And if it frightens Young, what Rush can get from him, the idea of the things that come from the ship - from every door and wall and console his fingers touch - that Rush seemingly cannot block out, can barely even talk about, it terrifies him.
Young kisses him, let’s all of Rush’s manic energy focus on him. He can’t get Rush to really talk to him, but he can let him take it out on him. It was better than one of them actually hurting the other.
Rush grabs at him - too rough - and Young lets him, gives as good as he gets. Sometimes you have to squeeze a man too tight to keep him from breaking.
Rush keeps holding on when he’s done, shaking, still wearing that desperate edge.
He doesn’t look like he’s going to break down anymore. Young takes a deep breath, tries to ignore his hard on, the various aches that will be a pain in the ass later.
“So apart from us being in a symbiotic relationship with a crazy starship, what have you got?”
Rush breathes a disbelieving laugh. Young smiles.
“The port sensor array is down.”
“Again?”
Rush makes a vague noise, eyes closed. “I have Volker and Brody on it. Eli and Park are translating some of the information on the infirmary. As soon as Destiny gets more information from the seedship, we’ll change course. We won’t drop out again until Destiny needs to recharge, and then again when we meet the seed ship.”
Young nods. He thinks of how he’ll say this to Camille, what the crew will be up to in the meantime. Not for the first time he curses the stone restrictions that call for brief and infrequent contact with Earth. He does not look forward to telling Telford that Destiny is sentient.
“How long will that take?”
“Hours? Days? It depends on how fast Destiny can sort through everything. It’s not performing optimally.”
Young can imagine.
Someone has mixed charcoal and purple dye and drawn a mural on the wall opposite the door of the mess. It was full of swirls and acute angles. It was nice enough.
Young watches a throng of people vote on colors - someone, probably Eli, had mixed ash with dye and called it paint - and wonders how in earth he’d missed this.
He eats his dessert of half-frozen fruit mush and lets his eyes drift over the crown, catching on hair clips and new buttons and a surprising amount of fingerless gloves.
Climate control. That was something else for Rush to push off on the rest of the science team. If there is any benefit to Rush disappearing into the bowels of the ship every day, it was in Young’s requests being worked on. Rather than brush Young off entirely, Rush shoves the matter and the people meant to assist him; it’s something akin to how these things usually worked, and completely out of character.
Rush’s compliance made Young itch with suspicion, be he’d meant what he said to Telford. He trusts Rush not to kill them.
Camille enters. Young watches her from the corner of his eye as she gets a cup of tea and the night’s dinner, and resists the urge to sigh when she heads straight for his table. He toys with the idea of downing his fruit and heading for the door, but it’s just a passing thought. He stirs the fruit in his bowl.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she starts; her tone says she doesn’t approve of him not giving her a time and that she expects him to explain. So he does.
Camille frowns when he’s done. “Is this why you asked me about my dreams?”
Young nods. “I needed to know if the ship was communicating with you as well as us.”
He lets her work through it; she, like TJ, doesn’t need any handholding.
“You say Destiny has been communicating with other Ancient vessels. Does that include Atlantis?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits. “I think it does. There’s not a lot passing between them - from my understanding, Destiny mostly sends out status reports and requests for assistance. The replies it gets are acknowledgement that the message has been received. I think only thirty percent of the outgoing messages get replies.”
Camille’s eyebrows shoot up. “That must be…distressing.”
“Injured and more than half your friends are dead? Yeah. I doubt the ship is mentally stable from any frame of reference.”
“We need to talk to a scientist involved with Atlantis; if the city is sentient, it’s important that we try to communicate. Do you….” Camille huffs. “I would’ve preferred he come to both of us with this information. For better or for worse, the three of us make up the entirety of Destiny’s command staff. We need to be on the same page.”
“If it makes any difference,” Young says, “if I’d known what he had to tell me, I would’ve involved you from the start.”
“I know.” She picks up her tea; her sleeves cover her hands. “How are we going to tell the crew? We have to tell the crew,” she adds when she sees the look on his face. “If Destiny’s already communicating with us, there’s no way we can hide it. Most of them already suspect that the AI is more complex than anyone is letting on.”
“That’s not what I was thinking. I just hate making these kinds of announcements. You know.”
Camille nodded. “Let’s work out what we’re going to say.”
Young beats the hides in time with the throbbing in his head, trying to blot out thoughts about Destiny’s course corrections and seedships and dream tampering and anything.
It isn’t working.
The phantom ache from the dream he’d been given lingers in his joints.
Ships that could go mad from isolation. The Ancients were insane.
There’s an ominous crack from the reed broom in his hands. He shakes out his arms.
The room is bleached white around the edges, but it’s nothing, he’s fine.
He takes another swing, focusing on the nice solid whump.
Normally this room is the warmest place on the ship, but today he feels chilled. The exertion is taking care of some of that. This isn’t the nicest job on the ship, but compared to the scraping and smearing with brains that had come before, taking a broom to dead skin that smelled too strongly of Nature is a piece of cake.
There was a reason he’d gotten here early.
A loud electronic whine cuts through the air. Young glares at the ceiling. He was starting to regret giving them permission to fix that thing.
“Hold on a minute,” Brody says underneath the racket, “we’re experiencing some - no, no just turn it -”
The noise cuts off abruptly. Young sighs.
He checks his watch. He’s been working what felt like forever, but there’s still an hour until his shift officially starts.
He looks the door, thinks about one of the crew walking in on him swaying in the middle of the floor.
He’s really getting tired of this.
TJ gives him a cup of tea as she glances at the thermometer. “It might be an immune disorder.”
“Maybe I’m allergic to the Pussycat Dolls.”
TJ grins. The Pussycat Dolls had provided the soundtrack to his shift before he gave up: the same five songs on a loop. He’s tempted to rescind Chen’s speaker privileges for poor taste in music.
He uses his mug to gesture at the thermometer. “What’s the verdict? Am I well enough to attend tonight’s performance of Aschenputtel?”
“You’re going to spend the night here,” TJ says. “I thought about letting you sleep it off in your quarters, but…”
“We need to keep an eye on my temperature; I understand.” He sighs. “Is there anything I can help with while I’m here?”
“You can drink that and get some rest.”
Young raises his eyebrows at her. TJ returns the gesture, arms folded. He huffs. “Do you have a book I can borrow?”
Of all the people visiting him in the infirmary, Rush is the most unexpected.
“What on earth is that?” Rush says, frowning at the wooden disks on his chessboard.
“Checkers,” says Young. “Varro doesn’t play chess.”
“You used my board for this? Where on earth did you get the pieces?”
“Scrap wood from two different planets. The purple ones are from that planet with the toxic frogs. I can’t exactly remember the red pieces.” He gives Rush a look. “Are you going to stand there all day? It’s not like I’m contagious.”
Rush glares. “I have better things to do than babysit.”
“Bullshit. If you were really busy, you wouldn’t be down here.”
Rush scoffs.
“I’m not as sick this time,” Young adds, sitting up to look him in the eye. “You don’t have to avoid me.”
It’s like watching a balloon deflate. Maybe a puffer fish. Rush sits on the gurney across from Young without another word. He looks exhausted - more so than usual.
“I do not appreciate being forced to endure Col. Telford in your absence.”
“Camille did it last time. It’s only fair.”
“Fuck fair. As if either one of you could do the same if out positions were reversed.”
“Wouldn’t stop us from trying.” If Rush were unavailable, he would probably just put Eli in his place. Young had honestly expected Rush to push the matter off onto Lt. Scott.
“Col. Telford believes I had something to do with this.”
“David’s a suspicious bastard.” Young declines to add “Just like you” to the end of that sentence. Rush and Telford would get along if they weren’t exactly alike. “What’s really bothering you?”
Not exactly alike; Telford wouldn’t have given him the scathing look Rush did. And he’d have answered the question.
Young sighs and takes his glasses off. “If you won’t answer me, will you at least play a game of chess? If I read this book again my eyes will drop out.”
They play three games and Young loses two of them. Young starts to set up the board again, half his attention on the way Rush plays with his king.
“This is going to keep happening,” Rush says, his unfocused eyes on the board. “Over and over again until you die or reach whatever goal they set for you.”
“I figured as much,” Young says softly, hyperaware of the public nature of their conversation. He’s worried, but that worry feels far away, buried underneath bad news and exhaustion. It was not knowing that ate at him most often - not knowing what to expect or how human he’d be at the end of it.
He takes that frantic urge and pushes it down.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to be okay?”
Rush doesn’t answer. That’s as good as a “No”.
“-I think that now, more than ever, is the time to settle the division of power on this ship.”
“Mm.”
“If we act quickly and decisively, the crew will have plenty of time to adjust to the changes and we’ll finally have something approaching a reasonable balance between military and civilian governance.”
“Mmhm.”
“I’m also sleeping with your wife.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Camille sits on the edge of the gurney and Young blinks his eyes open.
“I’m going to present this to you in writing,” Camille says. “With citations.”
“I’m sorry,” Young rubs a hand over his eyes. “I’m just…”
“Tired.” Camille smiles. “If I held you to half the things you agree to when you’re half asleep, I’d be in control of the ship.”
“I’m sure you’d make a great dictator.”
“All shall love me and despair.” Camille’s grin fades. “I had a dream in Ancient a few nights ago. I don’t speak Ancient.”
“The ship?”
“I was in my house, on Earth, playing Marco Polo with Sharon. Only instead of Sharon, I’d get answers from ghosts or furniture. My legs had been cut off, and I had to find her so she could put me back together. I vividly remember chewing a telephone wire and breaking my teeth on it.”
Young flinches.
“I don’t think it was communicating on purpose. It was broadcasting on all frequencies but only listening to one. It-” Camille pauses with her hands in the air, halfway though some sort of gesture. She lets her hands fall to her sides. “My walls were covered in numbers and words. Every time I talked a new portion of the wall lit up, and when Sharon didn’t answer it went dark again. I’m sorry; I’m not explaining this very well.”
“Last night I dreamed that I was roasting myself so survive. Compared to sucking the marrow out of my own femur your dream is…better. To hear about.”
For a moment, they were both silent. Young winced at another brief screech from the ship’s sound system.
“Colonel Telford is not happy that you’ve been unavailable.”
“So I’ve heard. Does he know that he’s free to come here and speak to me in person?”
“He knows that you are in the infirmary, and that you have a fever. He came to me because he assumed Dr. Rush was being…less than honest.”
“And you’re surprised by that?”
“I’m not. That’s also why I feel we need to do this. The structure that Earth expects is not the one we’re using; we need to have it written down, officially, who is in charge of this ship. Obviously I prefer something similar to the methods we’re already using - the three of us sharing power equally with each other. We need something permanent; I don’t want Col Telford accosting random crew members for information because he doesn’t like what he’s hearing.”
“If you’d like to have a senior staff meeting down here…”
Camille purses her lips. “While you’re incapacitated Lieutenant Scott has assumed military command. I won’t antagonize TJ when there’s an easy solution.”
“And the solution is?”
“Scott and I keep you up-to-date and we have informal talks about the situation. When you’ve returned to duty we’ll handle the specifics.”
Prying information out of Scott is like trying to pry open a pit-bull’s jaw. He’s only really open mouthed when he needs help; otherwise he’s worried about irritating TJ or “aggravating his condition”, and he’d appreciate it if it weren’t damned annoying.
It’s easier to tune in to the ship’s healthy gossip train. There’s something about being stuck in the infirmary that makes everyone want to talk.
“Our attempts to raise the temperature haven’t worked,” Chloe says, huddled inside Scott’s jacket. “If anything it’s getting colder. The ship’s using the energy for something else - we think maybe the dreams? That is, it’s appropriating the power it normally uses to keep the temperature level to strengthen its communication system. It’s projecting more to…everyone, really, and sending out more messages to other ships.”
“Do you know how much colder it’s going to get?”
Chloe shakes her head. “We know it’s not going to get dangerously cold, but…I’m going to have to work something out; I need to give Matt his jacket back.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Running, I think.” Chloe curls in on herself. “It’d be easier if we could drop out more. It gets hard when it’s just this. Just the ship.”
Young looks around the infirmary. Bouncing back and forth between Rush’s quarters and here is getting exhausting.
“I know just how you feel.”
“Could you make it to your quarters without passing out?” TJ asks, his boots in one hand.
He slouches, incredibly tired. “No.”
“I thought not.”
TJ puts his boots on the floor.
He is abruptly thrust from a dream of fire into a deep pool of affection and there was something wrong he needs to- he needs -
Emily’s face on their wedding day, young and happy and everything that they weren’t in the end and he needs
A curl of hair dangling over TJ’s ear. He tugs it and she smiles at him, light from the window making her hair shine, and for this one moment everything was wonderful and they weren’t doing anything wrong, and she was beautiful, always beautiful and too good for…he…he needs…
Rush, the first time they’d sought comfort in each other and a hundred other times after, and he needs to wake up, and they laid there, Rush warm and right and real against his back, and he thinks he could be happy with this, with the cool quiet night and the shelter of the trees, and Rush’s steady breath against the back of his neck. Just this.
It’s the sense of falling that rouses him in the end. He jerks awake to the sick drop from FTL and Inman walking out of TJ’s office with a blanket of animal hide draped over her shoulders.
He can hear her worried question under a loud electrical whine, and underneath the racket Young hears “We found a seedship!” coming from the shipwide communication system. He isn’t sure the broadcast was intentional. Maybe it was; Destiny’s intention to make it known throughout the ship that it’d found something like itself.
His head is swimming.
“-oung. Colonel Young -”
That was his radio.
“This is Young. What’s happening?”
If it sounded a bit slurred, being startled out of his sleep was as good an excuse as any. Inman sits across from him, trying to finger comb her hair into some sort of order.
The explanation coming from the bridge is garbled and echoes terribly, but Young is able to parse the gist. They’d dropped out with the seedship practically on top of them, and none of the controls were responding to them. Destiny had initiated the docking procedure on its own.
“This is Lt. Scott; I’m on my way to the bridge. Don’t touch anything until I get there.”
“Volker to Dr. Rush. You’re needed on the bridge.”
“This is Eli; could you please turn shipwide off?”
“This is a good thing, isn’t it?” Inman yawns. “I mean, we were supposed to meet up with a seedship; that’s why we hadn’t dropped out in a while. So it’s nice that we finally did.”
“I think we all expected a bit more warning.”
Inman nods and shivers, pulling her blanket tighter across her shoulders. “To be honest sir, I could use the fresh air.”
The ship shudders. Someone finally manages to cut the sound system off; probably Rush. Young had managed to hear his voice under the white noise.
They wait a moment, but everything has settled down. Inman looks at him. “Should I -?”
“They’ll send someone,” Young says, laying down and trying to massage away his headache. “I assume we’ve finished docking and Destiny is having a nice long conversation with the seedship.”
He closes his eyes; even the dim light was aggravating his headache. He meant to rest just a moment, waiting for the infirmary doors to open or his name to come up on the radio. Instead, he falls asleep.
He’s standing in the gate room, in front of an open wormhole. In front of him is a vaguely humanoid shape - something trying and failing to mimic a human appearance.
Young can see the places where the features were meant to be, but they were blurred, more the suggestion of features than anything specific.
He stares at it for an unknown length of time. Finally, the suggestion of a mouth begins to move.
“Communication with” - here, the shape says a word that his mind slides over - “has been established: you are parasites. Communication with Atlantis has been established: you are symbiots.”
“And what do you think we are?” he couldn’t help asking.
The shape flickers and stretches. When it settles, it’s in the shape of a repair robot.
“Inefficient,” it says.
Inefficient repair robot is a step up from parasite, Young supposes. “Who are you?”
There is a garbled noise and the press of something else against his mind - feelings and sounds that don’t belong to him. The foreign sensation abruptly retreats and the projection morphs briefly into the shape of a seedship, and then again into the humanoid form it had first presented him.
“Traveler,” it says. “Instructions.”
Before Young can ask what that meant he again feels the press of something foreign and incomprehensible against his own mind, his thoughts twisting into meaningless numbers and shapes and sounds, and somehow he can see them in front of his eyes, a mess of shape and color and an impossible heat dancing in front of his eyes. He flinches away.
The flood of information abruptly ceases. “Incorrect program,” the thing says, the seedship says.
And Young is alone, in the gateroom, with an inactive gate. It is impossibly cold.
“The ship is melting,” Camille says. She’s sitting on the staircase, watching him.
“I see.” And he could see. The ceiling is dripping on his head. “How can it be melting when it’s so cold?”
Camille points to the gate. Where the gate had been was a pillar of fire, white cold. Rush is standing in front of it, emaciated and frostbitten, his hands outstretched.
“This is a dream,” Rush says, turning to face Young. His hands are full of white fire, and they’re being devoured. Where his eyes should be are two empty holes. “This is a dream.”
“Can you fix it?” Young asks. He absentmindedly wipes the blood from his chin.
“This is a dream,” Rush says, and reaches out with his burning hands.
Young jerks and falls through the floor, falls, and he is on the floor in the infirmary with Inman crouching in front of him. His head is killing him.
“Colonel Young,” Inman says. How many times has she called his name?
“I’m okay,” he manages to grit out. He feels anything but.
The kino feed shows hundreds of repair robots swarming over every available surface. One taps lightly on one of the kinos before pushing it to the side.
The bulk of the visible robots are centered on the docking port, where the seedship’s airlock met one of Destiny’s own. As they watch, the repair robots work steadily until the hatch is open, and then begin to work inside Destiny, repairing that end of the hatch and the floor and ceiling and door controls.
“They’re doing this at ten other locations,” Scott says. “So far they haven’t come any further into Destiny than that. I think they’re waiting for something.”
Young watches the diligent work of the robots, carefully bringing those portions of Destiny into acceptable condition.
“Inefficient,” Young whispers, catching at the edge of a half forgotten dream.
“Sir?”
“They’re waiting for us to open the doors.”
There are two planets in range. One is locked out, but the other looks promising.
TJ lets him out of the infirmary. He’s on medical leave; TJ insisted on that, and he hadn’t felt like arguing with her.
He sleeps in Rush’s quarters, off and on.
He is tired.
“You’ll be fine,” Rush says, looking anything but fine himself. Young wonders when he slept last, if he sleeps at all in those spaces of time where Young is asleep and Rush is still there, working in bed with Young’s reading glasses on.
“The ship is still projecting,” Rush continues. “I believe that half the exhaustion you feel - we feel - is coming from Destiny. When the repairs have progressed, it will focus its attention elsewhere.”
“That doesn’t help much now,” Young can’t help but point out.
“I never said it would help.”
He sighs, fighting his eyes open. “You should get some rest.”
“You do that.”
Pain in the ass.
“Sleep, Rush. Close your eyes, stop thinking for five minutes, give your brain a chance to recharge? Does any of this make sense to you?”
Rush’s lips twitch. He’s enjoying this. Bastard.
“Unlike some people I could name, I actually have work to do.”
“Work that you can do perfectly well once you’ve passed out from exhaustion. I’m going to hit the lights, and unless you can see in the dark you’re going to put down whatever that is and go to sleep.”
“You can’t even keep your eyes open. Do you really think-?”
Young follows the line of Rush’s arm until he reaches his hand. His firm massage quickly devolves into a simple repetitive hand motion, but Rush is focused on him now.
Rush sighs. “You’re a menace.”
He pulls away long enough to cut off the lights, and how the hell…?
“You honestly thought you had to cross the room?” Rush is definitely laughing at him, but Young doesn’t care.
He tries to come up with something more seductive than “If I jerk you off will you finally fucking sleep?” but who does he need to impress? He pulls the hand he has up between them and uses it to drag Rush closer.
“You’re incorrigible,” Rush says, too fucking far away from his mouth. “You just got out of the infirmary.”
Hasn’t stopped them before. “Do you ever shut up?”
Young kisses him before he can answer. He’s exhausted and there are ten pound weights attached to his eyelids, but Rush is warm and real and insulting him as he makes his way down the side of Young’s neck, and he is definitely awake enough for this. Awake enough to take Rush in hand and hear him hiss, to wince when their teeth clack together and laugh when Rush complains about his arm falling asleep.
This is real - Rush, his hands, his eyes, his need to do something with that insane beard before Young takes the fucking flamethrower to his face. The room is cold but Rush is a fucking furnace, and this - this is real. The cramp in his leg, the calluses on their fingers, rough knees and an inhumanly hot mouth…this is real. This is good.
And this is going to work, crazy dream-giving ships be damned.
This entry was crossposted to My DW Account. Please feel free to read or comment on either site.
Fandom: SGU
Pairing: Young/Rush, mentions of Scott/Chloe
Rating: R/NC-17
Warnings: sex, fevers, anxiety, mutations, nightmares, sentient starships
Notes: Written for the h/c bingo prompt “isolation” and the longfic bingo prompt “trapped”. Follows Contact and Flamingoes and Mustard. I tried to write porn, and this happened. :|
Summary: They’re doing the best they can.
Rush has him backed up against the wall just beside the door, a thigh pushed up between his legs. He has a hand pressed against Young’s collarbone as if afraid he’ll disappear.
Their pants are open and Young doesn’t care about his back or his knee or what time of day it is. All that matters is what Rush is doing with his other hand. He’s too old to rut against a bulkhead like this - they both are - but he doesn’t care; he really doesn’t care.
Someone pounds hard on his door.
“Shit,” he grunts, head falling against the wall. “Shit.”
Rush is close; Young can tell by the way he sinks his teeth into his shoulder, by the way the hand on his chest claws, and this is really the worst timing.
No one looks for him in his quarters. That’s the point of doing this in his quarters. But Rush is growling deep in his chest, and someone is pounding on the door and shouting something he can’t quite hear….
He was wrong, the knocking wasn’t the worst. The door mechanism whirs at the worst possible time, the actual worst possible time. He only half notices, distracted by the way Rush shifts just so. Rush definitely hasn’t noticed, or maybe he just doesn’t care. He mouths up the side of Young’s neck and rolls his hips, cutting Young off before he can try to speak.
The only sound besides their breathing is stunned silence. Rush adjusts his pants and shifts so that he’s between Young and the door.
“I see the word privacy means nothing to you.”
Young makes himself look at the door, trying not to imagine the worst case scenario for who could have walked in on him having an orgasm. TJ is very carefully looking away, biting her lips. Scott looks pole-axed - but then, it’s not really Lt. Scott. Young’s best guess is Telford; who else would look for him in his quarters? Or more to the point: who else would go ahead and open the door?
“What are you doing?” not-Lt.-Scott says.
Young tries to think of an answer besides the obvious, but it’s Rush who replies, closing his pants properly and turning to face the door. Young uses the screen of Rush’s body to fix his clothes.
“Is there something you wanted?”
Not-Lt.-Scott opens his mouth - it seems he’s pulled himself together - but TJ grabs his arm and pulls. “We can talk about it in our normal conference room. Twenty minutes?”
Just that quickly they’re alone again. Rush raises his eyebrows. “Are you going to clean up or what? I don’t suppose you want to go into a meeting come in your shorts.”
Young gapes at him. “Did they bother you at all?”
Rush scowls. “I’m fucking pissed actually, but let it dry in your pants if you want.”
Rush cleans up quickly - switching to the only other shirt he had. Then he’s gone. Young tries not to grind his teeth. He takes his time; he only has one other set of underwear, and they’ve been patched with unfortunately scratchy wool.
He only turns two corners before he bumps into Rush, who’s scribbling on a piece of paper that’s falling apart at the folds. Rush doesn’t even greet him, just starts walking as soon as Young’s standing beside him. Young sighs.
Camille meets them outside the conference room. When Young raises his eyebrows at her, she shrugs. “Rush radioed me.”
The three of them were what amounted to senior staff on Destiny. It made sense; this way Young didn’t have to repeat it to Camille later.
She’s frowning at them, like something is out of place. Young opens the door.
Telford’s expression doesn’t suit Scott’s face. He doesn’t bring up the scene in Young’s quarters, except to say “You’re late.”
“By a minute and a half,” Young says. “What did we need to talk about?”
“It sounded important” Camille adds. She’s wearing a grey sweater Young’s never seen before. He tries not to smile.
The news Telford has to give is nothing to smile about. On the surface it’s nothing new - things with the Lucian Alliance are getting increasingly more frustrating. Homeworld is cracking down on security, which means
“We’re going to restrict the use of the stones to reports and emergencies only. No more seminars, no more visits home.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
There’s a brief moment of silence. Young can’t help but glance at Camille; this news isn’t going to go over well.
“Is this really necessary?” Camille says, almost on cue. “The stones are the only way we have of contacting our families. Crew members compose letters and emails and maintain contact with the world while those of us still on the ship get information and support. They’ve been a boost to the overall mental health of the crew, as well as our physical health. We’ve had a lot of success without growing and preserving a variety of food since we began doing seminars. Those seminars have been essential to improving our living conditions, and we depend on the stones to maintain contact with our families. We’ve been able to get essential advice on food preservation, weaving, construction…”
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear” Telford says. “Homeworld is concerned about the things that could happen to you without continued support. Unfortunately, the Lucian Alliance is making that impossible.”
“The more help we get from those kinds of experts - the experts that are only available to us through the use of the stones - the better our living conditions. Is there any real possibility that isolating us from our only means of support with doing anything to stop the Lucian Alliance?”
“I think we can all agree that this doesn’t sound like the best idea,” Young says, before Camille can really build up steam.
“Is there any way we can finish our schedule before this goes into effect?” TJ asks. Young can’t help but wonder if she and Camille have been planning for something like this. “At the very least we could let those people who were already due take their leave.”
“Not unless you let them all through today.” Telford shrugs. “This wasn’t my idea. I’ll try to give you a date to resume extended contact, but there’s nothing I can do right now. The best I can say is wait it out.”
Camille is working on yet another knitting project, this one vaguely purple.
“Dye?” he asks, setting his meal on the table. Today’s grey mush tastes like bananas - sandy, nutty bananas.
“The first batch,” Camille says. “I see you’re braving today’s breakfast.”
“You’re not eating?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite.”
The new restrictions on the stones, then. He wasn’t fond of it either.
“We’ll make it work,” he says. They always do.
The purple item of clothing grows incrementally larger in Camille’s hand. A few people from the nearest table share mournful memories of banana bread.
“We would have the Recreation Committee host a funeral. For the seminars,” he explains when Camille gives him a startled look.
That gets a real smile from her. “How about something a little less morbid.”
“I leave it in your capable hands.” He gives his bowl a considering look. “You know, this actually isn’t that bad.”
Lunch is a sandwich - wilted leafy greens and paste with the texture and flavor of sand, cowering in the folds of a piece of flatbread. What the seed paste lacked in flavor it made up for in nutrition, so it was becoming a major staple. Young can honestly say he’s eaten worse.
He was never quite sure to start when he went looking for Rush. This time he heads for one of the more isolated rooms, going off Eli’s mention of consoles.
“What?” Rush snaps as soon as Young opens the door.
“Lunch,” Young says. “Becker says you haven’t eaten yet.”
“So you’re a delivery boy.”
“Shut up and eat. What are you doing in here anyway?”
Rush doesn’t answer, dubiously eyeing the sandwich.
Young sits at the second console, squinting as his eyes adjust. The text is in Ancient, intercut with diagrams.
“Some things were preprogrammed into Destiny’s computers. Weapons schematics, the means to make replacement parts for certain components, instructions for some of the more complex equipment…it’s a matter of finding the information, and proving to the ship we’re ready to access it.”
“Proving to the ship?”
“You can’t be surprised. The ship was testing you.”
Young grimaces, remembering the awful dreams and general unpleasantness of Destiny’s attempt at testing him.
“Nothing like that,” Rush says, seeing the look on Young’s face. “It’s less a matter of worthiness, and more a matter of…cognitive capability. Destiny needs to know that we know what we’re looking for and that, if it cedes control to us, we’ll be able to use them properly. The ship doesn’t need to tamper with our minds for that.”
“Sort of like fitting the right keys in the right locks?”
Rush makes a face. “I suppose you could see it that way.”
Young rolls his eyes. “I suppose that’s what you’ve been working on down here. Are you going to do all of this by yourself?”
“Of course not.”
Of course not, he says, as if he hasn’t spent majority of his time doing exactly that.
“I have Eli working on plans to explore the area surrounding hydroponics; he should come to you later today.”
“Thanks for the head up,” Young mumbles.
“That’s also the reason for the bulk of the repairs we’ve done. Repairing the systems we’ve already access makes the other available to us; the affects our comfort are only secondary.”
“Bullshit. You want this place livable as much as the rest of us.”
There’s a smile tugging at the corner of Rush’s mouth. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something? Something other than irritating me?”
“I have a meeting with Telford in thirty minutes,” he admits. A half an hour to set up meetings for the next sixth months, and most likely Telford would spend twenty of that explaining that he hadn’t been able to get any of the restrictions relaxed. Just thinking about it makes him grind his teeth. “What about you? Are you going to stay down here all day or will you show up for your bridge shift?”
Not that there would be much going on up there. They were in FTL, and weren’t expected to drop out for a while.
“If I don’t?” Rush asks, taunting him. “Will you leave your meeting to drag me there yourself?”
Young shrugs. “I was thinking I’d send Eli. Or I could tell him and Chloe that you’re interested in helping with their next event. I’m sure they’d believe me.”
Young lets himself sink into the regular pattern of insults, trying to figure out what was bothering him. On the surface, it’s business as usual, but he can’t shake the current of unease he feels. And then Rush gives him a look.
It’s a terrible idea. It’s the middle of the day; they don’t have time to make out like teenagers in an out of the way conference room. Young has a meeting and Rush has a bridge shift. It’s a bad idea.
And yet here they are. Rush is on him like he wants to absorb him, like he’s afraid Young is going to be ripped away from him at any moment. Not for the first time, Young wonders what exactly Rush gets from him when they touch. He knows - he knows - that it was more than what Rush was telling him.
He forces himself to let go of his curiosity and his concern. He focuses on Rush. On the annoying things - Rush’s beard on his face, the sandy flavor that had gone from the sandwich to Rush’s mouth. On the good things - Rush a line of heat down his front, lips hands tongue teeth. Just…Rush, endlessly frustrating but less heartless than he pretended to be. And Young…Young…
Young cuts the thought off before it can finish.
It’s Rush who pulls back first, shifting so their foreheads are pressed together. “You’re going to be late for your meeting.”
“Fuck my meeting.”
Rush smiles. “I don’t think we want Col. Telford walking in on us again.”
Young closes his eyes and takes a moment to enjoy just breathing the same air. He sighs, a rueful smile on his lips. “We have got to stop doing this in the middle of the day.”
The meeting with Telford is as awful as anticipated, but they get the bulk of the work over quickly. After a round of “friendly” poking at Young’s command style, Telford finally asks the question that has clearly been itching him.
“Are you and Rush really-”
“Yes.”
Telford looks startled, but what had he expected to hear? “There’s a problem with the ship that we could only fix with our flies open”? Telford could be pigheaded, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“Rush? Are you out of your mind? He tried to kill you! He killed me!”
“To be fair, an alternate traumatized version of Rush killed an alternate version of you. That’s not exactly the same.”
Telford glares. “Don’t bullshit me, Everett. That was literally an hour into the future; he was hardly a different person. And do I really need to remind you of the number of times he’s tried to take over the ship? How can you trust him?”
He thinks about it. “I trust him with my life,” Young says. “It’s pretty safe to say I trust him with the life of the science team, and possibly with Wray’s life. I trust him to keep this ship running, because he values this ship more than he values his own life. After that…” Young shrugs and looks at the table. “I don’t know. I probably trust him about as much as I trust you.”
That remark hits right where he’d intended it to. He and Telford both know how shaky things between them are.
He sighs. “I’m fucking him, David. I’m not putting him in control of the ship. Are you satisfied?”
There’s a moment of silence. Finally, Telford says “Is he the reason you haven’t been using the stones?”
“No.”
“Then I’m satisfied. I don’t like it, but that’s…. Let’s get back to work; I have another meeting after this.”
The day had passed as slow as any other, but sleep isn’t coming. Young stares at the ceiling, not thinking about much of anything. He has something in his eye.
He blinks. There is the normal sticky sound as his eyelids touch and pull apart, then there is something else behind it, a dragging sensation. He freezes, eyes open and unfocused. He takes a deep breath, feeling the real, solid weight of Rush’s arm across his chest. The smell of vegetable oil and charcoal makes his nose itch.
He closes his eyes and opens them slowly. The extra drag is more noticeable this time. There is the normal dual sensation of eyes and eyelids touching that he experienced mostly when he was suffering a headache of overtired, and there is the second sensation a fraction of a second later. He takes another breath, slowly. Slowly.
He can…he can feel those damn sheets against his back, too slippery and too scratchy all at once. His hair tickles his neck every time Rush exhales. He can hear the hiss of the air re-circulators and the ticking of his watch, and he can feel the extra slide every time he blinks - every time. He would never have noticed it if he wasn’t on the restless edge of sleep, where every small thing became a thousand times more intrusive.
What time is it? He can’t reach his watch without waking Rush, and he needs that man to stay exactly where he is.
Young takes another slow, deep breath, focusing on the muscles expanding and contracting, the cold of the air as it makes its way into his lungs.
He needs to tell TJ. He needs to…no Rush probably knew. He swallows against the panic crawling up his throat.
He needs to calm down. He needs to sleep before he does anything else. He needs to stop. panicking.
Young closes his eyes and resists the urge to blink them open again.
He is featureless. He cannot see. His legs are broken - so much of him is broken. He waits.
The singing is constant. He calls into the void, and from every direction, a few faint replies reach his ears that are not ears. So many of the voices grow weaker.
He is alone.
But one of the songs is growing louder, growing nearer. One of the others survives and is well. Weak, perhaps, but well enough to help him.
He catalogues his injuries and he shouts.
Young jolts awake. Beside him, Rush does the same, giving the walls a bemused look.
He sits up. “Did you happen to have a dream about…singing?”
Young stares at him. “After a fashion.”
Rush goes for his clothes with a muttered curse. It’s Young’s turn to sit up, frowning at Rush while the man tries to remember which shirt was his. “What’s going on?”
“The ship,” Rush says, clearly distracted. “It must be. We can’t both be having the same exact nightmare.”
Young reaches out to grab him and misses. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“I’m not…” Rush pauses, apparently coming to the conclusion that he has to give Young something. “I’m not entirely sure. I am sure that that was Destiny affecting our dreams, and I need to find out why.”
“Do you think that it was just us?”
Rush raises his eyebrows. “I think that you would be in a better position to find that out than me.”
Young sighs and falls back on the bed, reaching for his watch. “Talk to me at…shit, 0900. Most of the crew starts waking up around six-hundred; I’ll have been able to ask around by then.”
He’s tired. He’s incredibly, ridiculously, painfully tired, and he really does not need the ship to start screwing with his head again. He cannot…. He gets up, slowly.
Rush is already gone.
TJ takes a deep breath, blinking rapidly. Young waits for her to say something now that she’s through examining him. He hates the watery brightness in her eyes.
“Are you-” She clears her throat and straightens. “You said you hadn’t noticed any change in vision? No blurriness or odd shapes?”
“Everything’s the same.” He pauses. “Excepting the obvious.”
“It’s possible that the headaches are due to eyestrain. I…it doesn’t look like it’s making a huge impact on your vision, but you should wear your glasses more. They seem to behave in the same way as your actual eyelids; we’ll add eye exams to the list of things we need to do more often.”
He nods easily. It made sense to try and stay on top of this.
“Are you okay? You seem like you’re taking it pretty well.”
Young gives her a lopsided grin. “I did my panicking last night.”
That wrings a smile out of her.
He spends another twenty minutes in the infirmary, trying to look as together as possible to ease TJ’s mind. By the time he left, she’d relaxed almost entirely.
The bridge is quiet. Camille is sketching in the command chair; Eli has his headphones in.
“You have a clean bill of health?” Camille asks with a smile.
“Clean enough to sit in a chair for a few hours. I didn’t miss anything?”
“We figured out which washing machines were functional,” she says. Then she holds up her sketchpad. “What do you think?”
It’s a picture of the forward view. It’s nice, and he tells her so, adding that she’d done a good job drawing the back of Eli’s head.
She hadn’t had any weird dreams, and neither had Eli.
Rush misses the nine o’clock meeting, which Young had pretty much expected - whatever it was wasn’t immediately dangerous, or else Rush would have hunted him down. So Young tries to stay awake and settles into the day.
There is a spear fishing group and a wood working group. They work together pretty well in one of the storage rooms. Young spends time with them, doing some heavily lifting and occasionally taking part in the spear practice. They need to see him, so he lets himself be seen.
He takes part in other things. There is a recipe contest, where the winning entry would be served to everyone. The settings on the working machines in the laundry room have to be figured out, and devices and food items have to be named. The Recreation and Moral committee have to be proud. Prizes include seashells, a nicely shaped chunk of lava rock, a clothing item of the winner’s choice, and extra liquor rations for a month.
With a particularly fancy shell, some scrap metal, and help from Brody, Young makes Camille a hair clip. He looks up from his work one day to see that Rush has trimmed his hair in the same style Young gave him what felt like forever ago. Young gets a new pair of socks.
It’s…pleasant. Monotonous and empty, and pleasant nonetheless.
He’s surprised when Rush finally brings up the dream again, but when Rush tells him flat out that Destiny has found a seed ship…well. Surprise is the last thing he feels.
Destiny, Rush tells him, has been constantly communicating with other Ancient ships, some further away than others. It’s similar to the way the ship keeps track of gates, but starkly, painfully different. The ship feels, and whether purposely or accidentally it’s been pushing its feelings at them, pushing its experiences at them.
“It explains the other dreams.”
“Others?” Young says.
The console that Rush is leaning on lights the underside of his face, like a kid holding a flashlight to tell a ghost story. The way Rush curls his fingers into fists makes Young wonder if there isn’t a ghost story playing out in his head.
“You’ve been following a course laid out for you. You’re injured, and alone, and you’re searching for something you may not survive to find. You call for help until your voice is almost gone, and you’re waiting - you’re always waiting - for your superiors to come for you.”
“Rush-” Young starts, not liking the look on Rush’s face.
“You scream for them. You know they must have fallen, you know that it’s past time, that only death would have kept them away, but you can’t stop trying. You can’t or you’ll go mad.”
“Rush!”
“And you know,” Rush is shouting now, “that there is an almost nonexistent probability that you will be heard but you can’t bear to stop, to conserve that energy instead of wasting it, because the odds are still greater than zero, and so long as it remains greater that zero you can still try. You must still try.”
“Nick!” Young grabs him firmly by the shoulders. “Nick, you don’t have to explain it. You don’t.”
At the time, Young hadn’t been able to separate those dreams from his normal nightmares. Now that he knows…. This, this entire thing is the last thing that they need. The last thing that Rush needs, that either of them needs but especially Rush, is the ship fucking with them. And if it frightens Young, what Rush can get from him, the idea of the things that come from the ship - from every door and wall and console his fingers touch - that Rush seemingly cannot block out, can barely even talk about, it terrifies him.
Young kisses him, let’s all of Rush’s manic energy focus on him. He can’t get Rush to really talk to him, but he can let him take it out on him. It was better than one of them actually hurting the other.
Rush grabs at him - too rough - and Young lets him, gives as good as he gets. Sometimes you have to squeeze a man too tight to keep him from breaking.
Rush keeps holding on when he’s done, shaking, still wearing that desperate edge.
He doesn’t look like he’s going to break down anymore. Young takes a deep breath, tries to ignore his hard on, the various aches that will be a pain in the ass later.
“So apart from us being in a symbiotic relationship with a crazy starship, what have you got?”
Rush breathes a disbelieving laugh. Young smiles.
“The port sensor array is down.”
“Again?”
Rush makes a vague noise, eyes closed. “I have Volker and Brody on it. Eli and Park are translating some of the information on the infirmary. As soon as Destiny gets more information from the seedship, we’ll change course. We won’t drop out again until Destiny needs to recharge, and then again when we meet the seed ship.”
Young nods. He thinks of how he’ll say this to Camille, what the crew will be up to in the meantime. Not for the first time he curses the stone restrictions that call for brief and infrequent contact with Earth. He does not look forward to telling Telford that Destiny is sentient.
“How long will that take?”
“Hours? Days? It depends on how fast Destiny can sort through everything. It’s not performing optimally.”
Young can imagine.
Someone has mixed charcoal and purple dye and drawn a mural on the wall opposite the door of the mess. It was full of swirls and acute angles. It was nice enough.
Young watches a throng of people vote on colors - someone, probably Eli, had mixed ash with dye and called it paint - and wonders how in earth he’d missed this.
He eats his dessert of half-frozen fruit mush and lets his eyes drift over the crown, catching on hair clips and new buttons and a surprising amount of fingerless gloves.
Climate control. That was something else for Rush to push off on the rest of the science team. If there is any benefit to Rush disappearing into the bowels of the ship every day, it was in Young’s requests being worked on. Rather than brush Young off entirely, Rush shoves the matter and the people meant to assist him; it’s something akin to how these things usually worked, and completely out of character.
Rush’s compliance made Young itch with suspicion, be he’d meant what he said to Telford. He trusts Rush not to kill them.
Camille enters. Young watches her from the corner of his eye as she gets a cup of tea and the night’s dinner, and resists the urge to sigh when she heads straight for his table. He toys with the idea of downing his fruit and heading for the door, but it’s just a passing thought. He stirs the fruit in his bowl.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she starts; her tone says she doesn’t approve of him not giving her a time and that she expects him to explain. So he does.
Camille frowns when he’s done. “Is this why you asked me about my dreams?”
Young nods. “I needed to know if the ship was communicating with you as well as us.”
He lets her work through it; she, like TJ, doesn’t need any handholding.
“You say Destiny has been communicating with other Ancient vessels. Does that include Atlantis?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits. “I think it does. There’s not a lot passing between them - from my understanding, Destiny mostly sends out status reports and requests for assistance. The replies it gets are acknowledgement that the message has been received. I think only thirty percent of the outgoing messages get replies.”
Camille’s eyebrows shoot up. “That must be…distressing.”
“Injured and more than half your friends are dead? Yeah. I doubt the ship is mentally stable from any frame of reference.”
“We need to talk to a scientist involved with Atlantis; if the city is sentient, it’s important that we try to communicate. Do you….” Camille huffs. “I would’ve preferred he come to both of us with this information. For better or for worse, the three of us make up the entirety of Destiny’s command staff. We need to be on the same page.”
“If it makes any difference,” Young says, “if I’d known what he had to tell me, I would’ve involved you from the start.”
“I know.” She picks up her tea; her sleeves cover her hands. “How are we going to tell the crew? We have to tell the crew,” she adds when she sees the look on his face. “If Destiny’s already communicating with us, there’s no way we can hide it. Most of them already suspect that the AI is more complex than anyone is letting on.”
“That’s not what I was thinking. I just hate making these kinds of announcements. You know.”
Camille nodded. “Let’s work out what we’re going to say.”
Young beats the hides in time with the throbbing in his head, trying to blot out thoughts about Destiny’s course corrections and seedships and dream tampering and anything.
It isn’t working.
The phantom ache from the dream he’d been given lingers in his joints.
Ships that could go mad from isolation. The Ancients were insane.
There’s an ominous crack from the reed broom in his hands. He shakes out his arms.
The room is bleached white around the edges, but it’s nothing, he’s fine.
He takes another swing, focusing on the nice solid whump.
Normally this room is the warmest place on the ship, but today he feels chilled. The exertion is taking care of some of that. This isn’t the nicest job on the ship, but compared to the scraping and smearing with brains that had come before, taking a broom to dead skin that smelled too strongly of Nature is a piece of cake.
There was a reason he’d gotten here early.
A loud electronic whine cuts through the air. Young glares at the ceiling. He was starting to regret giving them permission to fix that thing.
“Hold on a minute,” Brody says underneath the racket, “we’re experiencing some - no, no just turn it -”
The noise cuts off abruptly. Young sighs.
He checks his watch. He’s been working what felt like forever, but there’s still an hour until his shift officially starts.
He looks the door, thinks about one of the crew walking in on him swaying in the middle of the floor.
He’s really getting tired of this.
TJ gives him a cup of tea as she glances at the thermometer. “It might be an immune disorder.”
“Maybe I’m allergic to the Pussycat Dolls.”
TJ grins. The Pussycat Dolls had provided the soundtrack to his shift before he gave up: the same five songs on a loop. He’s tempted to rescind Chen’s speaker privileges for poor taste in music.
He uses his mug to gesture at the thermometer. “What’s the verdict? Am I well enough to attend tonight’s performance of Aschenputtel?”
“You’re going to spend the night here,” TJ says. “I thought about letting you sleep it off in your quarters, but…”
“We need to keep an eye on my temperature; I understand.” He sighs. “Is there anything I can help with while I’m here?”
“You can drink that and get some rest.”
Young raises his eyebrows at her. TJ returns the gesture, arms folded. He huffs. “Do you have a book I can borrow?”
Of all the people visiting him in the infirmary, Rush is the most unexpected.
“What on earth is that?” Rush says, frowning at the wooden disks on his chessboard.
“Checkers,” says Young. “Varro doesn’t play chess.”
“You used my board for this? Where on earth did you get the pieces?”
“Scrap wood from two different planets. The purple ones are from that planet with the toxic frogs. I can’t exactly remember the red pieces.” He gives Rush a look. “Are you going to stand there all day? It’s not like I’m contagious.”
Rush glares. “I have better things to do than babysit.”
“Bullshit. If you were really busy, you wouldn’t be down here.”
Rush scoffs.
“I’m not as sick this time,” Young adds, sitting up to look him in the eye. “You don’t have to avoid me.”
It’s like watching a balloon deflate. Maybe a puffer fish. Rush sits on the gurney across from Young without another word. He looks exhausted - more so than usual.
“I do not appreciate being forced to endure Col. Telford in your absence.”
“Camille did it last time. It’s only fair.”
“Fuck fair. As if either one of you could do the same if out positions were reversed.”
“Wouldn’t stop us from trying.” If Rush were unavailable, he would probably just put Eli in his place. Young had honestly expected Rush to push the matter off onto Lt. Scott.
“Col. Telford believes I had something to do with this.”
“David’s a suspicious bastard.” Young declines to add “Just like you” to the end of that sentence. Rush and Telford would get along if they weren’t exactly alike. “What’s really bothering you?”
Not exactly alike; Telford wouldn’t have given him the scathing look Rush did. And he’d have answered the question.
Young sighs and takes his glasses off. “If you won’t answer me, will you at least play a game of chess? If I read this book again my eyes will drop out.”
They play three games and Young loses two of them. Young starts to set up the board again, half his attention on the way Rush plays with his king.
“This is going to keep happening,” Rush says, his unfocused eyes on the board. “Over and over again until you die or reach whatever goal they set for you.”
“I figured as much,” Young says softly, hyperaware of the public nature of their conversation. He’s worried, but that worry feels far away, buried underneath bad news and exhaustion. It was not knowing that ate at him most often - not knowing what to expect or how human he’d be at the end of it.
He takes that frantic urge and pushes it down.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to be okay?”
Rush doesn’t answer. That’s as good as a “No”.
“-I think that now, more than ever, is the time to settle the division of power on this ship.”
“Mm.”
“If we act quickly and decisively, the crew will have plenty of time to adjust to the changes and we’ll finally have something approaching a reasonable balance between military and civilian governance.”
“Mmhm.”
“I’m also sleeping with your wife.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Camille sits on the edge of the gurney and Young blinks his eyes open.
“I’m going to present this to you in writing,” Camille says. “With citations.”
“I’m sorry,” Young rubs a hand over his eyes. “I’m just…”
“Tired.” Camille smiles. “If I held you to half the things you agree to when you’re half asleep, I’d be in control of the ship.”
“I’m sure you’d make a great dictator.”
“All shall love me and despair.” Camille’s grin fades. “I had a dream in Ancient a few nights ago. I don’t speak Ancient.”
“The ship?”
“I was in my house, on Earth, playing Marco Polo with Sharon. Only instead of Sharon, I’d get answers from ghosts or furniture. My legs had been cut off, and I had to find her so she could put me back together. I vividly remember chewing a telephone wire and breaking my teeth on it.”
Young flinches.
“I don’t think it was communicating on purpose. It was broadcasting on all frequencies but only listening to one. It-” Camille pauses with her hands in the air, halfway though some sort of gesture. She lets her hands fall to her sides. “My walls were covered in numbers and words. Every time I talked a new portion of the wall lit up, and when Sharon didn’t answer it went dark again. I’m sorry; I’m not explaining this very well.”
“Last night I dreamed that I was roasting myself so survive. Compared to sucking the marrow out of my own femur your dream is…better. To hear about.”
For a moment, they were both silent. Young winced at another brief screech from the ship’s sound system.
“Colonel Telford is not happy that you’ve been unavailable.”
“So I’ve heard. Does he know that he’s free to come here and speak to me in person?”
“He knows that you are in the infirmary, and that you have a fever. He came to me because he assumed Dr. Rush was being…less than honest.”
“And you’re surprised by that?”
“I’m not. That’s also why I feel we need to do this. The structure that Earth expects is not the one we’re using; we need to have it written down, officially, who is in charge of this ship. Obviously I prefer something similar to the methods we’re already using - the three of us sharing power equally with each other. We need something permanent; I don’t want Col Telford accosting random crew members for information because he doesn’t like what he’s hearing.”
“If you’d like to have a senior staff meeting down here…”
Camille purses her lips. “While you’re incapacitated Lieutenant Scott has assumed military command. I won’t antagonize TJ when there’s an easy solution.”
“And the solution is?”
“Scott and I keep you up-to-date and we have informal talks about the situation. When you’ve returned to duty we’ll handle the specifics.”
Prying information out of Scott is like trying to pry open a pit-bull’s jaw. He’s only really open mouthed when he needs help; otherwise he’s worried about irritating TJ or “aggravating his condition”, and he’d appreciate it if it weren’t damned annoying.
It’s easier to tune in to the ship’s healthy gossip train. There’s something about being stuck in the infirmary that makes everyone want to talk.
“Our attempts to raise the temperature haven’t worked,” Chloe says, huddled inside Scott’s jacket. “If anything it’s getting colder. The ship’s using the energy for something else - we think maybe the dreams? That is, it’s appropriating the power it normally uses to keep the temperature level to strengthen its communication system. It’s projecting more to…everyone, really, and sending out more messages to other ships.”
“Do you know how much colder it’s going to get?”
Chloe shakes her head. “We know it’s not going to get dangerously cold, but…I’m going to have to work something out; I need to give Matt his jacket back.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Running, I think.” Chloe curls in on herself. “It’d be easier if we could drop out more. It gets hard when it’s just this. Just the ship.”
Young looks around the infirmary. Bouncing back and forth between Rush’s quarters and here is getting exhausting.
“I know just how you feel.”
“Could you make it to your quarters without passing out?” TJ asks, his boots in one hand.
He slouches, incredibly tired. “No.”
“I thought not.”
TJ puts his boots on the floor.
He is abruptly thrust from a dream of fire into a deep pool of affection and there was something wrong he needs to- he needs -
Emily’s face on their wedding day, young and happy and everything that they weren’t in the end and he needs
A curl of hair dangling over TJ’s ear. He tugs it and she smiles at him, light from the window making her hair shine, and for this one moment everything was wonderful and they weren’t doing anything wrong, and she was beautiful, always beautiful and too good for…he…he needs…
Rush, the first time they’d sought comfort in each other and a hundred other times after, and he needs to wake up, and they laid there, Rush warm and right and real against his back, and he thinks he could be happy with this, with the cool quiet night and the shelter of the trees, and Rush’s steady breath against the back of his neck. Just this.
It’s the sense of falling that rouses him in the end. He jerks awake to the sick drop from FTL and Inman walking out of TJ’s office with a blanket of animal hide draped over her shoulders.
He can hear her worried question under a loud electrical whine, and underneath the racket Young hears “We found a seedship!” coming from the shipwide communication system. He isn’t sure the broadcast was intentional. Maybe it was; Destiny’s intention to make it known throughout the ship that it’d found something like itself.
His head is swimming.
“-oung. Colonel Young -”
That was his radio.
“This is Young. What’s happening?”
If it sounded a bit slurred, being startled out of his sleep was as good an excuse as any. Inman sits across from him, trying to finger comb her hair into some sort of order.
The explanation coming from the bridge is garbled and echoes terribly, but Young is able to parse the gist. They’d dropped out with the seedship practically on top of them, and none of the controls were responding to them. Destiny had initiated the docking procedure on its own.
“This is Lt. Scott; I’m on my way to the bridge. Don’t touch anything until I get there.”
“Volker to Dr. Rush. You’re needed on the bridge.”
“This is Eli; could you please turn shipwide off?”
“This is a good thing, isn’t it?” Inman yawns. “I mean, we were supposed to meet up with a seedship; that’s why we hadn’t dropped out in a while. So it’s nice that we finally did.”
“I think we all expected a bit more warning.”
Inman nods and shivers, pulling her blanket tighter across her shoulders. “To be honest sir, I could use the fresh air.”
The ship shudders. Someone finally manages to cut the sound system off; probably Rush. Young had managed to hear his voice under the white noise.
They wait a moment, but everything has settled down. Inman looks at him. “Should I -?”
“They’ll send someone,” Young says, laying down and trying to massage away his headache. “I assume we’ve finished docking and Destiny is having a nice long conversation with the seedship.”
He closes his eyes; even the dim light was aggravating his headache. He meant to rest just a moment, waiting for the infirmary doors to open or his name to come up on the radio. Instead, he falls asleep.
He’s standing in the gate room, in front of an open wormhole. In front of him is a vaguely humanoid shape - something trying and failing to mimic a human appearance.
Young can see the places where the features were meant to be, but they were blurred, more the suggestion of features than anything specific.
He stares at it for an unknown length of time. Finally, the suggestion of a mouth begins to move.
“Communication with” - here, the shape says a word that his mind slides over - “has been established: you are parasites. Communication with Atlantis has been established: you are symbiots.”
“And what do you think we are?” he couldn’t help asking.
The shape flickers and stretches. When it settles, it’s in the shape of a repair robot.
“Inefficient,” it says.
Inefficient repair robot is a step up from parasite, Young supposes. “Who are you?”
There is a garbled noise and the press of something else against his mind - feelings and sounds that don’t belong to him. The foreign sensation abruptly retreats and the projection morphs briefly into the shape of a seedship, and then again into the humanoid form it had first presented him.
“Traveler,” it says. “Instructions.”
Before Young can ask what that meant he again feels the press of something foreign and incomprehensible against his own mind, his thoughts twisting into meaningless numbers and shapes and sounds, and somehow he can see them in front of his eyes, a mess of shape and color and an impossible heat dancing in front of his eyes. He flinches away.
The flood of information abruptly ceases. “Incorrect program,” the thing says, the seedship says.
And Young is alone, in the gateroom, with an inactive gate. It is impossibly cold.
“The ship is melting,” Camille says. She’s sitting on the staircase, watching him.
“I see.” And he could see. The ceiling is dripping on his head. “How can it be melting when it’s so cold?”
Camille points to the gate. Where the gate had been was a pillar of fire, white cold. Rush is standing in front of it, emaciated and frostbitten, his hands outstretched.
“This is a dream,” Rush says, turning to face Young. His hands are full of white fire, and they’re being devoured. Where his eyes should be are two empty holes. “This is a dream.”
“Can you fix it?” Young asks. He absentmindedly wipes the blood from his chin.
“This is a dream,” Rush says, and reaches out with his burning hands.
Young jerks and falls through the floor, falls, and he is on the floor in the infirmary with Inman crouching in front of him. His head is killing him.
“Colonel Young,” Inman says. How many times has she called his name?
“I’m okay,” he manages to grit out. He feels anything but.
The kino feed shows hundreds of repair robots swarming over every available surface. One taps lightly on one of the kinos before pushing it to the side.
The bulk of the visible robots are centered on the docking port, where the seedship’s airlock met one of Destiny’s own. As they watch, the repair robots work steadily until the hatch is open, and then begin to work inside Destiny, repairing that end of the hatch and the floor and ceiling and door controls.
“They’re doing this at ten other locations,” Scott says. “So far they haven’t come any further into Destiny than that. I think they’re waiting for something.”
Young watches the diligent work of the robots, carefully bringing those portions of Destiny into acceptable condition.
“Inefficient,” Young whispers, catching at the edge of a half forgotten dream.
“Sir?”
“They’re waiting for us to open the doors.”
There are two planets in range. One is locked out, but the other looks promising.
TJ lets him out of the infirmary. He’s on medical leave; TJ insisted on that, and he hadn’t felt like arguing with her.
He sleeps in Rush’s quarters, off and on.
He is tired.
“You’ll be fine,” Rush says, looking anything but fine himself. Young wonders when he slept last, if he sleeps at all in those spaces of time where Young is asleep and Rush is still there, working in bed with Young’s reading glasses on.
“The ship is still projecting,” Rush continues. “I believe that half the exhaustion you feel - we feel - is coming from Destiny. When the repairs have progressed, it will focus its attention elsewhere.”
“That doesn’t help much now,” Young can’t help but point out.
“I never said it would help.”
He sighs, fighting his eyes open. “You should get some rest.”
“You do that.”
Pain in the ass.
“Sleep, Rush. Close your eyes, stop thinking for five minutes, give your brain a chance to recharge? Does any of this make sense to you?”
Rush’s lips twitch. He’s enjoying this. Bastard.
“Unlike some people I could name, I actually have work to do.”
“Work that you can do perfectly well once you’ve passed out from exhaustion. I’m going to hit the lights, and unless you can see in the dark you’re going to put down whatever that is and go to sleep.”
“You can’t even keep your eyes open. Do you really think-?”
Young follows the line of Rush’s arm until he reaches his hand. His firm massage quickly devolves into a simple repetitive hand motion, but Rush is focused on him now.
Rush sighs. “You’re a menace.”
He pulls away long enough to cut off the lights, and how the hell…?
“You honestly thought you had to cross the room?” Rush is definitely laughing at him, but Young doesn’t care.
He tries to come up with something more seductive than “If I jerk you off will you finally fucking sleep?” but who does he need to impress? He pulls the hand he has up between them and uses it to drag Rush closer.
“You’re incorrigible,” Rush says, too fucking far away from his mouth. “You just got out of the infirmary.”
Hasn’t stopped them before. “Do you ever shut up?”
Young kisses him before he can answer. He’s exhausted and there are ten pound weights attached to his eyelids, but Rush is warm and real and insulting him as he makes his way down the side of Young’s neck, and he is definitely awake enough for this. Awake enough to take Rush in hand and hear him hiss, to wince when their teeth clack together and laugh when Rush complains about his arm falling asleep.
This is real - Rush, his hands, his eyes, his need to do something with that insane beard before Young takes the fucking flamethrower to his face. The room is cold but Rush is a fucking furnace, and this - this is real. The cramp in his leg, the calluses on their fingers, rough knees and an inhumanly hot mouth…this is real. This is good.
And this is going to work, crazy dream-giving ships be damned.
This entry was crossposted to My DW Account. Please feel free to read or comment on either site.