Rule 26 (5 of ?, j2 au)
Still unbeta'd and still unameripicked! Just scooting in ahead of Finale Day!
Rule 26 (5/?)
(J2 au)
Jared deliberately and maliciously did not shower before dinner. The only reason he changed out of his jumpsuit was because the shin was ripped up and bloody, and uncomfortable. On the way out of his room, he avoided even glancing in any reflective surfaces, because he was determined to put as little effort into his appearance as possible.
Jensen would have his presence at the dinner date, nothing more than that. Which was a shame, because he was missing out on Jared at his hottest and most sparkling. Jared was an excellent date. Of course, the last time he'd been on anything even remotely resembling a dinner date was Milo buying him an extra mug of scummy beer and then sticking his hand down Jared's pants.
If Jensen tried to stick his hand down Jared's pants, Jared would see to it that he ended the attempt with nothing but a bloody stump.
He wondered if Jensen would try putting his hands anywhere inappropriate, and his mind drifted unhelpfully to what black latex fingers touching intimate portions of his anatomy might feel like. It was safe to think about these things in his own head, because Jared had a healthy core of hatred to build upon. And it wasn't like he was blind.
Any other time a guy who looked like Jensen asked him out, Jared would have been all over it. In fact, Jared would have been all over him. But apparently guys as pretty as Jensen had to have a flaw; in this case, Jensen's flaw was that he was the scourge of the galaxy.
A droid directed him to one of the formal reception rooms, and as Jared approached, he could hear Jeff and Jensen talking.
"… make you take this seriously?" said Jeff. "Does he have to try throttling you again before you'll accept that he's a threat?"
"I'm in more danger from food poisoning than I am from him," said Jensen. "It's a date, Jeff. Traditionally, those are between just two people."
"Traditionally, those two people both wanna be there!" Jeff cut off. He gave a sharp, angry sigh. "Look, Jensen, let's be realistic, I'm not gonna ruin the mood by being here. The mood is already ruined. What do you think's gonna happen? No, don't… I'm not try'na be mean but he's not ever gonna like you the way you want him to. You can't have this. You know you can't. Evil dictators can't have boyfriends."
Silence, then, "Well aren't you just a ray of fucking sunshine?" Jensen was quiet and waspish. "And y'know, evil dictators can have whatever they damn well want. And I wanna have dinner with the really hot guy I kidnapped, without my bodyguard standing in the corner, getting twitchy every time the guy picks up his cutlery."
"Jensen-"
"No. Damn it, Jeff, just… no. You can stand outside the fucking door, but that's it. I promise, if he comes at me with his butter knife, I'll let you know."
There was movement, and Jared hurried out of sight before Jeff came out of the room. The door slammed shut, and Jared listened to the creak of Jeff's armor and the thud of his boots fade as he headed down the other corridor. Then he moved to the door, put his hand on the handle, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
Jensen was stood by an open fireplace that was probably big enough for Jared to stand in without hunching. It had to be big, because the dining table stretched the length of the massive room. Two places had been set opposite each other, and it looked more than a little ridiculous.
Jensen was dressed in black and gunmetal gray. His back was turned to Jared, his hands shoved in his pants pockets. Unwillingly, Jared's gaze dropped to the tight little rounds of the cheeks of Jensen's ass. Equally unwillingly, he admitted to himself that it would be kind of awesome to get his hands on an ass as pretty as that. Jensen had nice long legs too, which would probably wrap real neatly around Jared's middle.
He cleared his throat. "I'm here," he said.
Jensen turned around, and he smiled like he was already a little in love with just the way Jared entered a room. His shirt emphasized the fairness of his skin, and the inhuman color of his eyes, and Jared was way past trying not to be attracted to him on a very basic level.
Thankfully, Jared had a brain and a set of principles as well as a dick, and they made sure he didn't do anything stupid like throw Jensen down on the table, peel him out of his expensive clothes and make him come all over himself.
"Hi," said Jensen. He smiled a little uncomfortably and scraped his fingers through his hair. His hands were still gloved, black and shiny and fascinating, and Jared's stupid, brainless dick twitched in his pants.
"You sound nervous," Jared said bluntly. "Try pretending I'm a planet full of innocent people that you're about to firebomb. Figure you don't feel real nervous then."
"I thought I'd try picturing you naked instead," said Jensen. "That might work too."
He picked up a thin stack of papers from the table, and held them out to Jared. As Jared flicked through them, he was aware of Jensen pouring two glasses of honey-white wine.
They were completed transfer orders, with Chad's name and the others'.
"They were still waiting to be processed for wiping," said Jensen. "They'll be in the detention center by morning."
He offered Jared the glass of wine, watching him closely. His shoulders loosened subtly when Jared accepted it, but his eyes never strayed from Jared's face. Jared watched him right back, pinned down by the significance of the moment as he raised the glass to his lips. They drank at the same time.
The crackling sweetness of the alcohol was enough to distract Jared from the slightly tilt of Jensen's head as he drank, and the paleness of his throat, and the soft curl of his lips around the glass.
Nothing Jared tasted in a single one of Stantone's bars - not even Enzo's, where the cover charge on the door was more than Jared and Chad put together could legitimately afford - came close to the quality of Jensen's wine. He guzzled the first few mouthfuls, then realized that Jensen was watching him. Though he wasn't entirely convinced Jensen had ever looked away.
"It's a regional specialty from Corbus 7," Jensen said. "Their vines grow in fields of lavender up on the mountains, and they get heat and light from the smaller sun in the system for seventeen solid hours each day. The gas composition of the sun is rich in duplaxin, which reacts with the proteins in the lavender soil to produce the distinctive taste in the wine." He smiled slightly and took another drink. "It's got a side-effect of producing serotonin in the human brain. The hormone of happiness. I'm not denying that factored in to my reasoning when I chose it for our dinner tonight."
Jared set his glass down. "You should have been a science teacher." His tone was blankly unimpressed. "Right, you wanna eat? Get this over and done with?"
"Careful," said Jensen dryly. "I don't think I can keep up with your enthusiasm."
They took seats across from one another. At first, Jared tried not to pay attention to Jensen's shiny, laced together black fingers, and concentrated on the droid silently serving him. Then, when his eyes were back on Jensen's hands for the fifth time in three minutes, he decided to just come right out and say it.
"Don't you ever take your gloves off?"
Jensen started, then looked down at his gloves, as if realizing for the first time he was still wearing them. He flexed his fingers thoughtfully, and Jared shifted in his seat at the low burn of arousal the gesture sent through him.
"Curse of the lab-rat," said Jensen. "Never know when you're going to have to start messing with samples."
He made no move to strip the gloves off, and Jared found he really couldn't take his eyes off Jensen's hands. He resented Jensen more than a little for it. When he decided he could spend just as much time looking at Jensen's face - his damn pretty eyes and equally pretty mouth -Jared forced himself through sheer power of will to look away. He moodily picked up his fork and started on the exquisitely arranged starter on his plate, determined to dislike it.
"This is seafood from the Calaisean oceans," said Jensen. "They have species of seafood not found anywhere else in the galaxy. Their evolution is probably due to the unique arrangement of volcanoes on the ocean bed, which erupted-"
"Is every food item gonna come with a lecture?" Jared interrupted. "'Cause I was a lousy student in school."
Jensen paused, then smiled slightly. "I don't believe that." He considered Jared a moment, and then shrugged in mild exasperation. "I was just trying to make conversation."
"Well this is a dinner date, isn't it? Let's make dinner date conversation." Jared gave him a nasty smile. "Let's talk about you. Tell me all about you, Doctor Nekrotik."
At least Jensen had the nerve not to back down, even if he busied himself with carefully slicing his food rather than meet Jared's unfriendly, narrow-eyed gaze. "What do you want to know?"
There was a lot Jared wanted to know. Quite a few of the questions that immediately came to mind were related to Jensen's worth as a human being, his apparent lack of a conscience, and queries as to how he slept at night.
"Okay," said Jared, "the obvious one. You've been around for years. How come you're not all old and wrinkly?"
An old and wrinkly Doctor Nekrotik would have been decidedly less temptation, and that Jensen was not all old and wrinkly and was therefore provoking Jared to grudgingly lust after him was clearly further proof that he was evil incarnate.
"Ah," said Jensen.
After a moment's pause, Jared said, "That too tough a one to answer? You want me to pick something easier?"
"No, I was trying to think how to answer without giving you a science lesson, since you don't seem real fond of those," said Jensen. He gestured to the basket of bread at Jared's elbow. "Pass me one?"
Jared picked up the basket, then froze. He considered Jensen's outstretched black hand. Then he put the basket back down.
"Say 'please'," he said.
Jensen blinked, a small, confused smile appearing on his face. It was possible Jared had gone insane, because that would be a good explanation as to why he was abruptly set on forcing the word out of Jensen, on making him say it.
Such a stupid little power play and it was still making Jared hard.
Jensen's finger twitched, and the gesture snapped Jared's gaze to it instantly.
"You know," said Jensen, all confusion gone from his smile, leaving it hot and wicked, "I could just take the basket. Wouldn't even have to get outta my seat. I could just drag you, and the basket, right over the tabletop to where I want you."
"You might break some of this fine china," said Jared breathlessly.
"Yes, yes that could happen," Jensen agreed.
He leaned back in his chair, and Jared was two seconds away from lunging across the table and kissing him until it hurt.
"Okay," said Jensen. "Okay. Jared, would you pass me some of that bread, please?"
It hit Jared low in the belly, a tight, aching heat. Right then, he loathed Jensen for making him want him, for being able to do this to him with a single word. And he hated Jensen just that little bit more for knowing exactly what he was doing to Jared, He shoved the basket across the tabletop towards Jensen, and sullenly stabbed his fork into his seafood.
"You gonna answer the question or not?" he said.
He refused to look up to see the expression on Jensen's face, but he heard him sigh again.
"Sorry, there's no way around the science part. I'll try to keep it brief. The nature of my research is crystal technology. This whole galaxy is pretty much built from crystal. The air, the earth, biological matter including our own bodies, all full of billions of crystal particles. And right now, aside from my own work, the most ambitious things we use crystals for is air-conditioning units in luxury accommodation."
"Not brief enough," said Jared.
Laughing, Jensen said, "My point is, I know some pretty neat tricks you can play with crystals." And then the laughter dropped out of his voice abruptly. "You've no idea what it's like to get old. It's humiliating and pathetic." A pause, and then, his tone strangely light, Jensen said, "Your own body turns on you."
He drew in a breath, and Jared looked up in time to see him sweep a smile back onto his face. "I'm not sure a 'lousy student' like you could be expected to follow the intricacies of crystal genetics and DNA manipulation."
Jared ignored the teasing, and went on stubbornly looking at him, waiting. Jensen rolled his eyes and said, "You want to know what I did? I fed huge quantities of highly volatile crystals into my bloodstream. That's what I did." He gestured with a magician's flourish to his too-beautiful face. "And this is what I got."
"And the mood-swings?" said Jared.
Jensen's smirk came on slowly, directed away from Jared, as though he was enjoying some private joke. "A side-effect. A chemical imbalance. I'll fix it eventually." He turned his smile back on Jared, and Jared refused to be dazzled this time. "Are you done? Is it my turn to interrogate you now?"
"Not yet," said Jared, because there was one last thing he had to know.
His whole life, he'd accepted the destruction of his homeworld as just something that had happened, a foundation for his hatred of Doctor Nekrotik. Any time he'd questioned it, it had been rhetorical, as just one more demonstration of the injustices and atrocities perpetrated by Doctor Nekrotik and his armies.
He'd never really wondered why it had happened.
Until now.
Words coming out in a rush, he said, "I want to know why you burned my planet. What did we do to deserve that? Tell me. What did my people do to bring you down on them? I wanna know why you thought we deserved what you did to us."
Jensen's eyes went dark. He abandoned his food, tucked his hands out of sight under the table. Jared's heart was beating fast as he looked at him.
"C'mon, tell me. What did we do?"
"You won't like it," said Jensen.
Jared flashed his teeth, shaky and hostile. "Don't think you could give me a reason I'd be real thrilled about."
Jensen leaned back in his chair, but with none of the heated lazy grace from before. This was a defensive move, a preemptive surrender.
"At the core of your planet was a deposit of grade four medirian crystal. Crystal of that quality will break and reform into grade five in hot and atmospherically unstable conditions."
That was it apparently. Jensen had just explained, and Jared didn't get it. He kept waiting, but Jensen wasn't saying anything else.
He turned the words over, and then realized what it was Jensen had just told him.
He got it.
He swallowed. The words had to be pronounced slowly and carefully around his building rage. "You firebombed my planet," Jared said slowly, "because you wanted to create the right conditions to upgrade your damn crystals? You killed all those people… in a science experiment?"
"I'm sorry," said Jensen.
He sounded genuinely remorseful, but it wasn't enough. All those people who'd died deserved more than his hushed regret. He should be broken, devastated. He shouldn't have been able to live with himself.
"You're sorry? You think sorry is big enough for what you did?"
"No," Jensen said instantly. "It's not. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't say it."
Jared stared at him, searched his face for answers that weren't there.
"How could you do that? How could you? How could you fucking do that?" It came out weak, a child's plaintive questioning of simple facts of nature.
"I wanted the crystals," said Jensen. "I'm sorry."
Jared was halfway out of his chair, and Jensen didn't flinch. "You say you're sorry one more time and I'll…" He sank backwards, tried to think around the noise inside his head. "Those people died horrible… evil deaths. They burned alive. Do you understand that? I can still, God, I can still hear them screaming. I can never forget it. And you're sorry?"
The room swam around him, and it took Jared a moment to realize he was crying. He choked back the thickness of grief in his throat, and tasted ash.
Jensen looked back at him, wide-eyed and grave but silent.
"What did you need the crystals for?" said Jared. "Tell me. Was it worth them dying? What did you use the crystals for?"
"They… uh…" Jensen cleared his throat and said, "They decrease warm-up time for the heavy cannons on my front-line warships."
Jared squeezed his eyes shut. His stomach hurt and his shoulders were shaking, hand spasming where it was gripping his knife too tightly.
"I'm sorry," said Jensen.
He had it the sense not to say it again.
:::
There was no more conversation after that. The droids came and served the main course, and then they came back a little while later to take it away, untouched.
Twenty minutes after the dessert was served - something white and lemon yellow that Jared didn't look at - Jensen threw down his napkin, stormed from the room and didn't come back
Jared didn't even look up to watch him go.
:::
By the time Wisdom showed up, the fire had gone out ages ago, even the embers in the grate gone black. Jared was still sitting there in the dark, at the table that he hadn't even noticed the droids emptying.
"You want me to give you something to sleep?" said Wisdom. "No dreams, just rest."
It took Jared a moment to come back to himself, to put himself back in the reality of his body, and not that burned out planet from years ago. He nodded. Wisdom mirrored the nod approvingly
Wisdom got Jared out of the chair and moving, and Jared allowed himself to be led away.
"I said that meal was too damn fancy," said Wisdom, blithely attaching Jared's near catatonic state of shock to the food so that neither of them would have to talk about the other thing.
"But the boy was determined to impress you," he went on. "Not like you'd have been impressed with a regular steak that you could actually enjoy, of course. No, you know what the problem is? Last time he had a date was with that primpy little bastard from the Zcechi embassy. That was his kinda food you got served. God, I hated that little prick."
The monologue didn't distract Jared from their progress to Wisdom's medical bay, or from the shot he gave Jared, or from them making their way to Jared's bedroom. Jared was tipped neatly but ungently onto his bed. Wisdom's shape moved in front of the square of moonlight at Jared's window.
"I want to die," said Jared. He couldn't stop thinking about the muted light in Jensen's eyes, and his hatefully sincere and woefully inadequate apology.
Wisdom laughed bitterly. "You think suicide's even an option anymore?"
The drug knocked Jared out before the full horror of that could hit.
:::
It was Wisdom who fetched Jared in the morning. He didn't even acknowledge Jared's resistance as he hauled him out of bed, shoved him under the shower and then flung clothes at him.
"Let me do my duty as chief physician and get you fed and moving," he said, "and then I'll leave you alone to wallow. You think I wanna spend all day babysitting your sorry backside?"
If nothing else, Jared was grateful for the direction, because it meant he didn't have to think or make decisions.
In the kitchen, Jensen was slumped over a cup of coffee at the breakfast bar, watching a morning talk show on the holoscreen with glazed eyes. Kane was beside him. He looked over his shoulder as Jared came in, and nudged Jensen in the ribs. Jensen glanced back at Jared, wary and miserable. In the corner, Jeff set his mug down heavily, drawing Jared's attention to his presence with a deliberate lack of subtlety.
Unable and unwilling to meet Jensen's eyes, Jared helped himself to a cup of coffee and sat down as far away from Jensen as he could get while still being in the kitchen.
They all listened in silence to the perky chatter of the two hosts on the talk show.
Once he'd finished his coffee, Wisdom headed out, taking Kane with him. Jared didn't miss the significant look Wisdom shot Jeff, just like he didn't miss the new tension that entered Jensen's poise when Jeff reluctantly left a few minutes later, and it was just him and Jared in the kitchen.
Jeff wouldn't have gone far. He probably expected Jared to try killing Jensen again. Maybe later. Right now, Jared felt drained, worn out with grief. Hating Jensen felt like hating a storm or a volcano. Jared couldn't hate something that acted so indiscriminately with so little idea of what it was doing, not until the numbness in his head went away again.
The talk show took a break for a news segment, and, as usual, the first item was about Doctor Nekrotik. Jensen sighed, and Jared studied the back of his head, the velvety bristle of hair and the smoothness of the skin at the nape of his neck and the loose thread on his faded blue t-shirt.
On the holoscreen, the next news item appeared: some royal wedding on a planet a few systems over.
Jared had drunk his coffee too fast. The inside of his mouth was burned and sore, and his tongue was raw. It interested him distantly that he hadn't even registered the pain as he was doing it.
"Jared, do you remember what I said about your planet?" said Jensen, gaze still fixed on the holoscreen. "About the crystals needing heat and atmospheric instability to improve their quality?"
"Yes," said Jared, because it was all he could manage.
"Well some crystals, that's the exact last thing they need," Jensen said. "They can't take disruption to their surroundings. It ruins them. Like ambola crystals. It'd ruin them."
When nothing more was forthcoming, Jared raised an eyebrow. "What's your point?"
Jensen didn't speak or move. Jared rolled his eyes and didn't care enough to pursue it.
The talk show came on again, and then Jensen was on his feet, shouting, "Kane! Kane!"
Jared's suspicion that Jeff hadn’t gone far were confirmed when he appeared in the doorway. Jensen's gaze locked on him instantly, and Jared noticed Jeff's flick first to him, then back to Jensen, before his shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly.
"Sir?" he said.
"Tell Kane to summon the fleet. Have them rendezvous with us at Nigellus Twelve," said Jensen. "And bring me my mask. I've found my crystals."
next
Rule 26 (5/?)
(J2 au)
Jared deliberately and maliciously did not shower before dinner. The only reason he changed out of his jumpsuit was because the shin was ripped up and bloody, and uncomfortable. On the way out of his room, he avoided even glancing in any reflective surfaces, because he was determined to put as little effort into his appearance as possible.
Jensen would have his presence at the dinner date, nothing more than that. Which was a shame, because he was missing out on Jared at his hottest and most sparkling. Jared was an excellent date. Of course, the last time he'd been on anything even remotely resembling a dinner date was Milo buying him an extra mug of scummy beer and then sticking his hand down Jared's pants.
If Jensen tried to stick his hand down Jared's pants, Jared would see to it that he ended the attempt with nothing but a bloody stump.
He wondered if Jensen would try putting his hands anywhere inappropriate, and his mind drifted unhelpfully to what black latex fingers touching intimate portions of his anatomy might feel like. It was safe to think about these things in his own head, because Jared had a healthy core of hatred to build upon. And it wasn't like he was blind.
Any other time a guy who looked like Jensen asked him out, Jared would have been all over it. In fact, Jared would have been all over him. But apparently guys as pretty as Jensen had to have a flaw; in this case, Jensen's flaw was that he was the scourge of the galaxy.
A droid directed him to one of the formal reception rooms, and as Jared approached, he could hear Jeff and Jensen talking.
"… make you take this seriously?" said Jeff. "Does he have to try throttling you again before you'll accept that he's a threat?"
"I'm in more danger from food poisoning than I am from him," said Jensen. "It's a date, Jeff. Traditionally, those are between just two people."
"Traditionally, those two people both wanna be there!" Jeff cut off. He gave a sharp, angry sigh. "Look, Jensen, let's be realistic, I'm not gonna ruin the mood by being here. The mood is already ruined. What do you think's gonna happen? No, don't… I'm not try'na be mean but he's not ever gonna like you the way you want him to. You can't have this. You know you can't. Evil dictators can't have boyfriends."
Silence, then, "Well aren't you just a ray of fucking sunshine?" Jensen was quiet and waspish. "And y'know, evil dictators can have whatever they damn well want. And I wanna have dinner with the really hot guy I kidnapped, without my bodyguard standing in the corner, getting twitchy every time the guy picks up his cutlery."
"Jensen-"
"No. Damn it, Jeff, just… no. You can stand outside the fucking door, but that's it. I promise, if he comes at me with his butter knife, I'll let you know."
There was movement, and Jared hurried out of sight before Jeff came out of the room. The door slammed shut, and Jared listened to the creak of Jeff's armor and the thud of his boots fade as he headed down the other corridor. Then he moved to the door, put his hand on the handle, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
Jensen was stood by an open fireplace that was probably big enough for Jared to stand in without hunching. It had to be big, because the dining table stretched the length of the massive room. Two places had been set opposite each other, and it looked more than a little ridiculous.
Jensen was dressed in black and gunmetal gray. His back was turned to Jared, his hands shoved in his pants pockets. Unwillingly, Jared's gaze dropped to the tight little rounds of the cheeks of Jensen's ass. Equally unwillingly, he admitted to himself that it would be kind of awesome to get his hands on an ass as pretty as that. Jensen had nice long legs too, which would probably wrap real neatly around Jared's middle.
He cleared his throat. "I'm here," he said.
Jensen turned around, and he smiled like he was already a little in love with just the way Jared entered a room. His shirt emphasized the fairness of his skin, and the inhuman color of his eyes, and Jared was way past trying not to be attracted to him on a very basic level.
Thankfully, Jared had a brain and a set of principles as well as a dick, and they made sure he didn't do anything stupid like throw Jensen down on the table, peel him out of his expensive clothes and make him come all over himself.
"Hi," said Jensen. He smiled a little uncomfortably and scraped his fingers through his hair. His hands were still gloved, black and shiny and fascinating, and Jared's stupid, brainless dick twitched in his pants.
"You sound nervous," Jared said bluntly. "Try pretending I'm a planet full of innocent people that you're about to firebomb. Figure you don't feel real nervous then."
"I thought I'd try picturing you naked instead," said Jensen. "That might work too."
He picked up a thin stack of papers from the table, and held them out to Jared. As Jared flicked through them, he was aware of Jensen pouring two glasses of honey-white wine.
They were completed transfer orders, with Chad's name and the others'.
"They were still waiting to be processed for wiping," said Jensen. "They'll be in the detention center by morning."
He offered Jared the glass of wine, watching him closely. His shoulders loosened subtly when Jared accepted it, but his eyes never strayed from Jared's face. Jared watched him right back, pinned down by the significance of the moment as he raised the glass to his lips. They drank at the same time.
The crackling sweetness of the alcohol was enough to distract Jared from the slightly tilt of Jensen's head as he drank, and the paleness of his throat, and the soft curl of his lips around the glass.
Nothing Jared tasted in a single one of Stantone's bars - not even Enzo's, where the cover charge on the door was more than Jared and Chad put together could legitimately afford - came close to the quality of Jensen's wine. He guzzled the first few mouthfuls, then realized that Jensen was watching him. Though he wasn't entirely convinced Jensen had ever looked away.
"It's a regional specialty from Corbus 7," Jensen said. "Their vines grow in fields of lavender up on the mountains, and they get heat and light from the smaller sun in the system for seventeen solid hours each day. The gas composition of the sun is rich in duplaxin, which reacts with the proteins in the lavender soil to produce the distinctive taste in the wine." He smiled slightly and took another drink. "It's got a side-effect of producing serotonin in the human brain. The hormone of happiness. I'm not denying that factored in to my reasoning when I chose it for our dinner tonight."
Jared set his glass down. "You should have been a science teacher." His tone was blankly unimpressed. "Right, you wanna eat? Get this over and done with?"
"Careful," said Jensen dryly. "I don't think I can keep up with your enthusiasm."
They took seats across from one another. At first, Jared tried not to pay attention to Jensen's shiny, laced together black fingers, and concentrated on the droid silently serving him. Then, when his eyes were back on Jensen's hands for the fifth time in three minutes, he decided to just come right out and say it.
"Don't you ever take your gloves off?"
Jensen started, then looked down at his gloves, as if realizing for the first time he was still wearing them. He flexed his fingers thoughtfully, and Jared shifted in his seat at the low burn of arousal the gesture sent through him.
"Curse of the lab-rat," said Jensen. "Never know when you're going to have to start messing with samples."
He made no move to strip the gloves off, and Jared found he really couldn't take his eyes off Jensen's hands. He resented Jensen more than a little for it. When he decided he could spend just as much time looking at Jensen's face - his damn pretty eyes and equally pretty mouth -Jared forced himself through sheer power of will to look away. He moodily picked up his fork and started on the exquisitely arranged starter on his plate, determined to dislike it.
"This is seafood from the Calaisean oceans," said Jensen. "They have species of seafood not found anywhere else in the galaxy. Their evolution is probably due to the unique arrangement of volcanoes on the ocean bed, which erupted-"
"Is every food item gonna come with a lecture?" Jared interrupted. "'Cause I was a lousy student in school."
Jensen paused, then smiled slightly. "I don't believe that." He considered Jared a moment, and then shrugged in mild exasperation. "I was just trying to make conversation."
"Well this is a dinner date, isn't it? Let's make dinner date conversation." Jared gave him a nasty smile. "Let's talk about you. Tell me all about you, Doctor Nekrotik."
At least Jensen had the nerve not to back down, even if he busied himself with carefully slicing his food rather than meet Jared's unfriendly, narrow-eyed gaze. "What do you want to know?"
There was a lot Jared wanted to know. Quite a few of the questions that immediately came to mind were related to Jensen's worth as a human being, his apparent lack of a conscience, and queries as to how he slept at night.
"Okay," said Jared, "the obvious one. You've been around for years. How come you're not all old and wrinkly?"
An old and wrinkly Doctor Nekrotik would have been decidedly less temptation, and that Jensen was not all old and wrinkly and was therefore provoking Jared to grudgingly lust after him was clearly further proof that he was evil incarnate.
"Ah," said Jensen.
After a moment's pause, Jared said, "That too tough a one to answer? You want me to pick something easier?"
"No, I was trying to think how to answer without giving you a science lesson, since you don't seem real fond of those," said Jensen. He gestured to the basket of bread at Jared's elbow. "Pass me one?"
Jared picked up the basket, then froze. He considered Jensen's outstretched black hand. Then he put the basket back down.
"Say 'please'," he said.
Jensen blinked, a small, confused smile appearing on his face. It was possible Jared had gone insane, because that would be a good explanation as to why he was abruptly set on forcing the word out of Jensen, on making him say it.
Such a stupid little power play and it was still making Jared hard.
Jensen's finger twitched, and the gesture snapped Jared's gaze to it instantly.
"You know," said Jensen, all confusion gone from his smile, leaving it hot and wicked, "I could just take the basket. Wouldn't even have to get outta my seat. I could just drag you, and the basket, right over the tabletop to where I want you."
"You might break some of this fine china," said Jared breathlessly.
"Yes, yes that could happen," Jensen agreed.
He leaned back in his chair, and Jared was two seconds away from lunging across the table and kissing him until it hurt.
"Okay," said Jensen. "Okay. Jared, would you pass me some of that bread, please?"
It hit Jared low in the belly, a tight, aching heat. Right then, he loathed Jensen for making him want him, for being able to do this to him with a single word. And he hated Jensen just that little bit more for knowing exactly what he was doing to Jared, He shoved the basket across the tabletop towards Jensen, and sullenly stabbed his fork into his seafood.
"You gonna answer the question or not?" he said.
He refused to look up to see the expression on Jensen's face, but he heard him sigh again.
"Sorry, there's no way around the science part. I'll try to keep it brief. The nature of my research is crystal technology. This whole galaxy is pretty much built from crystal. The air, the earth, biological matter including our own bodies, all full of billions of crystal particles. And right now, aside from my own work, the most ambitious things we use crystals for is air-conditioning units in luxury accommodation."
"Not brief enough," said Jared.
Laughing, Jensen said, "My point is, I know some pretty neat tricks you can play with crystals." And then the laughter dropped out of his voice abruptly. "You've no idea what it's like to get old. It's humiliating and pathetic." A pause, and then, his tone strangely light, Jensen said, "Your own body turns on you."
He drew in a breath, and Jared looked up in time to see him sweep a smile back onto his face. "I'm not sure a 'lousy student' like you could be expected to follow the intricacies of crystal genetics and DNA manipulation."
Jared ignored the teasing, and went on stubbornly looking at him, waiting. Jensen rolled his eyes and said, "You want to know what I did? I fed huge quantities of highly volatile crystals into my bloodstream. That's what I did." He gestured with a magician's flourish to his too-beautiful face. "And this is what I got."
"And the mood-swings?" said Jared.
Jensen's smirk came on slowly, directed away from Jared, as though he was enjoying some private joke. "A side-effect. A chemical imbalance. I'll fix it eventually." He turned his smile back on Jared, and Jared refused to be dazzled this time. "Are you done? Is it my turn to interrogate you now?"
"Not yet," said Jared, because there was one last thing he had to know.
His whole life, he'd accepted the destruction of his homeworld as just something that had happened, a foundation for his hatred of Doctor Nekrotik. Any time he'd questioned it, it had been rhetorical, as just one more demonstration of the injustices and atrocities perpetrated by Doctor Nekrotik and his armies.
He'd never really wondered why it had happened.
Until now.
Words coming out in a rush, he said, "I want to know why you burned my planet. What did we do to deserve that? Tell me. What did my people do to bring you down on them? I wanna know why you thought we deserved what you did to us."
Jensen's eyes went dark. He abandoned his food, tucked his hands out of sight under the table. Jared's heart was beating fast as he looked at him.
"C'mon, tell me. What did we do?"
"You won't like it," said Jensen.
Jared flashed his teeth, shaky and hostile. "Don't think you could give me a reason I'd be real thrilled about."
Jensen leaned back in his chair, but with none of the heated lazy grace from before. This was a defensive move, a preemptive surrender.
"At the core of your planet was a deposit of grade four medirian crystal. Crystal of that quality will break and reform into grade five in hot and atmospherically unstable conditions."
That was it apparently. Jensen had just explained, and Jared didn't get it. He kept waiting, but Jensen wasn't saying anything else.
He turned the words over, and then realized what it was Jensen had just told him.
He got it.
He swallowed. The words had to be pronounced slowly and carefully around his building rage. "You firebombed my planet," Jared said slowly, "because you wanted to create the right conditions to upgrade your damn crystals? You killed all those people… in a science experiment?"
"I'm sorry," said Jensen.
He sounded genuinely remorseful, but it wasn't enough. All those people who'd died deserved more than his hushed regret. He should be broken, devastated. He shouldn't have been able to live with himself.
"You're sorry? You think sorry is big enough for what you did?"
"No," Jensen said instantly. "It's not. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't say it."
Jared stared at him, searched his face for answers that weren't there.
"How could you do that? How could you? How could you fucking do that?" It came out weak, a child's plaintive questioning of simple facts of nature.
"I wanted the crystals," said Jensen. "I'm sorry."
Jared was halfway out of his chair, and Jensen didn't flinch. "You say you're sorry one more time and I'll…" He sank backwards, tried to think around the noise inside his head. "Those people died horrible… evil deaths. They burned alive. Do you understand that? I can still, God, I can still hear them screaming. I can never forget it. And you're sorry?"
The room swam around him, and it took Jared a moment to realize he was crying. He choked back the thickness of grief in his throat, and tasted ash.
Jensen looked back at him, wide-eyed and grave but silent.
"What did you need the crystals for?" said Jared. "Tell me. Was it worth them dying? What did you use the crystals for?"
"They… uh…" Jensen cleared his throat and said, "They decrease warm-up time for the heavy cannons on my front-line warships."
Jared squeezed his eyes shut. His stomach hurt and his shoulders were shaking, hand spasming where it was gripping his knife too tightly.
"I'm sorry," said Jensen.
He had it the sense not to say it again.
:::
There was no more conversation after that. The droids came and served the main course, and then they came back a little while later to take it away, untouched.
Twenty minutes after the dessert was served - something white and lemon yellow that Jared didn't look at - Jensen threw down his napkin, stormed from the room and didn't come back
Jared didn't even look up to watch him go.
:::
By the time Wisdom showed up, the fire had gone out ages ago, even the embers in the grate gone black. Jared was still sitting there in the dark, at the table that he hadn't even noticed the droids emptying.
"You want me to give you something to sleep?" said Wisdom. "No dreams, just rest."
It took Jared a moment to come back to himself, to put himself back in the reality of his body, and not that burned out planet from years ago. He nodded. Wisdom mirrored the nod approvingly
Wisdom got Jared out of the chair and moving, and Jared allowed himself to be led away.
"I said that meal was too damn fancy," said Wisdom, blithely attaching Jared's near catatonic state of shock to the food so that neither of them would have to talk about the other thing.
"But the boy was determined to impress you," he went on. "Not like you'd have been impressed with a regular steak that you could actually enjoy, of course. No, you know what the problem is? Last time he had a date was with that primpy little bastard from the Zcechi embassy. That was his kinda food you got served. God, I hated that little prick."
The monologue didn't distract Jared from their progress to Wisdom's medical bay, or from the shot he gave Jared, or from them making their way to Jared's bedroom. Jared was tipped neatly but ungently onto his bed. Wisdom's shape moved in front of the square of moonlight at Jared's window.
"I want to die," said Jared. He couldn't stop thinking about the muted light in Jensen's eyes, and his hatefully sincere and woefully inadequate apology.
Wisdom laughed bitterly. "You think suicide's even an option anymore?"
The drug knocked Jared out before the full horror of that could hit.
:::
It was Wisdom who fetched Jared in the morning. He didn't even acknowledge Jared's resistance as he hauled him out of bed, shoved him under the shower and then flung clothes at him.
"Let me do my duty as chief physician and get you fed and moving," he said, "and then I'll leave you alone to wallow. You think I wanna spend all day babysitting your sorry backside?"
If nothing else, Jared was grateful for the direction, because it meant he didn't have to think or make decisions.
In the kitchen, Jensen was slumped over a cup of coffee at the breakfast bar, watching a morning talk show on the holoscreen with glazed eyes. Kane was beside him. He looked over his shoulder as Jared came in, and nudged Jensen in the ribs. Jensen glanced back at Jared, wary and miserable. In the corner, Jeff set his mug down heavily, drawing Jared's attention to his presence with a deliberate lack of subtlety.
Unable and unwilling to meet Jensen's eyes, Jared helped himself to a cup of coffee and sat down as far away from Jensen as he could get while still being in the kitchen.
They all listened in silence to the perky chatter of the two hosts on the talk show.
Once he'd finished his coffee, Wisdom headed out, taking Kane with him. Jared didn't miss the significant look Wisdom shot Jeff, just like he didn't miss the new tension that entered Jensen's poise when Jeff reluctantly left a few minutes later, and it was just him and Jared in the kitchen.
Jeff wouldn't have gone far. He probably expected Jared to try killing Jensen again. Maybe later. Right now, Jared felt drained, worn out with grief. Hating Jensen felt like hating a storm or a volcano. Jared couldn't hate something that acted so indiscriminately with so little idea of what it was doing, not until the numbness in his head went away again.
The talk show took a break for a news segment, and, as usual, the first item was about Doctor Nekrotik. Jensen sighed, and Jared studied the back of his head, the velvety bristle of hair and the smoothness of the skin at the nape of his neck and the loose thread on his faded blue t-shirt.
On the holoscreen, the next news item appeared: some royal wedding on a planet a few systems over.
Jared had drunk his coffee too fast. The inside of his mouth was burned and sore, and his tongue was raw. It interested him distantly that he hadn't even registered the pain as he was doing it.
"Jared, do you remember what I said about your planet?" said Jensen, gaze still fixed on the holoscreen. "About the crystals needing heat and atmospheric instability to improve their quality?"
"Yes," said Jared, because it was all he could manage.
"Well some crystals, that's the exact last thing they need," Jensen said. "They can't take disruption to their surroundings. It ruins them. Like ambola crystals. It'd ruin them."
When nothing more was forthcoming, Jared raised an eyebrow. "What's your point?"
Jensen didn't speak or move. Jared rolled his eyes and didn't care enough to pursue it.
The talk show came on again, and then Jensen was on his feet, shouting, "Kane! Kane!"
Jared's suspicion that Jeff hadn’t gone far were confirmed when he appeared in the doorway. Jensen's gaze locked on him instantly, and Jared noticed Jeff's flick first to him, then back to Jensen, before his shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly.
"Sir?" he said.
"Tell Kane to summon the fleet. Have them rendezvous with us at Nigellus Twelve," said Jensen. "And bring me my mask. I've found my crystals."
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