FIC: (Bandom) Bring me that horizon - William/Pete
TITLE: Bring me that horizon
AUTHOR: Dee
PAIRING: William/Pete
RATING: Adult (language, themes)
SUMMARY: As a resource for introduction to new planets, William has seen more than his fair share of golden visions for bright new worlds. He hasn't seen anything like Pete Wentz.
NOTES: For the " Alternate Line-Ups" challenge/ficathon, prompt #67: Interpreter AU. This wanted to be a novel; I refused; I hope meaning hasn't been sacrificed too badly to brevity!
DISCLAIMER: I do not know the personages depicted in this story, and I neither claim nor wish to imply that the events, actions and emotions herein are in any way real or actual. This is FICTION.
=====
William's waiting for his latest crew of intergalactic property moguls, propped up against the brushed-steel bulkhead and trying not to yawn. Trying and failing, because the cannister in his hand might be the largest size of coffee the mess hall in his section produces, but it's entirely possible there isn't enough caffeine on this entire damn substation to make up for the sleep he wasn't having last night. Fuck last-minute assignments and shotgunning five modules of syntax, bio-communication, agenda'd history, cultural conceptions and socio-linguistic miscellania; the processing requirements of that sort of shit played merry hell with actual REM sleep space.
He pauses mid slug of coffee to yawn fit to crack his jaw and make his eyes water. When he blinks them clear, there are people heading down the corridor towards him. Not that William bothers with anything premature like standing up straight or looking attentive - there are only four of them, and they way they're arrayed makes it clear three of them are the associates, attendants or other-named hangers-on to the guy in the lead.
That guy in the lead is... attention-grabbing. Not big - William'd go so far as to say short, but he has often been accused of being both a tall fucker and a tactless one - but still somehow large. And, now that William's paying attention, not bad looking at all. Not conventionally handsome, too darkly coloured, too large-featured, but everything about him screams sharp edges and unflinching life. There's an energy in the way he moves, something in the cant of his grin that makes William wonder, just like that, what it tastes like.
It's when that grin broadens that William realises he's been staring. OK, don't shy away from it; he's been ogling. The guy's got an eyebrow lifted, his own gaze wandering, returning the favour, and William wills himself not to blush as he looks down at the sheaf of paperwork that goes along with this assignment. Really, seriously, fuck job-related sleep-deprivation. He tells himself it'll be fine; he'll be able to dodge any potentially embarrassing situations with the guy amongst the dozen other shareholders and their retinues. William's had groups of upwards of fifty before. It'll be fine.
He clears his throat and does his best to sound bored as he says, "Name?"
"Peter Wentz." It's not the guy who answers, but one of the others. William wonders for a moment if tiredness - or maybe all the new information sloshing around in his head - has made him misread the dynamic entirely, but then the short, hot guy chimes in with, "Pete."
William's eyes slide to him for just a moment - long enough for the grin to flash again - and then he looks down, taking refuge in the paperwork. He was hoping he'd have an excuse for paying a lot of attention to the paperwork, sifting through trying to find the right claim form, but no such luck; the name's right there on the top one. "Right," he says, and runs a finger across the barcode at the bottom of the form. "We'll just wait for the others."
When he looks up again, the four of them are exchanging querying glances. "Is there going to be more crew?" says one of them - the one with the sort of amazing hair that suggests either he never did his military service or it was a long time ago. "Only they said all we got was you."
"I'm the only Authority-provided resource assigned to this expedition," William confirms, the stock phrase slipping off his tongue without any real input from his brain. He tightens his grip on his coffee cannister. "But all ownership claimants and their staff must be present before we launch."
"Yep," another one says cheerfully.
William's too tired for this. He blinks at them until the one with glasses says, "We aren't bringing any more people than this."
William sighs. The Universal Settlement Authority stock phrases are supposed to be perfectly clear and unambiguous, but this isn't the first time they've proved precisely the fucking opposite. "Look," he says, "everyone with a claim has to have equal access and synchronous introduction, otherwise--"
It's the short, hot-- Pete. It's Pete who interrupts with, "Check your paperwork."
The eyebrow waggle he also gives when William looks at him is definitely not helping. William chugs down the last quarter of his coffee before wedging the cannister behind a pipe so he has both hands to attack the paperwork, flicking up the first record, all ready to say, We have to wait for--. But the name on the second claim form - the name at the end of a list of others, the name currently holding the claim share - is Peter Wentz. It's the same on the third one, and the fourth one, and when William grabs the whole wad of them and lets the records fan down again, it's a wave of them.
They're all his.
On the form that William's stopped on, that he's staring at blindly, he realises he recognises the second-last name on the list as well. Nothing he can do about it now, but he files that away for future chasing-up. There's something weird going on here, but right now, William has a job to do and a biotransmitter launch window ticking closed. So he shuffles the sheaf of forms back into neat order, clears his throat, and says, "I see. In that case, if you'll all step inside, we'll begin the transportation process."
"After you," Peter Wentz, the sole owner of the universe's newest colonised planet, says with a smirk. He lifts an eyebrow and adds, "Mr...?"
"Oh." William wishes he had his coffee cannister back. He needs both to be more awake and to have something to do with his hands. "Beckett. William Beckett. At your service."
It's a stock phrase too, but the widening of Pete's smile is nowhere in any training manual, and neither is the flip William's stomach does in answer.
He hates last-minute assignments. Honestly. He does.
In accordance with protocol, the core outpost has been set up near a major centre of local population - not so near as to be threatening, but not so distant as to be stand-offish. There's a whole subsection of the xenoethnographic division of the Authority devoted to calculating that distance. William thinks it might be a really fascinating job.
In any case, the outpost is a compact structure containing essential communication, defensive, medical and life support systems, and explaining all of this provides an excellent way of establishing his credentials and position (William's well aware of the fact he's not the most awe-inspiring of official personifications). Except about ninety seconds after they've beamed down, his smallest group ever has scattered to the winds - one of them communing with the computers like they're his long-lost relations, one taking a gleeful catalogue of the contents of the armoury and one of them's on the fucking roof, honestly, William hadn't even known that was possible. William stops halfway through pointing out where the sleeping quarters are, because he's only talking to Pete now, and that's a little embarrassing.
"Sorry," Pete says cheerfully. He has his hands in his pockets and is rocking on his feet. "We've sort of been looking forward to this for a while. Don't worry, we'll have heaps of questions for you later, and when we go to meet the locals, you will definitely come in handy."
William just smiles like he knows something they don't - which he does; five modules of sleep-inhibiting information, in fact - and goes to claim a room for a nap while they play. Like he said, claimant groups up around the fifty mark aren't uncommon, so on this assignment, bunkspace is hardly going to be at a premium. They can have a room each and still have a couple of spares. William knocks open the first door he comes to, slings his kitbag onto one bunk, rolls into another, and is asleep while the faint sound of one of them exclaiming over the control room fitout is still filtering down the hall.
He wakes up to the door knocking open and a voice crowing, "The natives are nocturnal; fuck yeah this is my planet!"
"Only at the festival," William mumbles into his pillow, as he flounders out of sleep.
"What?" the voice demands.
"What?" William echoes, and pushes himself up.
Only to practically headbutt Pete in the face. As he recoils, slumping back onto his side on the narrow bunk, Pete just grins. "There's something serious going on over in the forest and we wanna say hi. Let's go." When William just blinks at him, trying to sort out the languages swimming in his head, Pete adds, "Please?" He wheedles like a toddler, except that he actually bats his eyelashes and William isn't sure he actually is awake, come to think of it. But while he's still scrubbing a hand over his face, Pete's grabbing his wrist and tugging, saying, "Come on, fuck, did they give us the slowest translator in the galaxy?"
"Hey," William protests, even as he's dragged out into the balmy night air. Except it isn't really night, because the atmospheric conditions on this planet trap and refract the radiant light, so the sky isn't black, it's a deep, luminous violet streaked with pink and orange wisps. He knows all of that already, has all the science in his head, but his jaw still drops. "Holy shit."
Talk about language unbecoming the Authority's official representative, but Pete just sighs happily beside him. "I know. My planet is the best."
"Your planet's fucking wondrous," another voice agrees, and William glances over to see the one who's mad about the computers - Patrick, he remembers, from the introductions they did in the cramped time before transportation. Patrick says, "You can manhandle the translator later, let's go meet the locals."
William clears his throat and twists his wrist out of Pete's grasp.
They saunter down the grassy slope in the gloaming, towards the coloured lights among the tree canopy and the hollow wooden knocking drums. This is absolutely nothing like any planetary introduction William's ever run. Sure, there are sometimes knots of hippies amidst the corporate investors, the people who ask William earnest questions about the information on the natives he's got stored away in his microchips, but they're almost always outnumbered (and more importantly, out-voted) by the cautious, conservative majority. And even when they're not, they tend to spend days after planetfall making carefully researched and mincing overtures towards the natives in an attempt to arrange a power-neutral first encounter.
Never before has William casually crashed a native festival barely half a day after arriving on a planet.
As they near the forest, William can make out the shaking of the canopy as shadows go flitting from branch to branch below. When the wind gusts up towards them, it carries a chittering sound, like a giggling woodpecker, that the back of William's brain tells him is laughter of the happy and carefree variety. (It matters; some races in the galaxy laugh in the face of battle, but it's a different kind altogether.)
"Do you have an opening statement prepared?" William asks, as they step into the trees.
Pete steps over a gnarled root beside him and shrugs. "Hail. Well met. Just popping down to say hi. If the party gets too rowdy we're calling the cops. Something like tha-"
William doesn't have to do more in response than smother a snort of laughter (even as the modules are coughing up translations) because a ball of shadow drops like a stone from the treetops just in front of them, and Pete screams like a girl.
"Classy, Wentz." The guy with the glasses (Andy, he should probably make an effort to remember this, there are only four of them after all) says. "Great first impression."
And it is a first impression, because the ball of shadow has unfurled itself to reveal a brown-furred body, a possum-like creature the size of a child, with its white-faced head almost as high as William's hip, twitching whiskers below large orange-pupilled eyes. A tail like a two-foot feather duster waves behind it; the paw it scratches behind one tufted ear with is closer to a hand, with an unclawed, opposable thumb.
That's its opening word, in fact; the rest comes in a melange of movement and chittering squeaks. William has no idea how the exploratory party managed to hammer out any method of communication for the tailless and ear-tuftless, but he guesses he's about to find out first-hand if word's got round about it.
He goes down on one knee - can't figure out if that's out of the modules or just a polite instinct - which brings them a little closer to the same height. William steadfastly refuses to look at his associates as he uses his fingers to move his own ears as he says in return (or tries to, at least), You startled them, but they are eager to make your acquaintance and introduce themselves as your new neighbours.
The possum responds with a flurry of noise and motion that William can barely follow at all, and half of it is directed at the other guys, but between his stumbling translation, and the play-acting that the possum resorts to - with every evidence of great amusement - when Pete and Andy start guessing wildly, they're invited to come along to the start of the festival and say hello to everyone.
Pete doesn't need to be asked twice, but Patrick refuses to climb the tree (even after the possum scampers up and down a trunk several times as if demonstrating that it's simplicity itself) and William's on his side. William negotiates an alternative meeting in a nearby clearing, and their welcome party hollers up into the canopy before bounding off through the forest.
"Hey," Pete says, falling in beside William as they hurry after. "What's his name?"
"It," William corrects. "They aren't gendered. And it's less of a name and more of a codification or description. Its name would include elements of personal description, and birthplace, and family, and common habits."
"Really?" Pete actually does look interested. "So I could be, like, little annoyance with all the teeth, and you could be eight miles of leg and eye rolling. There you go again."
William catches himself at it too, and it's easy to laugh. Pete does have a lot of teeth, but it's not in any way a bad thing when he's grinning like that.
The first meeting between the human colonists and the native inhabitants of this planet goes extremely well. By the time they stagger back up the hill to the outpost, dawn's starting to leach the colour from the sky, and William's dog tired again. He's worked his ass off tonight, trying to be in the middle of four conversations at once and failing pretty dramatically. No one seemed to mind, though; in his absence, they were making do with the play-acting and mime that Whiteface (Pete's new shorthand name for the first possum-creature they met) was both major advocate and star performer of. A steady parade of natives swung down from the trees above throughout the night, to play meet and greet and then go gambolling back up, their bushy tails swinging about for balance and emphasis.
So William's exhausted, but there's one moment that keeps playing in his head; tugged down by Pete's hand to sit on a rock beside him, where he's in mime-conference with a possum whose clawed hands are gnarled, its burgundy-dark eyes webbed with pale blue mist, its fur dusted a black that William's enhanced knowledge tells him means age. "Can you tell him--it," Pete says, dead serious for the first time since William met him, "that we don't want to take anything from their planet." He turned back to the old possum, his hand still warm on William's forearm as he said sincerely, even though the old one couldn't understand a word, "No mining, no harvesting, no exploitation of any kind. If you want to trade off-world, we'll help, but we're not here to make money, just to have a space to live."
William translated it to the absolute best of his ability. The old one said nothing, but tilted its ears and twitched a claw and William read in the movement the same doubt that he felt.
No, it wasn't doubt (he thinks now as they trudge back up the hill). It's just that it can't be true. One share in a planet costs a fortune. Pete Wentz has acquired all sixteen shares for this one. The expenditure, whether in actual cash or favours or effort, must have been enormous. And owning a planet isn't cheap either, with all the tolls and taxes and levies the USA demands. That's why people exploit planets in the first place; it's not mindless greed, it's just the system.
William watches Pete climbing in front of him, still energetic after the whole night, chattering away happily with Patrick. He doesn't doubt Pete's sincerity, but William's seen sincerity before. All those hippies, in minorities or majorities, all of their wonderful, hazy, delicious plans. Sincerity couldn't hold them up. Sincerity isn't enough.
William knows that. Just because he doesn't want to see Pete learn it too doesn't mean this is going to be the one exception in a hundred thousand.
It makes him feel even more tired than he already is.
Pete drags him out of bed again - literally; William wakes up when hands close around his ankles, but he really wakes up when he starts sliding off the bunk. He winds up in a tangle of blankets half on the floor, and doesn't imagine that having to blow hair out of the way makes his black look up at Pete any more fierce. Pete's grin remains undimmed, in any case.
"Exploring!" he demands.
"Breakfast," William counters.
They compromise on breakfast while exploring, since it's not like basic rations in an outpost are really complicated; William barely needs both hands to break open the wrapping on the protein bar. Which is good, because now Pete's dragging him up a frigging mountain, and he needs at least one hand for balance.
They can see the outpost from up here, Joe looking like a toy still crawling around on the roof. William wonders what he's doing up there, what Patrick's still doing in the control room, what Andy's been doing with the weapons since none of them seem that interested in declaring war on anyone, and the possums (William imagines) are all too hungover this afternoon to move, much less mount an attack. Even if they seemed inclined to.
A moment after that, which is the moment before Pete slides back down beside him, William wonders if he's been got out of the way so they can do whatever they're doing uninterrupted. And unobserved by the nominal Authority presence.
Pete bumping against his side, clutching at his shoulder, doesn't actually make him wonder that any less, though it's also not something William finds himself interested in objecting to. Pete's hair smells faintly of smoke from the fires at the festival last night, and there's also a touch of the dried fruit-type-thing that had been passed around - William had cleared it as safe for human consumption from his mental supermarket. They'd been far more appetising than the mass-produced faux-meal he's just finished, but it isn't hunger twisting his stomach right now.
He doesn't normally have problems like this on assignments. Then again, he's never had a colonist quite like Pete Wentz.
"You have to see this," Pete says, shakes hair out of his face, grabs William's wrist and tugs. "I fucking love this planet."
This is a waterfall, tumbling down a crevasse lined with orange-fronded ferns - in the sunlight, they look like they're on fire. At the bottom of the crevasse, the water looks almost purple, the spray misting violet all around them.
"You probably see shit like this all the time," Pete says after a long, quiet moment. "Right? How many planets have you been on?"
"Fourteen," William says, and then, "fifteen, counting this one." He hesitates a moment, then goes ahead and admits it. "It never gets old."
He's rewarded with the blinding grin he was hoping for, and then Pete's moving them both forward, saying, "We are going down, we are so going down, I bet it's incredible down there."
"I bet it's impossible to get back up," William predicts, but he doesn't actually resist.
Which is why, when they both turn out to be right, he can't really throw recriminations around.
It is incredible down there - the water-slick cliff faces are iridescent, the ferns blooming with red and yellow flowers like fireworks, the deep pool at the bottom full of the green-and-gold flicker of fish. It's paradise with sheer, slippery walls that they slide the last three metres down. There's no way they're getting back out again.
"The guys'll come find us," Pete declares, without a shred of concern. He's sprawled out on a relatively high stretch of rock, though there's no finding a dry place - both of them would be pretty much soaked to the skin just from the spray even if they hadn't both ended up falling into the water. In Pete's case, multiple times. William remains unconvinced they were all accidents. He's not ogling, but when he catches Pete's eye, Pete's leering back exaggeratedly, one hand propping his head up as he says, "Hey baby, come here often?" He's grinning in the next moment, adding, "We could make out until they get here. Traditional, right?"
It's ridiculous, and William's laughing, but he's also picking a rock to sit on that's a little closer to Pete's than he might have otherwise. He pushes wet hair out of his face, grimacing, and notes, "You can make your own traditions now."
"Fuck yeah," Pete sighs with lazy satisfaction, and lies back flat again. "I am god."
He pretty much is. By the time things get to the colonisation stage... well, put it this way; there are a lot of strict statutes about the preservation and benefit of native races, and yet somehow there have only ever been a few, extreme court cases out of them. William dangles his fingers in the water, lets the green fish nibble at his cuticles, and sounds utterly casual as he says, "Did you mean what you said last night?"
"Every word, baby," Pete responds, whipcrack fast, and then rolls over onto his side. "Wait, did I get drunk without noticing, because I swear I'd remember every second if we--"
William laughs, can't help it, doesn't really care to try. "When you were talking to the native elder. When you said you weren't taking anything off this planet." Pete's nodding like he doesn't even understand why William's asking, but... "You can't be serious. You can't get nothing out of a planet. How can you possibly pay for it?"
He didn't mean to ask all that, but Pete's not looking offended or stand-offish, he's just shrugging one shoulder, saying, "Maybe I'm amazingly independently wealthy."
Maybe he is. "And the rest of the planet shares?" William says, and smiles. "Not to mention ongoing administrative and logistic costs. Fourteen other planets, remember? I know the sort of money this takes."
"So do I," Pete replies, and he's not smiling back. He looks serious, and calmly intense. "I've been planning for this a long time. There's no way I'm failing now."
And William believes him, which is not something he wants to be happening. Wild crushes he can handle, but he doesn't know that he has enough in him to be sucked into yet another golden vision of planetary utopia that's inevitably going to be brutally crushed by reality. He does his best to avoid the dreamers, these days, but he can't lose Pete amongst the other shareholders, so he does the next best thing. He leans forward and kisses him.
Pete startles, a tiny noise and their noses bumping, and then he's not just meeting the kiss but pushing into it, half sitting up so he can get a hand around the back of William's neck, holding him steady like William was showing any inclination to go anywhere. William isn't, for the record; he's staying right here, lifting a hand to Pete's side for balance, and then to tug him closer by the damp fabric of his shirt, because Pete's kissing like he does everything else, bossy and just a little bit out of control. They're open-mouthed and messy before William really registers it's happening and it's good, even if his clothes wet and heavy against the buzz starting to limn his skin is far from the most pleasant sensation ever.
He's starting to think wild thoughts about doing something about that, thoughts about Pete's hands on his clammy skin, when a voice calls faintly from the distant sky, "Pete?"
"Fuck," Pete snarls against William's mouth, teeth grazing William's bottom lip before he's pulling back to tip his head up to the light and yell, "Fuck off, Stumph! Five more minutes!"
William starts laughing, knocking his forehead against Pete's shoulder, as from far aloft come more voices, the sound of footsteps, the patter of dislodged stones tumbling down to splash into the pool beside them.
The voice - Patrick, William assumes - calls down again, closer and clearer this time. "You can stay as long as you like, Wentz, but we need Beckett. The natives have come visiting."
After Patrick and Joe rig up rope and the portable winch to get them out, and insults fly and Pete gives a retaliatory full-body hug of chilly dampness to both of the others, after all of that, they get back to the outpost to find Andy cheerfully if mutely entertaining a small party of the possum-creatures, including Whiteface, and the elder Pete spoke to, and a few others William thinks he recognises. Whiteface seems to be the leader of the group again, so William's involved for a brief period in explaining to it why he and Pete are so bedraggled, and the ensuing conversation about pretty local sights takes so much of his concentration (it's hard, communicating this way, and maybe it would be even if William had all the necessary physical attributes, he's honestly not sure how the possums manage it) that he doesn't really notice what the others are doing until Joe elbows him.
He's holding a rounded wooden cup full of something dark and steaming; past him, William can see the Elder and a couple of the other possums filling cups that the others are holding. "This safe to drink?" Joe asks quietly.
He holds it out so William can inhale, waiting for the answer to rise from the back of his brain. The stuff smells not entirely unlike tea, but earthier, with overtones of something sort of like gin, and the steam feels a little greasy on his skin.
And that's it. His memory banks are silent.
William blinks, says, "Wait," and turns to Whiteface, who has that quizzical tilt to its head again. William manages, pointing at Joe's cup, to ask what it is. He gets an answer that means nothing - it's just a name, like if one of these creatures had come to Earth (back when that was still possible) and been told that liquid in the glass was whiskey.
"Well?" Pete asks, from a little way away. He's holding a cup of the stuff as well, steam curliqueing up from the surface.
William shakes his head. "I don't know what it is."
"How's that possible?" Patrick asks, frowning behind his glasses.
Honestly, William doesn't know. He's encountered things on other planets that weren't in the databases, but they'd been obscure, once-in-a-blue-moon occurrences, things the research teams couldn't have been expected to canvass. This... the possums are handing it out like it is tea, like they drink it all the time, settling down with their own cups like this is the most obvious and common of social rituals. How was this missed? "I don't know," William admits, "but since we don't know whether it's compatible with human digestion, I strongly recommend not drinking it."
Whiteface chitters at him, over its own cup of not-tea. All four of the others look expectantly at William, who reluctantly translates, "It's asking what the matter is."
Andy looks at Joe, who looks at Patrick, who says, "It's like they're offering us tea," like he's reading William's mind. He looks uncertain. "Will it be rude to refuse?"
All three of them look at Pete, who shrugs, says, "Fuck it," and lifts his cup with a big grin before taking a hefty swallow.
Tufted ears wave happily around the circle; the possums repeat his toasting gesture and drink from their own cups. The others join in, but in the cheerful turmoil that follows, William carefully tips his own cup out into the grass just behind him. He can't blame them; everything's unknown here, so what's one more thing? But the absence of knowledge when he's so sure of everything else stops William's throat up the moment he lifts his cup for a sip.
Besides, he tells himself, when all four of them come down with acute intergalactic food-poisoning, someone's going to have to look after them.
It never eventuates, which is sort of anti-climactic. Instead, after the possums leave a big carafe of the tea behind and toddle back off down to the forest (presumably for festival-day-two), the colonists have dinner and head off to get the sleep they missed out on the night before.
William waits until the outpost is quiet before slipping out of his bunk and into the control room. He frowns at the changes that have been wrought - he hadn't even known you could get the casings off the equipment like that - but everything still seems to work. At the very least, he manages to log into the Authority servers, conduct the requisite searches, chase the person he's looking for through three different databases, and finally track down an up-to-date contact matrix.
When he plugs it into the comm, it rings for so long he starts to doubt the up-to-date part, but eventually the screen fuzzes into a pixellated blur that resolves into light and shade and a familiar, bleary face saying, "Yo." And then, before William has a chance to say anything, a frown edges nearer the screen and Gabe Saporta says, "Holy shit, William Beckett. How fucking long has it been? Looking good, kid."
Gabe hasn't, honestly, changed one single bit, which is some strange combination of depressing and reassuring. "Yeah yeah," William replies, fiddling with the fine-tuning. "How many hedges have you been dragged through recently?"
"Every one a beautiful experience," Gabe says, with a easy sincerity. He leans back away from the screen, grinning lazily. "You did not call me up after all this time to shoot shit."
It's been years, and William barely knows Pete, but suddenly he has absolutely no doubt that these two together would be a terrible force. He barely even has to ask, but since he's gone to all this trouble, he might as well. "Not precisely," he admits. "Come into any planet shares recently?"
Gabe just laughs. "If you're asking, you don't have to ask. You're the assigned translator? Small fucking universe, man. Say hi to Pete for me."
Things were starting to line up. Gabe might look like a hobo, but he had flush periods, amazing resources all the time. Pete may not have had to pay full price for every share he'd garnered. "Did you give the shares to him?" William demands.
"Billvy," Gabe declares expansively, "that would be extremely illegal."
"Sell them to him for fifty credits and a stick of gum?" William counters.
"Is an Authority agent accusing me of intentionally underselling galactic assets?" His smirk widens, practically feline now. "Let's just say little Petey's a complete card shark when he wants to be."
It doesn't even seem that crazy, not for them, even if planetary shares in the kitty does redefine high-stakes poker. "And I assume the other parties at this game were Travis McCoy and Mikey Way?" The other names second-last from the bottom on the other share forms. It's fucking genius, and just skirting around all the laws governing share ownership. William's impressed; honest-to-god impressed. "How long were you guys putting this together?" he demands. "What's the plan?"
Gabe just grins, cups his hand around his ear. "Sorry, what? You're breaking up, your planet must be going into a tunnel." He laughs, even as William rolls his eyes, and he adds, "Bat your pretty eyes at Pete, he'll tell you anything," before the screen goes black.
William indulges in glaring at the screen for a moment, then goes hunting for the call log to wipe it from the system. When he can't find it - absolutely no trace of it in any of the four places all communications are automatically inscribed for Authority records, not even in the one that's supposed to be accessible by USA employees only - he sits for a moment longer, staring thoughtfully at the disrupted panels, the exposed wires, the ample signs of significant meddling.
And then he goes back to bed.
Joe and Patrick have more of the possum-tea with breakfast, but deny all accusations that it's addictive, and the fact that neither Andy or Pete are having more seems to agree with them, so William just shuts up about it. There don't seem to be any side-effects, in fact, adverse or otherwise, not even when the possums come back that evening with more of the tea and an invitation to join in the festivities the following evening.
It's amazingly draining; William isn't honestly sure how the possums manage to communicate so freely amongst themselves, even with the ear-and-tail twitches, when his mental vocabulary doesn't seem to be broad enough to cover everything he wants to say (or, more accurately, everything the colonists want to say, and never mind the stupidly fond way William's thinking about how things can't be expected to encompass Pete Wentz). He's exhausted by it halfway through the evening, when he turns away from a trio of bright-eyed young possums to almost run into Pete himself; there's a hand grabbing his own and they're half out of the clearing before William even registers it. "Wait," he says weakly, "I can't leave them--"
"They're getting on fine," Pete declares, and looking back, William can see it's actually true. Patrick seems to be in honest-to-god conversation with Whiteface, even if half of it is being conducted in mime, multiple times, and Joe's playing a boistrous game, and Andy seems to be teaching some of the possums how to turn their upside-down tea cups into percussion instruments.
He lets Pete drag him into the forest. It's hardly dark or gloomy, with the branches alive with lights and the scamperings of the possums, but there's a smaller clearing a little way away, where things are quieter. When they get to the edge of it, William's already reaching for Pete, unsurprised when his back hits a treetrunk and Pete's mouth hits his. He tastes of something dark and earthy and heady, which William assumes is the strange tea. He means to rein things in quickly, he really does, but one thing leads to another, and Pete's hands are everything he thought they would be, and one of them's hooking fingers under William's waistband by the time he finally manages to scrape enough of his brain together to say, "Wait," and catch Pete's wrists.
"God, why?" Pete demands, low and rough against William's neck, and William honestly can't remember for a moment. "I've been watching you all night, your fucking intense concentration; I want that on me--"
And really, none of that is helping, but William manages to say, "Right, Pete, I'm here to do a job."
"What, are you angling for a raise?" Pete practically growls it, his wrists twisting in William's grip, right up against him, and it's practically impossible to focus on anything but the fact that they're both hard.
William deserves a fucking medal for saying, "You only have eleven standard hours left on my contract."
Pete stills. After a moment he tilts back, shaking hair out of his face to look steadily up at William. "How long is that down here?"
"About a day," William hazards. "Less now. I did the calculations before we left the outpost."
Pete takes a step back, and William lets him go. There's a frown on his face now; he's fallen that quickly into business mode. "I thought resources stayed longer than that."
"Sometimes we do," William admits. "Often we do. But not all planets even need a translator to begin with. The Authority has a short basic contract that can then be extended as required upon request."
Pete's grin is sudden, and dark, and makes William's stomach flip over. "Oh, I think I need to keep you for a while."
But William stops him leaning back in with a hand on his chest. He takes a breath, and tells Pete's confused expression, "If you establish contact to make the request, the Authority will become aware of the modifications you've made to the equipment in the control room."
They stand there for a moment, eyes locked in a quiet corner of the forest tonight.
"Do you trust me?" Pete asks, and William can feel the vibration of the words through the palm he still has laid over Pete's heart.
He pulls his hand back. "I barely know you."
"Exactly." Pete takes a half-step closer now, and William lets him. "I can't tell you what we're doing here. It's more than just me, there's too much at stake. But I've meant absolutely everything I've said."
"I know." William does. Of all the things that are making this the craziest assignment he's ever had, that doesn't even make it onto the map as an issue.
He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, Pete's right up against him, purring, "Eleven standard hours. We should make the most of it."
This time, when his hands find William's waistband, William just arches into it, and shuts the hell up.
Later, when William's trying to comb all the bits of leaf out of his hair (and, by the sounds of the forest, Andy has been wildly successful with his drumming school) Pete says from behind him, utterly casually, "You could always stay, you know."
William's hands stop working for a moment, then he carries on, not turning around by great application of will. "That would be even worse. I'm an Authority resource, in possession of a great deal of their knowledge. They'd definitely come looking for me."
After a moment, Pete says, wildly ridiculous, "I certainly wouldn't want to let you go," and William can roll his eyes and drag him back to the dwindling festival.
Three of them at breakfast, Andy still asleep and Joe already back up on the roof, tinkering further with something William steadfastly does not want to know any more about. Pete and Patrick are having more of the tea and William lets them pour him a cup as well. What the hell. He's leaving today anyway.
"Are we going to manage without him?" Pete asks Patrick, the sort of business-like that seems both natural and baffling to William.
Patrick considers it thoroughly, holding his teacup low enough that the steam doesn't fog his glasses. "It'll be tricky for a bit. But I think we're starting to get on really well with the locals, Whiteface and Pippin especially."
"Pippin?" William echoes.
"The reddish one with the kink in its tail. Bounces a lot," Pete provides easily, rubbing at one eye. He pauses, then adds, "I have no idea how I know, but you're totally right, it's definitely a Pippin."
Patrick nods sagely, or maybe just still half-asleep. "Absolutely. And it's totally capable of--"
He breaks off, looking up towards the ceiling, and Pete says, "I am not going, you fucking go, he's probably just tied himself to the antenna again."
"What?" William asks, baffled.
"Joe needs help on the roof," Pete says easily.
"Can't you hear him?" Patrick asks, pushing his chair back in resigned fashion.
William looks up. He hasn't heard so much as a muffled thump from up there.
"Is someone going?" Andy shouts from down the corridor.
"I'm fucking on my way, you lazy bastards," Patrick yells back, and heads out.
William's still staring at the ceiling when Pete says, "Hey," really quietly. When he looks down, Pete's leaning forward across the table, eyes serious. William wonders if he's about to be asked to lie, if Pete knows that there'll be a debrief, like there always is of resources, the Authority keeping tabs on all their planetholders. He doesn't know what they're going to ask. He has even less idea what he's going to say.
Instead, Pete says, "I want you to have this," and pulls something out of his pocket, a flash of silver on a black synth-leather string. When he holds it up, the pendant dangles loose, a strange symbol that William thinks maybe he's seen somewhere before, but can't remember precisely where.
"To remember you by?" he asks, the sardonic lift of his eyebrows helping make this easier all round.
Pete smirks. "Something like that."
When William transmits out, later that afternoon, it's with the string knotted around his neck, the pendant sitting cool against the hollow of his throat. All four of them see him off; only one of them yanks his head down for a fierce, thorough final kiss.
The uninstalling of the knowledge modules goes off without a hitch, but something in the physical examination has the meditech frowning at the screen for about ten minutes while William gets chilly sitting on the table in the flimsy gown. The tea, he realises, and thinks the guy's looking at his brain chemistry report. He wants to ask, thinking about cries for help he hasn't heard, but just kicks his heels instead.
Eventually, the meditech gives up on it, and says, "Fine, you can go."
William's on his way to the checkout room, eager for a pair of pants, when the guy adds, "Oh, wait, your key."
His what?
When William looks back at him, the meditech's holding out the silver pendant on its black string, still prodding at his terminal. He looks up idly, and adds, "The techs passed it on. Pretty fancy mechanism, is it just for your quarters?"
William comes forward to take the pendant off him, rubbing a thumb over the silver symbol. Actually, the key for his quarters is just the standard metal dogtag every substation resident had; after losing it on two consecutive assignments, William just leaves it behind now, hunting down his roommate upon his return to let him back in.
Pretty fancy mechanism. To remember him by. You can always stay, you know.
The meditech is looking at him quizzically. William closes his fist around the symbol. "Yeah," he says. "It's the little things, you know."
"Sure," the meditech responds, already looking back to his terminal.
When William steps out of the checkout room, fully clothed now, there's a clerk waiting to take him to the debrief session. It's a bigger panel than William's ever faced before, five people bowed over their paperwork, two of them with triple silver bands around the forearms of their Authority uniforms.
He's not the only one who's noticed the strangenesses in Pete's paperwork, then.
The standard post-assignment stuff has already been covered; the three-banded woman at the far left of the panel starts off, without even looking up from the paperwork, with, "Tell us what Peter Wentz is doing on planet three-eight-five-delta-kilo."
William's already made sure his collar's covering the pendant. He has no idea what Pete is doing down there. He has no idea how they managed to get together all the shares of one planet, how long it took to channel them all into the one place. Even less idea how they intend to continue to finance the planet tenancy, or how long they expect to be able to hold out the Authority. But he knows that they're going to try. He knows they've been modifying the equipment since almost the moment they landed.
He knows Pete's given him an electronic key shaped like a keepsake.
He also knows - as first one, then another of the debrief panel looks up from their notes - that he's going to be watched. Even if he quits. Especially if he quits.
He knows he hates it here, in the substation. He's always known that. It's a good reason to take a job that lets you see fourteen different planets when most people don't even see one in their lifetime. Fifteen, now.
He knows Pete means it.
And maybe it will work. Maybe they'll make it work. And maybe one day William won't be watched any more.
The three-banded woman looks up as well, now, lowering her glasses to look at him sternly. William shakes his head slowly, gives a little shrug. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he says. "I think he's just a bored rich guy, buying an island to play on."
Maybe he does have enough in himself to believe, one more time.
AUTHOR: Dee
PAIRING: William/Pete
RATING: Adult (language, themes)
SUMMARY: As a resource for introduction to new planets, William has seen more than his fair share of golden visions for bright new worlds. He hasn't seen anything like Pete Wentz.
NOTES: For the " Alternate Line-Ups" challenge/ficathon, prompt #67: Interpreter AU. This wanted to be a novel; I refused; I hope meaning hasn't been sacrificed too badly to brevity!
DISCLAIMER: I do not know the personages depicted in this story, and I neither claim nor wish to imply that the events, actions and emotions herein are in any way real or actual. This is FICTION.
=====
William's waiting for his latest crew of intergalactic property moguls, propped up against the brushed-steel bulkhead and trying not to yawn. Trying and failing, because the cannister in his hand might be the largest size of coffee the mess hall in his section produces, but it's entirely possible there isn't enough caffeine on this entire damn substation to make up for the sleep he wasn't having last night. Fuck last-minute assignments and shotgunning five modules of syntax, bio-communication, agenda'd history, cultural conceptions and socio-linguistic miscellania; the processing requirements of that sort of shit played merry hell with actual REM sleep space.
He pauses mid slug of coffee to yawn fit to crack his jaw and make his eyes water. When he blinks them clear, there are people heading down the corridor towards him. Not that William bothers with anything premature like standing up straight or looking attentive - there are only four of them, and they way they're arrayed makes it clear three of them are the associates, attendants or other-named hangers-on to the guy in the lead.
That guy in the lead is... attention-grabbing. Not big - William'd go so far as to say short, but he has often been accused of being both a tall fucker and a tactless one - but still somehow large. And, now that William's paying attention, not bad looking at all. Not conventionally handsome, too darkly coloured, too large-featured, but everything about him screams sharp edges and unflinching life. There's an energy in the way he moves, something in the cant of his grin that makes William wonder, just like that, what it tastes like.
It's when that grin broadens that William realises he's been staring. OK, don't shy away from it; he's been ogling. The guy's got an eyebrow lifted, his own gaze wandering, returning the favour, and William wills himself not to blush as he looks down at the sheaf of paperwork that goes along with this assignment. Really, seriously, fuck job-related sleep-deprivation. He tells himself it'll be fine; he'll be able to dodge any potentially embarrassing situations with the guy amongst the dozen other shareholders and their retinues. William's had groups of upwards of fifty before. It'll be fine.
He clears his throat and does his best to sound bored as he says, "Name?"
"Peter Wentz." It's not the guy who answers, but one of the others. William wonders for a moment if tiredness - or maybe all the new information sloshing around in his head - has made him misread the dynamic entirely, but then the short, hot guy chimes in with, "Pete."
William's eyes slide to him for just a moment - long enough for the grin to flash again - and then he looks down, taking refuge in the paperwork. He was hoping he'd have an excuse for paying a lot of attention to the paperwork, sifting through trying to find the right claim form, but no such luck; the name's right there on the top one. "Right," he says, and runs a finger across the barcode at the bottom of the form. "We'll just wait for the others."
When he looks up again, the four of them are exchanging querying glances. "Is there going to be more crew?" says one of them - the one with the sort of amazing hair that suggests either he never did his military service or it was a long time ago. "Only they said all we got was you."
"I'm the only Authority-provided resource assigned to this expedition," William confirms, the stock phrase slipping off his tongue without any real input from his brain. He tightens his grip on his coffee cannister. "But all ownership claimants and their staff must be present before we launch."
"Yep," another one says cheerfully.
William's too tired for this. He blinks at them until the one with glasses says, "We aren't bringing any more people than this."
William sighs. The Universal Settlement Authority stock phrases are supposed to be perfectly clear and unambiguous, but this isn't the first time they've proved precisely the fucking opposite. "Look," he says, "everyone with a claim has to have equal access and synchronous introduction, otherwise--"
It's the short, hot-- Pete. It's Pete who interrupts with, "Check your paperwork."
The eyebrow waggle he also gives when William looks at him is definitely not helping. William chugs down the last quarter of his coffee before wedging the cannister behind a pipe so he has both hands to attack the paperwork, flicking up the first record, all ready to say, We have to wait for--. But the name on the second claim form - the name at the end of a list of others, the name currently holding the claim share - is Peter Wentz. It's the same on the third one, and the fourth one, and when William grabs the whole wad of them and lets the records fan down again, it's a wave of them.
They're all his.
On the form that William's stopped on, that he's staring at blindly, he realises he recognises the second-last name on the list as well. Nothing he can do about it now, but he files that away for future chasing-up. There's something weird going on here, but right now, William has a job to do and a biotransmitter launch window ticking closed. So he shuffles the sheaf of forms back into neat order, clears his throat, and says, "I see. In that case, if you'll all step inside, we'll begin the transportation process."
"After you," Peter Wentz, the sole owner of the universe's newest colonised planet, says with a smirk. He lifts an eyebrow and adds, "Mr...?"
"Oh." William wishes he had his coffee cannister back. He needs both to be more awake and to have something to do with his hands. "Beckett. William Beckett. At your service."
It's a stock phrase too, but the widening of Pete's smile is nowhere in any training manual, and neither is the flip William's stomach does in answer.
He hates last-minute assignments. Honestly. He does.
In accordance with protocol, the core outpost has been set up near a major centre of local population - not so near as to be threatening, but not so distant as to be stand-offish. There's a whole subsection of the xenoethnographic division of the Authority devoted to calculating that distance. William thinks it might be a really fascinating job.
In any case, the outpost is a compact structure containing essential communication, defensive, medical and life support systems, and explaining all of this provides an excellent way of establishing his credentials and position (William's well aware of the fact he's not the most awe-inspiring of official personifications). Except about ninety seconds after they've beamed down, his smallest group ever has scattered to the winds - one of them communing with the computers like they're his long-lost relations, one taking a gleeful catalogue of the contents of the armoury and one of them's on the fucking roof, honestly, William hadn't even known that was possible. William stops halfway through pointing out where the sleeping quarters are, because he's only talking to Pete now, and that's a little embarrassing.
"Sorry," Pete says cheerfully. He has his hands in his pockets and is rocking on his feet. "We've sort of been looking forward to this for a while. Don't worry, we'll have heaps of questions for you later, and when we go to meet the locals, you will definitely come in handy."
William just smiles like he knows something they don't - which he does; five modules of sleep-inhibiting information, in fact - and goes to claim a room for a nap while they play. Like he said, claimant groups up around the fifty mark aren't uncommon, so on this assignment, bunkspace is hardly going to be at a premium. They can have a room each and still have a couple of spares. William knocks open the first door he comes to, slings his kitbag onto one bunk, rolls into another, and is asleep while the faint sound of one of them exclaiming over the control room fitout is still filtering down the hall.
He wakes up to the door knocking open and a voice crowing, "The natives are nocturnal; fuck yeah this is my planet!"
"Only at the festival," William mumbles into his pillow, as he flounders out of sleep.
"What?" the voice demands.
"What?" William echoes, and pushes himself up.
Only to practically headbutt Pete in the face. As he recoils, slumping back onto his side on the narrow bunk, Pete just grins. "There's something serious going on over in the forest and we wanna say hi. Let's go." When William just blinks at him, trying to sort out the languages swimming in his head, Pete adds, "Please?" He wheedles like a toddler, except that he actually bats his eyelashes and William isn't sure he actually is awake, come to think of it. But while he's still scrubbing a hand over his face, Pete's grabbing his wrist and tugging, saying, "Come on, fuck, did they give us the slowest translator in the galaxy?"
"Hey," William protests, even as he's dragged out into the balmy night air. Except it isn't really night, because the atmospheric conditions on this planet trap and refract the radiant light, so the sky isn't black, it's a deep, luminous violet streaked with pink and orange wisps. He knows all of that already, has all the science in his head, but his jaw still drops. "Holy shit."
Talk about language unbecoming the Authority's official representative, but Pete just sighs happily beside him. "I know. My planet is the best."
"Your planet's fucking wondrous," another voice agrees, and William glances over to see the one who's mad about the computers - Patrick, he remembers, from the introductions they did in the cramped time before transportation. Patrick says, "You can manhandle the translator later, let's go meet the locals."
William clears his throat and twists his wrist out of Pete's grasp.
They saunter down the grassy slope in the gloaming, towards the coloured lights among the tree canopy and the hollow wooden knocking drums. This is absolutely nothing like any planetary introduction William's ever run. Sure, there are sometimes knots of hippies amidst the corporate investors, the people who ask William earnest questions about the information on the natives he's got stored away in his microchips, but they're almost always outnumbered (and more importantly, out-voted) by the cautious, conservative majority. And even when they're not, they tend to spend days after planetfall making carefully researched and mincing overtures towards the natives in an attempt to arrange a power-neutral first encounter.
Never before has William casually crashed a native festival barely half a day after arriving on a planet.
As they near the forest, William can make out the shaking of the canopy as shadows go flitting from branch to branch below. When the wind gusts up towards them, it carries a chittering sound, like a giggling woodpecker, that the back of William's brain tells him is laughter of the happy and carefree variety. (It matters; some races in the galaxy laugh in the face of battle, but it's a different kind altogether.)
"Do you have an opening statement prepared?" William asks, as they step into the trees.
Pete steps over a gnarled root beside him and shrugs. "Hail. Well met. Just popping down to say hi. If the party gets too rowdy we're calling the cops. Something like tha-"
William doesn't have to do more in response than smother a snort of laughter (even as the modules are coughing up translations) because a ball of shadow drops like a stone from the treetops just in front of them, and Pete screams like a girl.
"Classy, Wentz." The guy with the glasses (Andy, he should probably make an effort to remember this, there are only four of them after all) says. "Great first impression."
And it is a first impression, because the ball of shadow has unfurled itself to reveal a brown-furred body, a possum-like creature the size of a child, with its white-faced head almost as high as William's hip, twitching whiskers below large orange-pupilled eyes. A tail like a two-foot feather duster waves behind it; the paw it scratches behind one tufted ear with is closer to a hand, with an unclawed, opposable thumb.
That's its opening word, in fact; the rest comes in a melange of movement and chittering squeaks. William has no idea how the exploratory party managed to hammer out any method of communication for the tailless and ear-tuftless, but he guesses he's about to find out first-hand if word's got round about it.
He goes down on one knee - can't figure out if that's out of the modules or just a polite instinct - which brings them a little closer to the same height. William steadfastly refuses to look at his associates as he uses his fingers to move his own ears as he says in return (or tries to, at least), You startled them, but they are eager to make your acquaintance and introduce themselves as your new neighbours.
The possum responds with a flurry of noise and motion that William can barely follow at all, and half of it is directed at the other guys, but between his stumbling translation, and the play-acting that the possum resorts to - with every evidence of great amusement - when Pete and Andy start guessing wildly, they're invited to come along to the start of the festival and say hello to everyone.
Pete doesn't need to be asked twice, but Patrick refuses to climb the tree (even after the possum scampers up and down a trunk several times as if demonstrating that it's simplicity itself) and William's on his side. William negotiates an alternative meeting in a nearby clearing, and their welcome party hollers up into the canopy before bounding off through the forest.
"Hey," Pete says, falling in beside William as they hurry after. "What's his name?"
"It," William corrects. "They aren't gendered. And it's less of a name and more of a codification or description. Its name would include elements of personal description, and birthplace, and family, and common habits."
"Really?" Pete actually does look interested. "So I could be, like, little annoyance with all the teeth, and you could be eight miles of leg and eye rolling. There you go again."
William catches himself at it too, and it's easy to laugh. Pete does have a lot of teeth, but it's not in any way a bad thing when he's grinning like that.
The first meeting between the human colonists and the native inhabitants of this planet goes extremely well. By the time they stagger back up the hill to the outpost, dawn's starting to leach the colour from the sky, and William's dog tired again. He's worked his ass off tonight, trying to be in the middle of four conversations at once and failing pretty dramatically. No one seemed to mind, though; in his absence, they were making do with the play-acting and mime that Whiteface (Pete's new shorthand name for the first possum-creature they met) was both major advocate and star performer of. A steady parade of natives swung down from the trees above throughout the night, to play meet and greet and then go gambolling back up, their bushy tails swinging about for balance and emphasis.
So William's exhausted, but there's one moment that keeps playing in his head; tugged down by Pete's hand to sit on a rock beside him, where he's in mime-conference with a possum whose clawed hands are gnarled, its burgundy-dark eyes webbed with pale blue mist, its fur dusted a black that William's enhanced knowledge tells him means age. "Can you tell him--it," Pete says, dead serious for the first time since William met him, "that we don't want to take anything from their planet." He turned back to the old possum, his hand still warm on William's forearm as he said sincerely, even though the old one couldn't understand a word, "No mining, no harvesting, no exploitation of any kind. If you want to trade off-world, we'll help, but we're not here to make money, just to have a space to live."
William translated it to the absolute best of his ability. The old one said nothing, but tilted its ears and twitched a claw and William read in the movement the same doubt that he felt.
No, it wasn't doubt (he thinks now as they trudge back up the hill). It's just that it can't be true. One share in a planet costs a fortune. Pete Wentz has acquired all sixteen shares for this one. The expenditure, whether in actual cash or favours or effort, must have been enormous. And owning a planet isn't cheap either, with all the tolls and taxes and levies the USA demands. That's why people exploit planets in the first place; it's not mindless greed, it's just the system.
William watches Pete climbing in front of him, still energetic after the whole night, chattering away happily with Patrick. He doesn't doubt Pete's sincerity, but William's seen sincerity before. All those hippies, in minorities or majorities, all of their wonderful, hazy, delicious plans. Sincerity couldn't hold them up. Sincerity isn't enough.
William knows that. Just because he doesn't want to see Pete learn it too doesn't mean this is going to be the one exception in a hundred thousand.
It makes him feel even more tired than he already is.
Pete drags him out of bed again - literally; William wakes up when hands close around his ankles, but he really wakes up when he starts sliding off the bunk. He winds up in a tangle of blankets half on the floor, and doesn't imagine that having to blow hair out of the way makes his black look up at Pete any more fierce. Pete's grin remains undimmed, in any case.
"Exploring!" he demands.
"Breakfast," William counters.
They compromise on breakfast while exploring, since it's not like basic rations in an outpost are really complicated; William barely needs both hands to break open the wrapping on the protein bar. Which is good, because now Pete's dragging him up a frigging mountain, and he needs at least one hand for balance.
They can see the outpost from up here, Joe looking like a toy still crawling around on the roof. William wonders what he's doing up there, what Patrick's still doing in the control room, what Andy's been doing with the weapons since none of them seem that interested in declaring war on anyone, and the possums (William imagines) are all too hungover this afternoon to move, much less mount an attack. Even if they seemed inclined to.
A moment after that, which is the moment before Pete slides back down beside him, William wonders if he's been got out of the way so they can do whatever they're doing uninterrupted. And unobserved by the nominal Authority presence.
Pete bumping against his side, clutching at his shoulder, doesn't actually make him wonder that any less, though it's also not something William finds himself interested in objecting to. Pete's hair smells faintly of smoke from the fires at the festival last night, and there's also a touch of the dried fruit-type-thing that had been passed around - William had cleared it as safe for human consumption from his mental supermarket. They'd been far more appetising than the mass-produced faux-meal he's just finished, but it isn't hunger twisting his stomach right now.
He doesn't normally have problems like this on assignments. Then again, he's never had a colonist quite like Pete Wentz.
"You have to see this," Pete says, shakes hair out of his face, grabs William's wrist and tugs. "I fucking love this planet."
This is a waterfall, tumbling down a crevasse lined with orange-fronded ferns - in the sunlight, they look like they're on fire. At the bottom of the crevasse, the water looks almost purple, the spray misting violet all around them.
"You probably see shit like this all the time," Pete says after a long, quiet moment. "Right? How many planets have you been on?"
"Fourteen," William says, and then, "fifteen, counting this one." He hesitates a moment, then goes ahead and admits it. "It never gets old."
He's rewarded with the blinding grin he was hoping for, and then Pete's moving them both forward, saying, "We are going down, we are so going down, I bet it's incredible down there."
"I bet it's impossible to get back up," William predicts, but he doesn't actually resist.
Which is why, when they both turn out to be right, he can't really throw recriminations around.
It is incredible down there - the water-slick cliff faces are iridescent, the ferns blooming with red and yellow flowers like fireworks, the deep pool at the bottom full of the green-and-gold flicker of fish. It's paradise with sheer, slippery walls that they slide the last three metres down. There's no way they're getting back out again.
"The guys'll come find us," Pete declares, without a shred of concern. He's sprawled out on a relatively high stretch of rock, though there's no finding a dry place - both of them would be pretty much soaked to the skin just from the spray even if they hadn't both ended up falling into the water. In Pete's case, multiple times. William remains unconvinced they were all accidents. He's not ogling, but when he catches Pete's eye, Pete's leering back exaggeratedly, one hand propping his head up as he says, "Hey baby, come here often?" He's grinning in the next moment, adding, "We could make out until they get here. Traditional, right?"
It's ridiculous, and William's laughing, but he's also picking a rock to sit on that's a little closer to Pete's than he might have otherwise. He pushes wet hair out of his face, grimacing, and notes, "You can make your own traditions now."
"Fuck yeah," Pete sighs with lazy satisfaction, and lies back flat again. "I am god."
He pretty much is. By the time things get to the colonisation stage... well, put it this way; there are a lot of strict statutes about the preservation and benefit of native races, and yet somehow there have only ever been a few, extreme court cases out of them. William dangles his fingers in the water, lets the green fish nibble at his cuticles, and sounds utterly casual as he says, "Did you mean what you said last night?"
"Every word, baby," Pete responds, whipcrack fast, and then rolls over onto his side. "Wait, did I get drunk without noticing, because I swear I'd remember every second if we--"
William laughs, can't help it, doesn't really care to try. "When you were talking to the native elder. When you said you weren't taking anything off this planet." Pete's nodding like he doesn't even understand why William's asking, but... "You can't be serious. You can't get nothing out of a planet. How can you possibly pay for it?"
He didn't mean to ask all that, but Pete's not looking offended or stand-offish, he's just shrugging one shoulder, saying, "Maybe I'm amazingly independently wealthy."
Maybe he is. "And the rest of the planet shares?" William says, and smiles. "Not to mention ongoing administrative and logistic costs. Fourteen other planets, remember? I know the sort of money this takes."
"So do I," Pete replies, and he's not smiling back. He looks serious, and calmly intense. "I've been planning for this a long time. There's no way I'm failing now."
And William believes him, which is not something he wants to be happening. Wild crushes he can handle, but he doesn't know that he has enough in him to be sucked into yet another golden vision of planetary utopia that's inevitably going to be brutally crushed by reality. He does his best to avoid the dreamers, these days, but he can't lose Pete amongst the other shareholders, so he does the next best thing. He leans forward and kisses him.
Pete startles, a tiny noise and their noses bumping, and then he's not just meeting the kiss but pushing into it, half sitting up so he can get a hand around the back of William's neck, holding him steady like William was showing any inclination to go anywhere. William isn't, for the record; he's staying right here, lifting a hand to Pete's side for balance, and then to tug him closer by the damp fabric of his shirt, because Pete's kissing like he does everything else, bossy and just a little bit out of control. They're open-mouthed and messy before William really registers it's happening and it's good, even if his clothes wet and heavy against the buzz starting to limn his skin is far from the most pleasant sensation ever.
He's starting to think wild thoughts about doing something about that, thoughts about Pete's hands on his clammy skin, when a voice calls faintly from the distant sky, "Pete?"
"Fuck," Pete snarls against William's mouth, teeth grazing William's bottom lip before he's pulling back to tip his head up to the light and yell, "Fuck off, Stumph! Five more minutes!"
William starts laughing, knocking his forehead against Pete's shoulder, as from far aloft come more voices, the sound of footsteps, the patter of dislodged stones tumbling down to splash into the pool beside them.
The voice - Patrick, William assumes - calls down again, closer and clearer this time. "You can stay as long as you like, Wentz, but we need Beckett. The natives have come visiting."
After Patrick and Joe rig up rope and the portable winch to get them out, and insults fly and Pete gives a retaliatory full-body hug of chilly dampness to both of the others, after all of that, they get back to the outpost to find Andy cheerfully if mutely entertaining a small party of the possum-creatures, including Whiteface, and the elder Pete spoke to, and a few others William thinks he recognises. Whiteface seems to be the leader of the group again, so William's involved for a brief period in explaining to it why he and Pete are so bedraggled, and the ensuing conversation about pretty local sights takes so much of his concentration (it's hard, communicating this way, and maybe it would be even if William had all the necessary physical attributes, he's honestly not sure how the possums manage it) that he doesn't really notice what the others are doing until Joe elbows him.
He's holding a rounded wooden cup full of something dark and steaming; past him, William can see the Elder and a couple of the other possums filling cups that the others are holding. "This safe to drink?" Joe asks quietly.
He holds it out so William can inhale, waiting for the answer to rise from the back of his brain. The stuff smells not entirely unlike tea, but earthier, with overtones of something sort of like gin, and the steam feels a little greasy on his skin.
And that's it. His memory banks are silent.
William blinks, says, "Wait," and turns to Whiteface, who has that quizzical tilt to its head again. William manages, pointing at Joe's cup, to ask what it is. He gets an answer that means nothing - it's just a name, like if one of these creatures had come to Earth (back when that was still possible) and been told that liquid in the glass was whiskey.
"Well?" Pete asks, from a little way away. He's holding a cup of the stuff as well, steam curliqueing up from the surface.
William shakes his head. "I don't know what it is."
"How's that possible?" Patrick asks, frowning behind his glasses.
Honestly, William doesn't know. He's encountered things on other planets that weren't in the databases, but they'd been obscure, once-in-a-blue-moon occurrences, things the research teams couldn't have been expected to canvass. This... the possums are handing it out like it is tea, like they drink it all the time, settling down with their own cups like this is the most obvious and common of social rituals. How was this missed? "I don't know," William admits, "but since we don't know whether it's compatible with human digestion, I strongly recommend not drinking it."
Whiteface chitters at him, over its own cup of not-tea. All four of the others look expectantly at William, who reluctantly translates, "It's asking what the matter is."
Andy looks at Joe, who looks at Patrick, who says, "It's like they're offering us tea," like he's reading William's mind. He looks uncertain. "Will it be rude to refuse?"
All three of them look at Pete, who shrugs, says, "Fuck it," and lifts his cup with a big grin before taking a hefty swallow.
Tufted ears wave happily around the circle; the possums repeat his toasting gesture and drink from their own cups. The others join in, but in the cheerful turmoil that follows, William carefully tips his own cup out into the grass just behind him. He can't blame them; everything's unknown here, so what's one more thing? But the absence of knowledge when he's so sure of everything else stops William's throat up the moment he lifts his cup for a sip.
Besides, he tells himself, when all four of them come down with acute intergalactic food-poisoning, someone's going to have to look after them.
It never eventuates, which is sort of anti-climactic. Instead, after the possums leave a big carafe of the tea behind and toddle back off down to the forest (presumably for festival-day-two), the colonists have dinner and head off to get the sleep they missed out on the night before.
William waits until the outpost is quiet before slipping out of his bunk and into the control room. He frowns at the changes that have been wrought - he hadn't even known you could get the casings off the equipment like that - but everything still seems to work. At the very least, he manages to log into the Authority servers, conduct the requisite searches, chase the person he's looking for through three different databases, and finally track down an up-to-date contact matrix.
When he plugs it into the comm, it rings for so long he starts to doubt the up-to-date part, but eventually the screen fuzzes into a pixellated blur that resolves into light and shade and a familiar, bleary face saying, "Yo." And then, before William has a chance to say anything, a frown edges nearer the screen and Gabe Saporta says, "Holy shit, William Beckett. How fucking long has it been? Looking good, kid."
Gabe hasn't, honestly, changed one single bit, which is some strange combination of depressing and reassuring. "Yeah yeah," William replies, fiddling with the fine-tuning. "How many hedges have you been dragged through recently?"
"Every one a beautiful experience," Gabe says, with a easy sincerity. He leans back away from the screen, grinning lazily. "You did not call me up after all this time to shoot shit."
It's been years, and William barely knows Pete, but suddenly he has absolutely no doubt that these two together would be a terrible force. He barely even has to ask, but since he's gone to all this trouble, he might as well. "Not precisely," he admits. "Come into any planet shares recently?"
Gabe just laughs. "If you're asking, you don't have to ask. You're the assigned translator? Small fucking universe, man. Say hi to Pete for me."
Things were starting to line up. Gabe might look like a hobo, but he had flush periods, amazing resources all the time. Pete may not have had to pay full price for every share he'd garnered. "Did you give the shares to him?" William demands.
"Billvy," Gabe declares expansively, "that would be extremely illegal."
"Sell them to him for fifty credits and a stick of gum?" William counters.
"Is an Authority agent accusing me of intentionally underselling galactic assets?" His smirk widens, practically feline now. "Let's just say little Petey's a complete card shark when he wants to be."
It doesn't even seem that crazy, not for them, even if planetary shares in the kitty does redefine high-stakes poker. "And I assume the other parties at this game were Travis McCoy and Mikey Way?" The other names second-last from the bottom on the other share forms. It's fucking genius, and just skirting around all the laws governing share ownership. William's impressed; honest-to-god impressed. "How long were you guys putting this together?" he demands. "What's the plan?"
Gabe just grins, cups his hand around his ear. "Sorry, what? You're breaking up, your planet must be going into a tunnel." He laughs, even as William rolls his eyes, and he adds, "Bat your pretty eyes at Pete, he'll tell you anything," before the screen goes black.
William indulges in glaring at the screen for a moment, then goes hunting for the call log to wipe it from the system. When he can't find it - absolutely no trace of it in any of the four places all communications are automatically inscribed for Authority records, not even in the one that's supposed to be accessible by USA employees only - he sits for a moment longer, staring thoughtfully at the disrupted panels, the exposed wires, the ample signs of significant meddling.
And then he goes back to bed.
Joe and Patrick have more of the possum-tea with breakfast, but deny all accusations that it's addictive, and the fact that neither Andy or Pete are having more seems to agree with them, so William just shuts up about it. There don't seem to be any side-effects, in fact, adverse or otherwise, not even when the possums come back that evening with more of the tea and an invitation to join in the festivities the following evening.
It's amazingly draining; William isn't honestly sure how the possums manage to communicate so freely amongst themselves, even with the ear-and-tail twitches, when his mental vocabulary doesn't seem to be broad enough to cover everything he wants to say (or, more accurately, everything the colonists want to say, and never mind the stupidly fond way William's thinking about how things can't be expected to encompass Pete Wentz). He's exhausted by it halfway through the evening, when he turns away from a trio of bright-eyed young possums to almost run into Pete himself; there's a hand grabbing his own and they're half out of the clearing before William even registers it. "Wait," he says weakly, "I can't leave them--"
"They're getting on fine," Pete declares, and looking back, William can see it's actually true. Patrick seems to be in honest-to-god conversation with Whiteface, even if half of it is being conducted in mime, multiple times, and Joe's playing a boistrous game, and Andy seems to be teaching some of the possums how to turn their upside-down tea cups into percussion instruments.
He lets Pete drag him into the forest. It's hardly dark or gloomy, with the branches alive with lights and the scamperings of the possums, but there's a smaller clearing a little way away, where things are quieter. When they get to the edge of it, William's already reaching for Pete, unsurprised when his back hits a treetrunk and Pete's mouth hits his. He tastes of something dark and earthy and heady, which William assumes is the strange tea. He means to rein things in quickly, he really does, but one thing leads to another, and Pete's hands are everything he thought they would be, and one of them's hooking fingers under William's waistband by the time he finally manages to scrape enough of his brain together to say, "Wait," and catch Pete's wrists.
"God, why?" Pete demands, low and rough against William's neck, and William honestly can't remember for a moment. "I've been watching you all night, your fucking intense concentration; I want that on me--"
And really, none of that is helping, but William manages to say, "Right, Pete, I'm here to do a job."
"What, are you angling for a raise?" Pete practically growls it, his wrists twisting in William's grip, right up against him, and it's practically impossible to focus on anything but the fact that they're both hard.
William deserves a fucking medal for saying, "You only have eleven standard hours left on my contract."
Pete stills. After a moment he tilts back, shaking hair out of his face to look steadily up at William. "How long is that down here?"
"About a day," William hazards. "Less now. I did the calculations before we left the outpost."
Pete takes a step back, and William lets him go. There's a frown on his face now; he's fallen that quickly into business mode. "I thought resources stayed longer than that."
"Sometimes we do," William admits. "Often we do. But not all planets even need a translator to begin with. The Authority has a short basic contract that can then be extended as required upon request."
Pete's grin is sudden, and dark, and makes William's stomach flip over. "Oh, I think I need to keep you for a while."
But William stops him leaning back in with a hand on his chest. He takes a breath, and tells Pete's confused expression, "If you establish contact to make the request, the Authority will become aware of the modifications you've made to the equipment in the control room."
They stand there for a moment, eyes locked in a quiet corner of the forest tonight.
"Do you trust me?" Pete asks, and William can feel the vibration of the words through the palm he still has laid over Pete's heart.
He pulls his hand back. "I barely know you."
"Exactly." Pete takes a half-step closer now, and William lets him. "I can't tell you what we're doing here. It's more than just me, there's too much at stake. But I've meant absolutely everything I've said."
"I know." William does. Of all the things that are making this the craziest assignment he's ever had, that doesn't even make it onto the map as an issue.
He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, Pete's right up against him, purring, "Eleven standard hours. We should make the most of it."
This time, when his hands find William's waistband, William just arches into it, and shuts the hell up.
Later, when William's trying to comb all the bits of leaf out of his hair (and, by the sounds of the forest, Andy has been wildly successful with his drumming school) Pete says from behind him, utterly casually, "You could always stay, you know."
William's hands stop working for a moment, then he carries on, not turning around by great application of will. "That would be even worse. I'm an Authority resource, in possession of a great deal of their knowledge. They'd definitely come looking for me."
After a moment, Pete says, wildly ridiculous, "I certainly wouldn't want to let you go," and William can roll his eyes and drag him back to the dwindling festival.
Three of them at breakfast, Andy still asleep and Joe already back up on the roof, tinkering further with something William steadfastly does not want to know any more about. Pete and Patrick are having more of the tea and William lets them pour him a cup as well. What the hell. He's leaving today anyway.
"Are we going to manage without him?" Pete asks Patrick, the sort of business-like that seems both natural and baffling to William.
Patrick considers it thoroughly, holding his teacup low enough that the steam doesn't fog his glasses. "It'll be tricky for a bit. But I think we're starting to get on really well with the locals, Whiteface and Pippin especially."
"Pippin?" William echoes.
"The reddish one with the kink in its tail. Bounces a lot," Pete provides easily, rubbing at one eye. He pauses, then adds, "I have no idea how I know, but you're totally right, it's definitely a Pippin."
Patrick nods sagely, or maybe just still half-asleep. "Absolutely. And it's totally capable of--"
He breaks off, looking up towards the ceiling, and Pete says, "I am not going, you fucking go, he's probably just tied himself to the antenna again."
"What?" William asks, baffled.
"Joe needs help on the roof," Pete says easily.
"Can't you hear him?" Patrick asks, pushing his chair back in resigned fashion.
William looks up. He hasn't heard so much as a muffled thump from up there.
"Is someone going?" Andy shouts from down the corridor.
"I'm fucking on my way, you lazy bastards," Patrick yells back, and heads out.
William's still staring at the ceiling when Pete says, "Hey," really quietly. When he looks down, Pete's leaning forward across the table, eyes serious. William wonders if he's about to be asked to lie, if Pete knows that there'll be a debrief, like there always is of resources, the Authority keeping tabs on all their planetholders. He doesn't know what they're going to ask. He has even less idea what he's going to say.
Instead, Pete says, "I want you to have this," and pulls something out of his pocket, a flash of silver on a black synth-leather string. When he holds it up, the pendant dangles loose, a strange symbol that William thinks maybe he's seen somewhere before, but can't remember precisely where.
"To remember you by?" he asks, the sardonic lift of his eyebrows helping make this easier all round.
Pete smirks. "Something like that."
When William transmits out, later that afternoon, it's with the string knotted around his neck, the pendant sitting cool against the hollow of his throat. All four of them see him off; only one of them yanks his head down for a fierce, thorough final kiss.
The uninstalling of the knowledge modules goes off without a hitch, but something in the physical examination has the meditech frowning at the screen for about ten minutes while William gets chilly sitting on the table in the flimsy gown. The tea, he realises, and thinks the guy's looking at his brain chemistry report. He wants to ask, thinking about cries for help he hasn't heard, but just kicks his heels instead.
Eventually, the meditech gives up on it, and says, "Fine, you can go."
William's on his way to the checkout room, eager for a pair of pants, when the guy adds, "Oh, wait, your key."
His what?
When William looks back at him, the meditech's holding out the silver pendant on its black string, still prodding at his terminal. He looks up idly, and adds, "The techs passed it on. Pretty fancy mechanism, is it just for your quarters?"
William comes forward to take the pendant off him, rubbing a thumb over the silver symbol. Actually, the key for his quarters is just the standard metal dogtag every substation resident had; after losing it on two consecutive assignments, William just leaves it behind now, hunting down his roommate upon his return to let him back in.
Pretty fancy mechanism. To remember him by. You can always stay, you know.
The meditech is looking at him quizzically. William closes his fist around the symbol. "Yeah," he says. "It's the little things, you know."
"Sure," the meditech responds, already looking back to his terminal.
When William steps out of the checkout room, fully clothed now, there's a clerk waiting to take him to the debrief session. It's a bigger panel than William's ever faced before, five people bowed over their paperwork, two of them with triple silver bands around the forearms of their Authority uniforms.
He's not the only one who's noticed the strangenesses in Pete's paperwork, then.
The standard post-assignment stuff has already been covered; the three-banded woman at the far left of the panel starts off, without even looking up from the paperwork, with, "Tell us what Peter Wentz is doing on planet three-eight-five-delta-kilo."
William's already made sure his collar's covering the pendant. He has no idea what Pete is doing down there. He has no idea how they managed to get together all the shares of one planet, how long it took to channel them all into the one place. Even less idea how they intend to continue to finance the planet tenancy, or how long they expect to be able to hold out the Authority. But he knows that they're going to try. He knows they've been modifying the equipment since almost the moment they landed.
He knows Pete's given him an electronic key shaped like a keepsake.
He also knows - as first one, then another of the debrief panel looks up from their notes - that he's going to be watched. Even if he quits. Especially if he quits.
He knows he hates it here, in the substation. He's always known that. It's a good reason to take a job that lets you see fourteen different planets when most people don't even see one in their lifetime. Fifteen, now.
He knows Pete means it.
And maybe it will work. Maybe they'll make it work. And maybe one day William won't be watched any more.
The three-banded woman looks up as well, now, lowering her glasses to look at him sternly. William shakes his head slowly, gives a little shrug. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he says. "I think he's just a bored rich guy, buying an island to play on."
Maybe he does have enough in himself to believe, one more time.