FIC: What Dreams May Come (Stargate Universe)
I can't believe I finished this all in one day! I really must have been inspired. (Hooray for prompts!)
Title: What Dreams May Come (Stargate Universe)
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Eli, Rush/Chloe
Rating: PG-13 - language, references to masturbation, unrequited love (both het and m/m) some lucky people get to make out, plus angst!
Timeline: right on the heels of 1x09 "Life."
Spoilers: big spoilers for "Life."
Wordcount: 4,700
Author's notes: over at fyrewyre's Stargate Universe Kink Meme, sansdatelimite asked for "a Chloe/Rush fic where Eli is heartbroken over either the fact that a) the girl he loves is sleeping with his "mentor" or b) the guy he loves is sleeping with Chloe." This has both of those scenarios, so double the angst!
Summary: everyone has secrets.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate.
Eli is carefully avoiding Lieutenant Johansen.
He feels somewhat like a spy, considering the ultra careful measures he's taken to avoid being in the same place as her. And considering they are trapped together on an ancient ship in the depths of space, the whole thing is more than a little tricky.
"What are you doing?" Chloe asks. Her voice is so close to his ear, he actually jumps, spinning around in confusion.
"Fuck! Chloe don't do that!" he sputters.
She smiles impishly, having just tiptoed behind him and taken a quick peek over his shoulder at the kino display. "Sorry, didn't know you were such a scaredy cat," she grins, spinning on her heel.
Her skirt swirls around her thighs and her ass moves teasingly. Eli's doesn't know how girls walk that way, but it does all sorts of things to his poor, flustered brain.
He trails along after her, trying valiantly not to stare at her butt. "Hey, we're on an Ancient ship here! For all I know you could have been a ghost."
"The Ancients didn't leave ghosts, they ascended," she points out.
"You could have been a swarm of man-eating alien bugs."
She looks over her shoulder at him, frowning. "Hey!"
He shrugs. "Just saying."
"So what were you watching TJ on the kino for? Didn't Greer already like, threaten you with bodily harm for spying on people?"
"Okay, for the last time that was not me! And also, this is not about - I'm not - TJ isn't-"
"Okay, okay," she laughs, and it sounds like little silver bells, or birds singing, and all that other mushy crap you hear about in songs that Eli always thought was so stupid before he met her.
"I'm just teasing you," she says, but she glances back at the flickering kino screen in his hands. "So why are you keeping tabs on her?"
He sighs. "She's still doing psych evaluations."
"So? Eli, you're not a crazy person," she says, and she reaches over and grips his hand. His heart starts thudding in his chest and he swallows, suddenly feeling all sweaty and clumsy. "You don't have anything to worry about. Everyone likes you."
"What alien death ship are you trapped on? Nobody likes me."
"Sure they do," she says, easily, "I like you," his heart skips a beat, "and Matt likes you," Eli resists the urge to sigh, "even Rush sort of likes you, and he doesn't like anybody!"
"Look, it's not about if I have any...allies or not. I just don't want to talk to her, okay? I know I'm not a psycho killer or anything, and I don't think anyone is worried about me suddenly going all Jack Nicholson in the Shining on them, so I don't see why I should have to spill my guts."
"It's just talking to TJ, it isn't the Spanish Inquisition."
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," he says, and they share a laugh.
"That's not the point, though. I don't want to talk about personal stuff, not with anyone. Once you start, it's like opening a-a-" he gestures wildly with his hands.
"A can of worms?" she asks.
"Not what I was going for, but, okay, yeah, a can of worms. I have secrets. I don't wanna talk about them."
"Like what?"
"Well, if I told you they would be secrets anymore, would they?"
"Oh come on, we're friends!" she says, pleading.
She grabs his arm, and actually bats her eyelashes at him, which he didn't even know was something girls did outside of his mother's romance novels. Not that he ever read those. Ever.
"Ch-Chloe," he stammers, and she looks at him, and for a second he's terrified he's actually going to spill everything to her then and there, every stupid crush, every day dream and actual dream, which have gotten a little creepy, as of late.
Rescue comes in the form of the very person he's been avoiding.
TJ clears her throat, causing them both to jump. They turn and look at her with the expressions of a couple of toddlers caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
"Chloe, Eli, what a coincidence," she says, smiling sweetly (it must be the look the female preying mantis gives the male before biting his skull in half, thinks Eli.) "Just the two I was looking for! You've both been avoiding your psych evaluations."
"We both have?" Eli asks, surprised, and glances at Chloe, who is suddenly very, very interested in her feet. "I mean, uh, I've just been doing a lot work for Colonel Young. Important work," he stresses, "you can ask him."
TJ looks unconvinced, but shakes her head in resignation. "Fine. What about you, Chloe? Can you spare a minute to talk to me?"
Chloe looks at TJ like a deer caught in headlights. "What? Oh, actually, you know, the thing is..."
TJ nods. "Right, sure, the thing. You know the thing? Forget the thing. This'll take two minutes. Seriously. Two minutes." She sighs, "look, I'm not that scary. Why doesn't anyone want to talk to me?"
"Everyone's got secrets, I guess," says Chloe.
"I'm not a real psychologist, and I don't care about your childhood, or interpreting your dreams or anything. This is just so I can have something to put in a report for Colonel Young, okay? Come on, help me out here."
Chloe shifts from one foot to the other, nervously. "Okay, sure, I guess," she says in a tiny voice. "I mean, it's just to see how we're coping with life on the ship, right?"
TJ relaxes visibly. "Yes," she says, and Eli gets the feelings she's been through this exact same conversation with everyone onboard. "Look, I've just got a couple more people to track down. Why don't you go wait in my office?"
Eli raises an eyebrow. "You have an office?"
"The room I'm calling 'my office,'" she says, "and Eli? As soon as you're done whatever it is your doing for Colonel Young, I'd like to see you, as well."
"Right," he says, edging towards the nearest doorway, "but that, uh, might take a few days. Just so you know. Uh, I better go work on it now, actually," a weird nervous laugh escapes his throat. Great, now he's going to be nervous-laugh guy. He hates that guy. "So, I'll uh, see you later okay? See you, Chloe."
He sees TJ gesturing to her 'office' down the hall and Chloe forces a smile, even though she looks like she's on her way to the hangman's noose. Then he turns and actually runs to get away.
~*~
Eli likes Chloe.
Likes her a lot, actually. She's beautiful, first of all, that's a no-brainer. And she's nice, sweet and friendly and hey, she doesn't run screaming from the sight of him, which is always a plus. She's funny and smart and brave, almost too-good to be true, and she at least knows he exists, even if she doesn't know he likes her. Which seems, you know, kind of dense, because who wouldn't?
So that's secret the first.
He knows he's not a match for Lieutenant Scott, even if Scott does have a kid out there somewhere, and Chloe didn't seem too thrilled about that. The worst thing is, he doesn't think he could deal with Chloe rejecting him. He knows they would never be able to be friend again, not quite. She would always feel bad for him, and pity him, and he'd have to see that look on her face every day, probably until they all die in some horrible catastrophe.
And the thing is, he likes what he has with Chloe right now. He likes being able to talk to her, and the way she laughs at his dumb jokes, and the way she feels comfortable enough around him to tell him things like 'hey, my boyfriend is actually a dad, I don't know how to deal with this!' and he doesn't want to lose that, not ever.
So that's secret the first. And secret the second?
"Oh boy," he says to himself, pressing his hands into his eyes as he sits on the edge of his rock hard, not-comfortable-at-all thing that passes for a bed.
That's a big one.
He's tired, he tells himself. He's been looking over data all day. His brain's got to be exhausted. Too exhausted to dream, hopefully. He really doesn't think he can take another one of those dreams.
As he lies back in the darkness, he tries not to think about anything for awhile.
He tries to count sheep. Then he tries to multiply sheep until he's going over his multiplication tables and his brain is filled with a truly staggering amount of white fleecy animals. One of them looks up at him, wiggles its little ears and trots over, hooves clicking on the metal floor. It licks his hand.
"Oh crap," he says, "this means I'm dreaming, doesn't it?"
"Baah," says the sheep.
"What's a sheep doing on my space ship?" Rush asks, and he couldn't possibly sound more annoyed if he were real, and not just a figment of Eli's traitorous subconscious.
Eli groans. "I don't know. It's my dream, okay? I was thinking about sheep. So," he waves his hand, "there's sheep."
"And why," asks Rush, raising an eyebrow, "were you thinking about sheep?"
"Counting them! I was counting sheep! I was trying to get to sleep, okay? Which was a wasted effort, because here I am, dreaming, which I didn't want to be doing, because every time I have a dream lately it ends up being about you, and that is so wrong."
Imaginary Rush's eyebrow climbs even higher. "And why is that, exactly?" he asks, taking a step towards Eli.
In real life, Eli would have been backing up by now, but in the dream, he can't move his feet. Destiny's floor is turning to quicksand and sucking him down.
Rush towers over him, all crazy and intimidating. Which is ridiculous, he tells himself, because he's pretty sure he's taller than Rush.
Eli winces as Rush grabs him by the shoulders, calloused fingers digging into his skin so painfully he can't understand why he doesn't wake up.
"I need your help with these figures, Eli," Rush says. His eyes are bright with excitement. "The ship's systems are vast, incredible. And only you and I, together, can unlock her secrets."
"Sorry, the real Rush gets even more excited about the Destiny. Okay, subconscious. You can let me wake up now."
"Think of what we could accomplish! This ship is the most important discovery since the Stargate itself. We're going to change the world, Eli, you and I," his eyes are burning into Eli's.
He's so intense, Eli feels the world shifting, the colours dimming and running together like wet paint sliding off a canvas, except for Rush's eyes.
"But I need your help, Eli," he says, his voice a low rolling growl that makes Eli's knees buckle. Or it would, if he still had any, the dream is focused solely on Rush now. The rough stubble on his jaw, the grim lines of his mouth, and the wrinkles around his eyes are all hyper-clear, sharper than reality, and his breath against Eli's mouth feels hot and sends all sort of foreign signals screaming through his brain.
Rush's fingers leaf idly through Eli's hair, as he continues to study him, with that intensity that turns his knees to liquid. "I thought you were going to help me, isn't that right, Math Boy? Instead you're on a secret mission for the enemy."
"What? Oh that thing for Colonel Young? That's nothing. Not a thing. Nope. It's not like I'm going to find anything, anyways. Uh, except for that false data you planted. Which, hey, anyone could have found that."
"Eli?" the Rush in his dream says, sighing in exasperation.
"Wh-what?"
"Shut up."
And then they're kissing. And its rough, and sloppy and Rush's stubble is scratching his face and he's actually turned on by it, really, really turned on. He's kissing back, with enthusiasm, trying to hold on to the tangible part of the dream, but the more he tries, the harder he kisses Rush, the faster the dream melts away, like colours are all running over everything.
He wakes up in his bed, alone in the dark, with a hard on, confused and distressed and, hello, frustrated. He is, in fact, trembling, just like he has been every night since they've been stranded on this fucking ship.
"I am not in love with Rush!" he tells the darkness.
When he jerks off, he starts fantasizing about Chloe - all long hair and red lips and blue eyes, but then she changes, morphs into Rush - stern, implacable, inscrutable, Rush. And then he's fantasizing about Chloe and Rush both here, in bed, with him. And that's all kinds of messed up, but he doesn't care, and he comes.
"Well, shit," he says, staring into the dark ceiling above his head, "maybe I am a little in love with Rush."
~*~
His newfound revelations do nothing to make the following day any easier, especially with Rush shooting him glances of, what Eli has decided to label 'cold fury.'
They aren't as bad as 'bitter resentment,' which is a glare he often sees aimed in Colonel Young's direction. 'Burning desire for vengeance' is another one of Rush's looks, which also often rises to the surface around Young. Nonetheless, he misses the looks of reluctant admiration, and his personal favourite: 'oh, what do you know? Eli can do useful things, too.'
"Look, you can't keep blaming me for the fact that Young found out about your lie," he says finally.
"Oh no?" Rush asks, glancing at him, "watch me."
"He would have found out sooner or later. Anyone would have been able to tell that data was planted."
"But they didn't, did they," Rush says, tapping away at Destiny's console furiously, "you did!"
"Well, yeah, Young asked me to go over the stuff. What was I suppose to do? Lie? And then look like an idiot when Park or Volker come around the next day and say 'heeey something's not quite right here.'"
Rush's lips purse into a thin line. "Alright, fine."
"You're still mad."
"I'm not mad."
"You're in 'frosty indifference' mode," Eli says.
Rush's fingers fumble over the console. He looks up at Eli and blinks.
"I've labeled your moods. Most people think you're just plain crazy, but I've devised a scale."
Rush stares at him for a minute, before squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Great, just...great. Eli? Do me a favor?"
"Sure, what?"
"Stop talking."
Eli rolls his eyes, but they work in not totally uncomfortable silence for the next twenty minutes.
Finally, Eli can't take the quiet any longer. "It wasn't right, you know. Lying to everyone like that."
Rush looks across from his console at him, wearily. "People need hope, Eli. Without hope there's...well, there's only death," he says, his voice strangely distant and soft.
"Yeah, there's hope, and then there's lies," says Eli. "And I know, I know, don't give me that 'lying is what adults do because we're creepy like that' speech again."
Rush raises his eyebrows, but he closes his mouth, seemingly rethinking his next choice of words. "Fine. But haven't you ever had to lie, hmm?" he asks.
He leaves the console, walking slowly around the control room, towards Eli. There's something predatory about the way he moves, intense.
"Don't you have some secrets, Eli? And secrets are almost the same thing as lies, aren't they? They're almost worse. But we keep them anyway, because if the other person found out the truth their reaction would be-" he pauses.
He's standing, literally inches away from Eli, now. His expression is dark with thought, his eyes boring into Eli, intense. "Sometimes no one wants the truth," he says.
Eli swallows nervously. He fights off the urge to pinch himself on the arm. Rush's shoulders slump, suddenly, and he turns away, shadows falling across his eyes. He looks tired. "Sometimes you have to lie to the other person. To keep," he glances at Eli, "a friendship safe."
Eli's staring at him, slack jawed. He blinks. "Uh...you should probably try telling them, anyway," he says finally, nervously. "Cause life is short, and hell, you never know? Besides, given our track record for violent, dangerous mishaps we could all be dead by next week."
Rush doesn't exactly smile, but the corners of his mouth twitch up into something like an amused grimace. "Thank you, Eli," he says softly. "I'll keep that in mind."
~*~
"You've got to hide me," says Chloe, peeking around the corner of his workstation.
"From what? We don't have killer bugs onboard again, do we?"
"From TJ," she says, dropping into the seat next to him. "I chickened out yesterday, and took off while she was in the bathroom. I've been avoiding her ever since."
"Wha - Chloe what could you possibly have to hide?"
She looks at him. "What? I can't have secrets?"
"What'd you...kill somebody?"
"No!"
"Make out with your college roommate? Because if you did, I really think I should know about it - spare no detail, no matter how sordid or perverse."
"No, Eli," she says, frowning at him, but then breaks into giggles despite herself. "And no."
"So what is it?"
She's silent, biting her bottom lip.
"Oh my God, are you gonna make me keep guessing?"
"No, no, Eli, don't-"
"You're secretly married? No? You have a long-lost kid, too?"
"Not funny, Eli."
"Okay, okay. Um...secret crush you're harboring?"
She blushes. She actually blushes at him.
"On someone...someone other than Matt?" He can hardly believe he's saying it, and she's squirming, biting her lip, blushing.
Eli feels his heart beating faster. His mouth goes dry. He can hardly dare to believe what he's thinking, but just the tinniest spark of hope is growing in his chest.
"Is it...someone I know?" he asks, carefully.
"...Y-es," she says finally, not meeting his gaze. "You know him," she says, her voice hardly louder than a whisper.
"Oh," he says, his eyebrows crawling skyward, "okay. So it's someone on this ship, someone I know... Uh, well, let's see...is he a snappy dresser?"
"No, not really," she says. "I don't think he cares too much about stuff like that."
He tries not to glance down at his crumpled 'You Are Here' t-shirt.
"Is it one of the other soldiers? It's not Greer is it, cause he kinda frightens me."
"No," she's smiling now, "not one of the soldiers. Sort of the opposite, in fact. I kind of... Well I've had a lot of time to think about things, you know. Everything's so different here, and I sort of feel like I need someone more mature, more...well, you know, Eli."
"Oh. Okay," he says, forcing himself to remember breathing.
There's a sharp jolt of metal as the door slides open, clanging and groaning, and Eli throws his hands up in frustration, spinning around in his chair to find TJ looking down at them, frowning.
"So this is where you're hiding."
"Uh, excuse me, we're kinda in the middle of something here," says Eli.
Her expression says 'yeah, right.'
"I'm only going to borrow Chloe for five minutes," she says. "Maybe more like ten, once you explain to me why you ran off, yesterday."
"I just...wasn't...I had a headache," Chloe finishes, lamely.
"I'm also the ship's only medic," says TJ.
"Oh, right."
"Come on," says TJ, and Chloe stands, with obvious reluctance. Eli tries to give her a reassuring smile, while avoiding TJ's gaze as much as possible, no need to remind her he's still on her list, after all.
As the two girls turn to leave, the door groans and clangs, and slides open again. This time it's Rush standing there. He's studying something in his hand, and doesn't look up, "Eli, take a look at these read outs for me-"
He looks up and he actually blanches at the sight of TJ, which Eli would find so much more amusing if he wasn't in the same boat, himself. Then Rush's eyes dart to Chloe, and back to TJ.
"Doctor Rush!" exclaims TJ, "just the other person I've been wanting to see. How about we get your eval out of the way?"
"I told you, Lieutenant, I'm fine. Perfectly fine. One hundred percent."
"Then our talk will be very boring," she says, smiling, "and that's fine with me."
Eli watches as Rush's shoulders hunch slightly with tension. "I have some important data to go over, with Eli, at the moment-"
"It can wait."
"With all due respect, Lieutenant, you fail to realize the importance of-"
"We're not exploding," TJ says, "so it can wait."
Rush looks distressed, and Eli wonders if he's about to try another excuse, various thoughts seem to cross his mind, and be rejected, because he gives in with the slightest of nods and a worried frown.
"Great! I might actually get through these in my life time," TJ says cheerily, flourishing her clipboard.
She ushers Chloe and Rush towards the door. "Why don't you two go ahead, and I'll be there in one second, I just want to talk to Eli about one thing, real quick" she says, and then she points to Chloe, "and no running off this time!"
Chloe swallows. He can't believe how worried both Rush and Chloe look. Hell, they look embarrassed, like little kids about to get scolded on the playground. It's bizarre. It's even more bizarre that Rush has apparently given up fighting with TJ; he and Chloe leave the room and TJ turns to him, arms crossed in front of her chest.
"Wha-what?" he asks.
"Is everything okay, Eli?"
"Of course. Of course it is," he says, trying to laugh a little, but it comes out as more of a choking cough. "Why wouldn't I be? I mean, why wouldn't it be?"
"Lieutenant Scott told me you were worried about your eval."
Eli's eyes widen. "He did? Oh, look, that was - I was just taking, you know. I've just been really busy, with stuff for Young, like I said."
She nods, "I just wanted to make sure. You know you can always talk to me, right? It doesn't have to be...I don't want to seem intimidating or anything. I'm just trying to help everyone."
"I know. I know you are," he says, forcing a smile, "and that's great. But nothing's wrong. Really."
She looks at him for a moment longer, and then nods towards the door. "Why don't you just take a walk with me? Come on, just to my 'office.'"
He sighs, but pushes away from his workstation. "Alright," he says, gesturing to the door, "lead the way."
She smiles a little, looking relieved, as they head down the corridor. "You seem like a nice guy, Eli. I know life on the ship has been hard on all of us. Some people have...ah, handled it more admirably than others. You seem to be doing really well, it's just, if you bottle things up inside you for too long, it can kinda make you crazy. I mean, I've read that. In my psych books," she clears her throat, and avoids Eli's gaze. "I just, I've seen the way you look at Chloe, and I thought, I mean I've been through something similar, myself-"
"Whoa. Back up. 'Seen the way I look at Chloe? What's that supposed to mean? I don't look at Chloe. And, anyway, so very not any of your business, TJ!"
"I'm sorry," she says, "I just thought, if you wanted someone to talk to about it-"
"I don't," he says firmly, "because there's nothing to talk about. She's my best friend. That's all."
They've reached TJ's make-shift office by now, and he's good and ready to storm off, and leave her to sort out Rush's problems (which must be enormous) when she pushes the door open.
The ancient doors slide apart, and there's her office, and there's her desk, and Eli forgets about being angry, or being pissed off, or being offended. He forgets about marching off in a huff, or telling TJ her comments are unprofessional, or any one of the things he might have been thinking about doing, because there, in her office, sprawled across her desk, are Chloe and Rush, wrapped around each other like two spiraling strands of DNA.
His body makes a weird choking sound completely of its own volition. Beside him, TJ drops her clipboard, it clatters to the metal floor with a resounding bang and Chloe and Rush jerk away from each other like it was a gunshot.
Chloe stares at them with wide eyes, her hair is in disarray, her lipstick smudged. Rush doesn't meet their gazes. He rakes a hand through his hair, nervously, licks his lips, glancing at Chloe. Chloe tugs on her shirt a little, looking anywhere but at Eli and TJ, blushing furiously.
"The opposite of a soldier."
"Sometimes you have to lie to keep a friendship safe."
Well, duh, of course, because obviously, it couldn't be him. It can't ever be him.
"Nobody likes the truth."
"Oh my God," says TJ.
Rush seems to snap out of whatever fugue he's in, and glares at her, one of the glares he normally reserves for Colonel Young. "Excuse me, Lieutenant, I don't believe anyone asked your fucking opinion."
TJ blushes and ducks her head. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I was just - surprised - I didn't-"
"Save it," he snaps, pushing past her.
He doesn't even appear to register Eli's presence, which is just as well. Eli has this image of them now, burned into his eyeballs - he won't ever be able to look at Rush again without seeing him pushing Chloe back along the length of a desk, kissing her neck and moving a hand up her thigh.
Chloe hurries past them, following Rush. She looks at Eli once, smiling a brief, slightly embarrassed smile, showing that she is still completely clueless about his feelings towards her.
He feels a sharp pain in his chest, and it's weird because all those times he's heard the expression 'breaking my heart' he never realized it would actually, physically hurt. And it hurts like a bitch.
There are tears burning behind his eyelids as he watches Chloe run down the hall towards Rush, who actually stops and waits for her. She grabs his arm, and he doesn't pull away from the contact, like he would with anyone else.
Hell, he said it himself, didn't he? Who wouldn't want Chloe Armstrong?
Eli watches them disappear down the hallway together, and then he feels TJ's eyes on him, and her pity is more than he can stand. He turns away from her, runs down the corridor towards his room, tears blurring his eyesight. He's choking back sobs, and he collapses, just inside his doorway, losing the battle against the tears that spill down his face, because it isn't about him - it's never about him.
He's still crying when TJ finds him, her boots falling softly on the floor. Kneeling beside him on the ground, she touches his shoulder gently.
"I know how much it hurts," she says.
"No," he says, "no, you really don't. How much it - hurts -" he chokes, "Why should it hurt? My - my mentor and my best friend, the two people I love most in all the world, are happy together. Why - why should I - What should hurt about that?"
She stares at him, and there are tears in her eyes, too. "Oh. Oh," she says. "Oh, Eli."
He starts crying, again, and TJ wraps her arms around him, and she's crying too, and all the colours in the world are running, and running out, and leaving everything black.
FINIS
Title: What Dreams May Come (Stargate Universe)
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Eli, Rush/Chloe
Rating: PG-13 - language, references to masturbation, unrequited love (both het and m/m) some lucky people get to make out, plus angst!
Timeline: right on the heels of 1x09 "Life."
Spoilers: big spoilers for "Life."
Wordcount: 4,700
Author's notes: over at fyrewyre's Stargate Universe Kink Meme, sansdatelimite asked for "a Chloe/Rush fic where Eli is heartbroken over either the fact that a) the girl he loves is sleeping with his "mentor" or b) the guy he loves is sleeping with Chloe." This has both of those scenarios, so double the angst!
Summary: everyone has secrets.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate.
Eli is carefully avoiding Lieutenant Johansen.
He feels somewhat like a spy, considering the ultra careful measures he's taken to avoid being in the same place as her. And considering they are trapped together on an ancient ship in the depths of space, the whole thing is more than a little tricky.
"What are you doing?" Chloe asks. Her voice is so close to his ear, he actually jumps, spinning around in confusion.
"Fuck! Chloe don't do that!" he sputters.
She smiles impishly, having just tiptoed behind him and taken a quick peek over his shoulder at the kino display. "Sorry, didn't know you were such a scaredy cat," she grins, spinning on her heel.
Her skirt swirls around her thighs and her ass moves teasingly. Eli's doesn't know how girls walk that way, but it does all sorts of things to his poor, flustered brain.
He trails along after her, trying valiantly not to stare at her butt. "Hey, we're on an Ancient ship here! For all I know you could have been a ghost."
"The Ancients didn't leave ghosts, they ascended," she points out.
"You could have been a swarm of man-eating alien bugs."
She looks over her shoulder at him, frowning. "Hey!"
He shrugs. "Just saying."
"So what were you watching TJ on the kino for? Didn't Greer already like, threaten you with bodily harm for spying on people?"
"Okay, for the last time that was not me! And also, this is not about - I'm not - TJ isn't-"
"Okay, okay," she laughs, and it sounds like little silver bells, or birds singing, and all that other mushy crap you hear about in songs that Eli always thought was so stupid before he met her.
"I'm just teasing you," she says, but she glances back at the flickering kino screen in his hands. "So why are you keeping tabs on her?"
He sighs. "She's still doing psych evaluations."
"So? Eli, you're not a crazy person," she says, and she reaches over and grips his hand. His heart starts thudding in his chest and he swallows, suddenly feeling all sweaty and clumsy. "You don't have anything to worry about. Everyone likes you."
"What alien death ship are you trapped on? Nobody likes me."
"Sure they do," she says, easily, "I like you," his heart skips a beat, "and Matt likes you," Eli resists the urge to sigh, "even Rush sort of likes you, and he doesn't like anybody!"
"Look, it's not about if I have any...allies or not. I just don't want to talk to her, okay? I know I'm not a psycho killer or anything, and I don't think anyone is worried about me suddenly going all Jack Nicholson in the Shining on them, so I don't see why I should have to spill my guts."
"It's just talking to TJ, it isn't the Spanish Inquisition."
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," he says, and they share a laugh.
"That's not the point, though. I don't want to talk about personal stuff, not with anyone. Once you start, it's like opening a-a-" he gestures wildly with his hands.
"A can of worms?" she asks.
"Not what I was going for, but, okay, yeah, a can of worms. I have secrets. I don't wanna talk about them."
"Like what?"
"Well, if I told you they would be secrets anymore, would they?"
"Oh come on, we're friends!" she says, pleading.
She grabs his arm, and actually bats her eyelashes at him, which he didn't even know was something girls did outside of his mother's romance novels. Not that he ever read those. Ever.
"Ch-Chloe," he stammers, and she looks at him, and for a second he's terrified he's actually going to spill everything to her then and there, every stupid crush, every day dream and actual dream, which have gotten a little creepy, as of late.
Rescue comes in the form of the very person he's been avoiding.
TJ clears her throat, causing them both to jump. They turn and look at her with the expressions of a couple of toddlers caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
"Chloe, Eli, what a coincidence," she says, smiling sweetly (it must be the look the female preying mantis gives the male before biting his skull in half, thinks Eli.) "Just the two I was looking for! You've both been avoiding your psych evaluations."
"We both have?" Eli asks, surprised, and glances at Chloe, who is suddenly very, very interested in her feet. "I mean, uh, I've just been doing a lot work for Colonel Young. Important work," he stresses, "you can ask him."
TJ looks unconvinced, but shakes her head in resignation. "Fine. What about you, Chloe? Can you spare a minute to talk to me?"
Chloe looks at TJ like a deer caught in headlights. "What? Oh, actually, you know, the thing is..."
TJ nods. "Right, sure, the thing. You know the thing? Forget the thing. This'll take two minutes. Seriously. Two minutes." She sighs, "look, I'm not that scary. Why doesn't anyone want to talk to me?"
"Everyone's got secrets, I guess," says Chloe.
"I'm not a real psychologist, and I don't care about your childhood, or interpreting your dreams or anything. This is just so I can have something to put in a report for Colonel Young, okay? Come on, help me out here."
Chloe shifts from one foot to the other, nervously. "Okay, sure, I guess," she says in a tiny voice. "I mean, it's just to see how we're coping with life on the ship, right?"
TJ relaxes visibly. "Yes," she says, and Eli gets the feelings she's been through this exact same conversation with everyone onboard. "Look, I've just got a couple more people to track down. Why don't you go wait in my office?"
Eli raises an eyebrow. "You have an office?"
"The room I'm calling 'my office,'" she says, "and Eli? As soon as you're done whatever it is your doing for Colonel Young, I'd like to see you, as well."
"Right," he says, edging towards the nearest doorway, "but that, uh, might take a few days. Just so you know. Uh, I better go work on it now, actually," a weird nervous laugh escapes his throat. Great, now he's going to be nervous-laugh guy. He hates that guy. "So, I'll uh, see you later okay? See you, Chloe."
He sees TJ gesturing to her 'office' down the hall and Chloe forces a smile, even though she looks like she's on her way to the hangman's noose. Then he turns and actually runs to get away.
~*~
Eli likes Chloe.
Likes her a lot, actually. She's beautiful, first of all, that's a no-brainer. And she's nice, sweet and friendly and hey, she doesn't run screaming from the sight of him, which is always a plus. She's funny and smart and brave, almost too-good to be true, and she at least knows he exists, even if she doesn't know he likes her. Which seems, you know, kind of dense, because who wouldn't?
So that's secret the first.
He knows he's not a match for Lieutenant Scott, even if Scott does have a kid out there somewhere, and Chloe didn't seem too thrilled about that. The worst thing is, he doesn't think he could deal with Chloe rejecting him. He knows they would never be able to be friend again, not quite. She would always feel bad for him, and pity him, and he'd have to see that look on her face every day, probably until they all die in some horrible catastrophe.
And the thing is, he likes what he has with Chloe right now. He likes being able to talk to her, and the way she laughs at his dumb jokes, and the way she feels comfortable enough around him to tell him things like 'hey, my boyfriend is actually a dad, I don't know how to deal with this!' and he doesn't want to lose that, not ever.
So that's secret the first. And secret the second?
"Oh boy," he says to himself, pressing his hands into his eyes as he sits on the edge of his rock hard, not-comfortable-at-all thing that passes for a bed.
That's a big one.
He's tired, he tells himself. He's been looking over data all day. His brain's got to be exhausted. Too exhausted to dream, hopefully. He really doesn't think he can take another one of those dreams.
As he lies back in the darkness, he tries not to think about anything for awhile.
He tries to count sheep. Then he tries to multiply sheep until he's going over his multiplication tables and his brain is filled with a truly staggering amount of white fleecy animals. One of them looks up at him, wiggles its little ears and trots over, hooves clicking on the metal floor. It licks his hand.
"Oh crap," he says, "this means I'm dreaming, doesn't it?"
"Baah," says the sheep.
"What's a sheep doing on my space ship?" Rush asks, and he couldn't possibly sound more annoyed if he were real, and not just a figment of Eli's traitorous subconscious.
Eli groans. "I don't know. It's my dream, okay? I was thinking about sheep. So," he waves his hand, "there's sheep."
"And why," asks Rush, raising an eyebrow, "were you thinking about sheep?"
"Counting them! I was counting sheep! I was trying to get to sleep, okay? Which was a wasted effort, because here I am, dreaming, which I didn't want to be doing, because every time I have a dream lately it ends up being about you, and that is so wrong."
Imaginary Rush's eyebrow climbs even higher. "And why is that, exactly?" he asks, taking a step towards Eli.
In real life, Eli would have been backing up by now, but in the dream, he can't move his feet. Destiny's floor is turning to quicksand and sucking him down.
Rush towers over him, all crazy and intimidating. Which is ridiculous, he tells himself, because he's pretty sure he's taller than Rush.
Eli winces as Rush grabs him by the shoulders, calloused fingers digging into his skin so painfully he can't understand why he doesn't wake up.
"I need your help with these figures, Eli," Rush says. His eyes are bright with excitement. "The ship's systems are vast, incredible. And only you and I, together, can unlock her secrets."
"Sorry, the real Rush gets even more excited about the Destiny. Okay, subconscious. You can let me wake up now."
"Think of what we could accomplish! This ship is the most important discovery since the Stargate itself. We're going to change the world, Eli, you and I," his eyes are burning into Eli's.
He's so intense, Eli feels the world shifting, the colours dimming and running together like wet paint sliding off a canvas, except for Rush's eyes.
"But I need your help, Eli," he says, his voice a low rolling growl that makes Eli's knees buckle. Or it would, if he still had any, the dream is focused solely on Rush now. The rough stubble on his jaw, the grim lines of his mouth, and the wrinkles around his eyes are all hyper-clear, sharper than reality, and his breath against Eli's mouth feels hot and sends all sort of foreign signals screaming through his brain.
Rush's fingers leaf idly through Eli's hair, as he continues to study him, with that intensity that turns his knees to liquid. "I thought you were going to help me, isn't that right, Math Boy? Instead you're on a secret mission for the enemy."
"What? Oh that thing for Colonel Young? That's nothing. Not a thing. Nope. It's not like I'm going to find anything, anyways. Uh, except for that false data you planted. Which, hey, anyone could have found that."
"Eli?" the Rush in his dream says, sighing in exasperation.
"Wh-what?"
"Shut up."
And then they're kissing. And its rough, and sloppy and Rush's stubble is scratching his face and he's actually turned on by it, really, really turned on. He's kissing back, with enthusiasm, trying to hold on to the tangible part of the dream, but the more he tries, the harder he kisses Rush, the faster the dream melts away, like colours are all running over everything.
He wakes up in his bed, alone in the dark, with a hard on, confused and distressed and, hello, frustrated. He is, in fact, trembling, just like he has been every night since they've been stranded on this fucking ship.
"I am not in love with Rush!" he tells the darkness.
When he jerks off, he starts fantasizing about Chloe - all long hair and red lips and blue eyes, but then she changes, morphs into Rush - stern, implacable, inscrutable, Rush. And then he's fantasizing about Chloe and Rush both here, in bed, with him. And that's all kinds of messed up, but he doesn't care, and he comes.
"Well, shit," he says, staring into the dark ceiling above his head, "maybe I am a little in love with Rush."
~*~
His newfound revelations do nothing to make the following day any easier, especially with Rush shooting him glances of, what Eli has decided to label 'cold fury.'
They aren't as bad as 'bitter resentment,' which is a glare he often sees aimed in Colonel Young's direction. 'Burning desire for vengeance' is another one of Rush's looks, which also often rises to the surface around Young. Nonetheless, he misses the looks of reluctant admiration, and his personal favourite: 'oh, what do you know? Eli can do useful things, too.'
"Look, you can't keep blaming me for the fact that Young found out about your lie," he says finally.
"Oh no?" Rush asks, glancing at him, "watch me."
"He would have found out sooner or later. Anyone would have been able to tell that data was planted."
"But they didn't, did they," Rush says, tapping away at Destiny's console furiously, "you did!"
"Well, yeah, Young asked me to go over the stuff. What was I suppose to do? Lie? And then look like an idiot when Park or Volker come around the next day and say 'heeey something's not quite right here.'"
Rush's lips purse into a thin line. "Alright, fine."
"You're still mad."
"I'm not mad."
"You're in 'frosty indifference' mode," Eli says.
Rush's fingers fumble over the console. He looks up at Eli and blinks.
"I've labeled your moods. Most people think you're just plain crazy, but I've devised a scale."
Rush stares at him for a minute, before squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Great, just...great. Eli? Do me a favor?"
"Sure, what?"
"Stop talking."
Eli rolls his eyes, but they work in not totally uncomfortable silence for the next twenty minutes.
Finally, Eli can't take the quiet any longer. "It wasn't right, you know. Lying to everyone like that."
Rush looks across from his console at him, wearily. "People need hope, Eli. Without hope there's...well, there's only death," he says, his voice strangely distant and soft.
"Yeah, there's hope, and then there's lies," says Eli. "And I know, I know, don't give me that 'lying is what adults do because we're creepy like that' speech again."
Rush raises his eyebrows, but he closes his mouth, seemingly rethinking his next choice of words. "Fine. But haven't you ever had to lie, hmm?" he asks.
He leaves the console, walking slowly around the control room, towards Eli. There's something predatory about the way he moves, intense.
"Don't you have some secrets, Eli? And secrets are almost the same thing as lies, aren't they? They're almost worse. But we keep them anyway, because if the other person found out the truth their reaction would be-" he pauses.
He's standing, literally inches away from Eli, now. His expression is dark with thought, his eyes boring into Eli, intense. "Sometimes no one wants the truth," he says.
Eli swallows nervously. He fights off the urge to pinch himself on the arm. Rush's shoulders slump, suddenly, and he turns away, shadows falling across his eyes. He looks tired. "Sometimes you have to lie to the other person. To keep," he glances at Eli, "a friendship safe."
Eli's staring at him, slack jawed. He blinks. "Uh...you should probably try telling them, anyway," he says finally, nervously. "Cause life is short, and hell, you never know? Besides, given our track record for violent, dangerous mishaps we could all be dead by next week."
Rush doesn't exactly smile, but the corners of his mouth twitch up into something like an amused grimace. "Thank you, Eli," he says softly. "I'll keep that in mind."
~*~
"You've got to hide me," says Chloe, peeking around the corner of his workstation.
"From what? We don't have killer bugs onboard again, do we?"
"From TJ," she says, dropping into the seat next to him. "I chickened out yesterday, and took off while she was in the bathroom. I've been avoiding her ever since."
"Wha - Chloe what could you possibly have to hide?"
She looks at him. "What? I can't have secrets?"
"What'd you...kill somebody?"
"No!"
"Make out with your college roommate? Because if you did, I really think I should know about it - spare no detail, no matter how sordid or perverse."
"No, Eli," she says, frowning at him, but then breaks into giggles despite herself. "And no."
"So what is it?"
She's silent, biting her bottom lip.
"Oh my God, are you gonna make me keep guessing?"
"No, no, Eli, don't-"
"You're secretly married? No? You have a long-lost kid, too?"
"Not funny, Eli."
"Okay, okay. Um...secret crush you're harboring?"
She blushes. She actually blushes at him.
"On someone...someone other than Matt?" He can hardly believe he's saying it, and she's squirming, biting her lip, blushing.
Eli feels his heart beating faster. His mouth goes dry. He can hardly dare to believe what he's thinking, but just the tinniest spark of hope is growing in his chest.
"Is it...someone I know?" he asks, carefully.
"...Y-es," she says finally, not meeting his gaze. "You know him," she says, her voice hardly louder than a whisper.
"Oh," he says, his eyebrows crawling skyward, "okay. So it's someone on this ship, someone I know... Uh, well, let's see...is he a snappy dresser?"
"No, not really," she says. "I don't think he cares too much about stuff like that."
He tries not to glance down at his crumpled 'You Are Here' t-shirt.
"Is it one of the other soldiers? It's not Greer is it, cause he kinda frightens me."
"No," she's smiling now, "not one of the soldiers. Sort of the opposite, in fact. I kind of... Well I've had a lot of time to think about things, you know. Everything's so different here, and I sort of feel like I need someone more mature, more...well, you know, Eli."
"Oh. Okay," he says, forcing himself to remember breathing.
There's a sharp jolt of metal as the door slides open, clanging and groaning, and Eli throws his hands up in frustration, spinning around in his chair to find TJ looking down at them, frowning.
"So this is where you're hiding."
"Uh, excuse me, we're kinda in the middle of something here," says Eli.
Her expression says 'yeah, right.'
"I'm only going to borrow Chloe for five minutes," she says. "Maybe more like ten, once you explain to me why you ran off, yesterday."
"I just...wasn't...I had a headache," Chloe finishes, lamely.
"I'm also the ship's only medic," says TJ.
"Oh, right."
"Come on," says TJ, and Chloe stands, with obvious reluctance. Eli tries to give her a reassuring smile, while avoiding TJ's gaze as much as possible, no need to remind her he's still on her list, after all.
As the two girls turn to leave, the door groans and clangs, and slides open again. This time it's Rush standing there. He's studying something in his hand, and doesn't look up, "Eli, take a look at these read outs for me-"
He looks up and he actually blanches at the sight of TJ, which Eli would find so much more amusing if he wasn't in the same boat, himself. Then Rush's eyes dart to Chloe, and back to TJ.
"Doctor Rush!" exclaims TJ, "just the other person I've been wanting to see. How about we get your eval out of the way?"
"I told you, Lieutenant, I'm fine. Perfectly fine. One hundred percent."
"Then our talk will be very boring," she says, smiling, "and that's fine with me."
Eli watches as Rush's shoulders hunch slightly with tension. "I have some important data to go over, with Eli, at the moment-"
"It can wait."
"With all due respect, Lieutenant, you fail to realize the importance of-"
"We're not exploding," TJ says, "so it can wait."
Rush looks distressed, and Eli wonders if he's about to try another excuse, various thoughts seem to cross his mind, and be rejected, because he gives in with the slightest of nods and a worried frown.
"Great! I might actually get through these in my life time," TJ says cheerily, flourishing her clipboard.
She ushers Chloe and Rush towards the door. "Why don't you two go ahead, and I'll be there in one second, I just want to talk to Eli about one thing, real quick" she says, and then she points to Chloe, "and no running off this time!"
Chloe swallows. He can't believe how worried both Rush and Chloe look. Hell, they look embarrassed, like little kids about to get scolded on the playground. It's bizarre. It's even more bizarre that Rush has apparently given up fighting with TJ; he and Chloe leave the room and TJ turns to him, arms crossed in front of her chest.
"Wha-what?" he asks.
"Is everything okay, Eli?"
"Of course. Of course it is," he says, trying to laugh a little, but it comes out as more of a choking cough. "Why wouldn't I be? I mean, why wouldn't it be?"
"Lieutenant Scott told me you were worried about your eval."
Eli's eyes widen. "He did? Oh, look, that was - I was just taking, you know. I've just been really busy, with stuff for Young, like I said."
She nods, "I just wanted to make sure. You know you can always talk to me, right? It doesn't have to be...I don't want to seem intimidating or anything. I'm just trying to help everyone."
"I know. I know you are," he says, forcing a smile, "and that's great. But nothing's wrong. Really."
She looks at him for a moment longer, and then nods towards the door. "Why don't you just take a walk with me? Come on, just to my 'office.'"
He sighs, but pushes away from his workstation. "Alright," he says, gesturing to the door, "lead the way."
She smiles a little, looking relieved, as they head down the corridor. "You seem like a nice guy, Eli. I know life on the ship has been hard on all of us. Some people have...ah, handled it more admirably than others. You seem to be doing really well, it's just, if you bottle things up inside you for too long, it can kinda make you crazy. I mean, I've read that. In my psych books," she clears her throat, and avoids Eli's gaze. "I just, I've seen the way you look at Chloe, and I thought, I mean I've been through something similar, myself-"
"Whoa. Back up. 'Seen the way I look at Chloe? What's that supposed to mean? I don't look at Chloe. And, anyway, so very not any of your business, TJ!"
"I'm sorry," she says, "I just thought, if you wanted someone to talk to about it-"
"I don't," he says firmly, "because there's nothing to talk about. She's my best friend. That's all."
They've reached TJ's make-shift office by now, and he's good and ready to storm off, and leave her to sort out Rush's problems (which must be enormous) when she pushes the door open.
The ancient doors slide apart, and there's her office, and there's her desk, and Eli forgets about being angry, or being pissed off, or being offended. He forgets about marching off in a huff, or telling TJ her comments are unprofessional, or any one of the things he might have been thinking about doing, because there, in her office, sprawled across her desk, are Chloe and Rush, wrapped around each other like two spiraling strands of DNA.
His body makes a weird choking sound completely of its own volition. Beside him, TJ drops her clipboard, it clatters to the metal floor with a resounding bang and Chloe and Rush jerk away from each other like it was a gunshot.
Chloe stares at them with wide eyes, her hair is in disarray, her lipstick smudged. Rush doesn't meet their gazes. He rakes a hand through his hair, nervously, licks his lips, glancing at Chloe. Chloe tugs on her shirt a little, looking anywhere but at Eli and TJ, blushing furiously.
"The opposite of a soldier."
"Sometimes you have to lie to keep a friendship safe."
Well, duh, of course, because obviously, it couldn't be him. It can't ever be him.
"Nobody likes the truth."
"Oh my God," says TJ.
Rush seems to snap out of whatever fugue he's in, and glares at her, one of the glares he normally reserves for Colonel Young. "Excuse me, Lieutenant, I don't believe anyone asked your fucking opinion."
TJ blushes and ducks her head. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I was just - surprised - I didn't-"
"Save it," he snaps, pushing past her.
He doesn't even appear to register Eli's presence, which is just as well. Eli has this image of them now, burned into his eyeballs - he won't ever be able to look at Rush again without seeing him pushing Chloe back along the length of a desk, kissing her neck and moving a hand up her thigh.
Chloe hurries past them, following Rush. She looks at Eli once, smiling a brief, slightly embarrassed smile, showing that she is still completely clueless about his feelings towards her.
He feels a sharp pain in his chest, and it's weird because all those times he's heard the expression 'breaking my heart' he never realized it would actually, physically hurt. And it hurts like a bitch.
There are tears burning behind his eyelids as he watches Chloe run down the hall towards Rush, who actually stops and waits for her. She grabs his arm, and he doesn't pull away from the contact, like he would with anyone else.
Hell, he said it himself, didn't he? Who wouldn't want Chloe Armstrong?
Eli watches them disappear down the hallway together, and then he feels TJ's eyes on him, and her pity is more than he can stand. He turns away from her, runs down the corridor towards his room, tears blurring his eyesight. He's choking back sobs, and he collapses, just inside his doorway, losing the battle against the tears that spill down his face, because it isn't about him - it's never about him.
He's still crying when TJ finds him, her boots falling softly on the floor. Kneeling beside him on the ground, she touches his shoulder gently.
"I know how much it hurts," she says.
"No," he says, "no, you really don't. How much it - hurts -" he chokes, "Why should it hurt? My - my mentor and my best friend, the two people I love most in all the world, are happy together. Why - why should I - What should hurt about that?"
She stares at him, and there are tears in her eyes, too. "Oh. Oh," she says. "Oh, Eli."
He starts crying, again, and TJ wraps her arms around him, and she's crying too, and all the colours in the world are running, and running out, and leaving everything black.
FINIS