Round 29: One Week (Part 2/2)

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Previous

They managed a smooth departure from the station some twenty minutes later, and that evening Jaejoong cooked, and the two spent their time eating and laughing at the Major and his men’s expressions after Jaejoong so casually explained the restraints. The restraints had been put away where they were supposed to be, along with Yoochun’s set, and the cuff had not been retrieved from its hiding place. Yoochun, in spite of being warned not to, in spite of really not wanting to, had found Jaejoong easy to trust. The fact that his honesty was obvious and immediate, that he didn’t think about whether he should tell Yoochun the truth or not, he simply did, had made that decision a lot easier. He tried not to think too hard about how right it had felt to have Jaejoong’s arm around his waist, whether it had been part of the act or not.

But at that moment, he wasn’t thinking about any of that. Yoochun’s attention was focused on his instruments and the view outside the thick screen at the front of the vessel. He was more concerned about how he was going to navigate through an asteroid field that had been stable just two weeks before and now seemed to be anything but. Unfortunately, he hadn’t noticed the instability before he entered, the first few minutes having been as normal as they ever were. But then things got more and more odd, until now he was wondering if it was worth attempting to go back and find another, longer and more public route to Alpha Five.

“I thought you said this field was stable,” Jaejoong said as he plopped down unceremoniously in the seat next to Yoochun, immediately pressing buttons and looking at the monitors in front of him.

“It was, I don’t know what happened. A rogue comet, maybe, I’ve seen those cause havoc before.”

“Always possible, but right now, we need to get out of this, and it looks like your ‘path’ is gone.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Yoochun grumbled, his hands on the controls, swerving around a chunk of rock.

“Our engines are destabilizing things more, it looks like,” Jaejoong muttered and put his hands on the controls, then pressed the button on the board that transferred the controls to him.

“Hey!” Yoochun yelled, turning to Jaejoong with fury in his eyes, even as he reached for the button to take control back. “I’ve trusted you, and this is what you do, take over my ship?”

“No!” Jaejoong glanced at Yoochun, but his attention was on the monitors, missing flying rocks bigger than the ship by only the barest of margins for a moment. “I’m not taking over, I’m making sure we get out alive! Please, I haven’t lied to you. Just trust me and let me get us out of this.”

Yoochun didn’t answer, but he kept his eyes on the monitors, one hand on the controls and the other ready to hit the button again and take control of his ship back. After a minute, the margins they were missing the rocks by increased as Jaejoong relaxed and learned the ship, learned how fast she reacted and just how far he could push her. Yoochun watched with growing respect. When he had said Jaejoong was a pilot, he had chosen a job on the ship at random, and Jaejoong didn’t look anything like all of the mousy, grease-covered, engineers he had met. Yet it seemed he had made the right choice, after all.

“Can we go to thrusters only?” The soft question jarred Yoochun for a moment, after a tense silence for more than fifteen minutes. He nodded as he looked again at the monitors and pressed the sequence to shut down the engine thrust and go to the side thrusters only, trusting on their momentum to keep them moving forward.

The minutes only got more tense, Yoochun’s knuckles going white on the controls as they narrowly missed being caught between a large rock and a smaller one that then collided behind them, sending dust out from the impact in a spreading ring. Jaejoong reached over and started up the engine again, using the burst to get them away from the spreading dust and out of the last of the asteroid field.

Yoochun cheered, raising his hands over his head and giving a little seated victory dance before turning to see Jaejoong grinning at him. He didn’t think, just reached out and grabbed Jaejoong’s face and pulled him in for a brief, firm kiss.

Jaejoong blinked at him for a moment, then chuckled a little as Yoochun pulled away, face red and clearing his throat, trying to think of a way to play it off.

“You know, I’ve had a few piloting gigs before,” Jaejoong said as he pressed a few buttons to check the monitors before re-engaging the autopilot. “No one has ever paid me with a kiss, before, though.”

“Really?” Yoochun cleared his throat one last time. “Well, there is a first for everything, I suppose.”

“There is, but since I am the best pilot in three sectors, I would expect a slightly larger payment. That was suitable for, maybe, the second or even the third-best pilot in three sectors.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, I think that’s right.”

Yoochun stood and took the half step that brought him next to Jaejoong’s chair in such a way that Jaejoong was forced to look up at him. “Then,” he said as he leaned down. “Maybe I should pay you again.”

The second kiss was softer, gentler, starting out as a mere whisper of lips on lips before Yoochun swept his tongue along Jaejoong’s lips and teased them open. He kept the kiss light and teasing, promising but never fulfilling as he nipped with his teeth and lightly probed with his tongue, until Jaejoong’s hands were clutching at his shirt and Yoochun coaxed a small sound that might have been a moan or a whimper from him, but he couldn’t be sure.

They ended up in Yoochun’s bed, and in spite of Jaejoong’s teasing, they didn’t use the restraints that were put away in the cupboard above the bunk. Afterward, they lay on the bed, both sweaty and sated, Jaejoong resting his head on Yoochun’s shoulder after he had briefly gotten up to reach for a tissue to clean up the mess he had made on his stomach. Yoochun ran his fingers through Jaejoong’s hair and sighed after a moment.

“You’re not human, are you?”

Jaejoong went a little stiff, but Yoochun didn’t stop playing with his hair, so he slowly relaxed before he answered.

“No, I’m not. I’m guessing, given what just happened, that it won’t be an issue.”

“Not for me, no. I knew the first day, you know. Your eyes gave you away. I had never seen anything like that, so I looked it up. But the only thing the database had was a brief description of an extinct species.”

Jaejoong nodded slowly. “Yes, and that is the way we want it, the way it needs to stay.”

“Why?” Yoochun whispered the question, his other hand rising and resting on top of Jaejoong’s where it rested over his heart.

Jaejoong sighed and his fingers shifted underneath Yoochun’s before he began to speak.

“There was a war, a long time ago. We were overconfident, believed we could win with inferior numbers because we were better trained, and had superior weaponry. We were right on that score, so they sent hunters to kill our civilians. Whole towns were wiped out at first, then gradually we were forced into the cities and the bombardments began. It took months, but they were smart about it. We could strike back, but not hard enough. In the end, the Elders decided the best course of action was a strategic retreat. They chose carefully and sent us away, slowly, under cover of darkness and technology that hadn’t been perfected yet when the war started. Finally, all that was left were those who had volunteered as Sacrifices.”

Jaejoong’s voice didn’t waver, but Yoochun was holding him in such a way that he could feel the pulse in his wrist, the way it increased, and he squeezed Jaejoong’s hand gently as he continued.

“The Sacrifices waged one last offensive, gave everything they had in an attempt to make us look desperate, that this was our final hurrah. And it worked. The enemy retaliated with everything they had, and when the dust settled, all that was left of our homeworld was a dead rock in space. The atmosphere was gone, burned away by the weapons they unleashed, weapons we hadn’t known they had. They declared us extinct, but they knew there were still some of us. They found one of the colonies, only a few years after the war was over, and annihilated everyone there. They hunt us still, though they have recruited from other races to do so, spinning lies of us as monsters, stealing faces and lives to keep their recruits focused on us as the enemy.”

Yoochun sighed softly, pressing a gentle kiss to Jaejoong’s forehead. The pain Jaejoong felt for his people was evident in his voice. It never wavered, and he didn’t shed a tear. It was the way his voice became more and more flat the longer he had spoken. Jaejoong was silent for a long minute, then he shifted, pulling himself up on one elbow and turning to look at Yoochun. His eyes gleamed a soft purple, and Yoochun gasped at the sight. He was beautiful before, but the change was startling and Yoochun suddenly wondered if this what he had always looked like.

“We still have colonies,” Jaejoong said quietly. “They are hidden well, and our children stay until they are trained in a field, ready to take a place in the world outside of the colony, and able to hide themselves. We hide ourselves so much, many of us never take our true form once we reach adulthood and leave the colony. We haven’t found the hunters yet, not completely, but we believe there are things they don’t know about us. If we are in our true form, there is little than can kill us. Wounds that would end a human life -- that would end our life if we were in a human form -- will not kill us. It is hard to explain, it is something like a coma for a human, but deeper, a sort of suspension of life, if you will, there isn’t a word for it in any language but our own.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Yoochun frowned, not liking the direction the conversation was going.

“I trust you.” Jaejoong didn’t say any more, just leaned forward and pressed his lips urgently against Yoochun’s before moving to straddle his hips, his hands moving down Yoochun’s sides and Yoochun moaned and let it go.

Yoochun woke a few hours later to a pinging from the comm unit on the wall above his head. He stretched to see it, careful not to wake Jaejoong, who was using his chest as a pillow, and frowned. He had no idea why Changmin would call him at what was three am standard time, much less what he wanted to say, but he was fairly sure that he didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was. Knowing Changmin it could be anything from his call to Victoria to the Inspection Report that would have been filed after the stop at Station Beta Four. He pressed the ignore button and settled back into bed, smiling as Jaejoong let out a small sound and readjusted himself after Yoochun’s movements had stilled. He fell asleep with one hand holding Jaejoong’s along his side and the other buried in the soft hair on Jaejoong’s head.

Docking at the tiny stations like the Alpha Five Substation was never easy, but Jaejoong made it look like the simplest thing in the known galaxy when they arrived the next evening. They still had an hour until they were to meet with Yoochun’s contact, so the two took the chance to sit quietly together, chatting about this and that, both avoiding the question of what to do when the time came to meet with Changmin the next day.

The man who had contacted Yoochun arrived on time, with a cart pulling a large bundle of cargo suspended from the ground by small anti-grav units. The units strained a little once the bay doors were closed and the ship’s artificial gravity took over again, but they didn’t have to work long. With help from Jaejoong, Yoochun lined up the cartons on the bay floor and lowered them gently before locking in the magnetic clips that would keep them secure even in the event of a failure of the artificial gravity system. Once that was done and the paperwork for the legal portion of the shipment was signed and sent off to the station’s administration office to be registered, the man brought out a small box and handed it over to Yoochun along with a short phrase that would be said to him by the contact who would come see him on Station Alpha Three to pick up the box. The rest of the cargo would be offloaded and sent on its way when they arrived.

Yoochun took the box and once the man was off the ship and the bay doors were closed once again, he and Jaejoong returned to the store room off the engine room and Yoochun again opened the panel. He sighed and took the cuff out, handing it to Jaejoong without a word before placing the box in its place and strapping it down with the webbing to keep it safe and protected. Once the panel was back in place and everything was as it had been, he pulled Jaejoong close and the two shared a soft kiss.

“I don’t look forward to putting that back on you. If I could think of a way to get around Changmin, I would do it. I would leave with you, run forever.”

Jaejoong smiled. “I told you, I have a plan. If I play my cards right, I might even be able to swing a smaller sentence combined with probation. I could be out in as little as six months if I give them some information, too.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Yoochun said, shaking his head.

Jaejoong didn’t answer, just tugged on Yoochun’s hand and they walked back to the cargo bay on their way to the bridge. Regardless of what they wanted, they needed to get underway again soon.

Yoochun stopped when they reached the cargo bay as the klaxon that signaled the airlock being opened from the outside sounded in the room, and Yoochun looked to the bay doors, then the smaller, man-sized hatch embedded in the one on the left as it opened and a tall man walked through. The klaxon stopped its alert when the hatch was closed and latched.

“Changmin,” Yoochun questioned, looking frantically over his shoulder toward Jaejoong. “What are you doing here, we were supposed to meet on Station Alpha Three.”

“Yes, we were,” Changmin said. “But that changed when you removed the cuff. It sent out a signal as soon as it was unlocked, and I followed it here.” Changmin shook his head and pulled an energy pistol from inside his coat. “I told you not to trust him, Yoochun. I’ve known you since we were kids, and you’ve always been so gullible. I was trying to protect you.”

Yoochun looked at the weapon in Changmin’s hand, a model he had never seen before, and he was fairly familiar with all of the legal and illegal models available, since he moved plenty of both from time to time. Jaejoong made a sound behind him, and he looked over to him, catching the brief gleam of purple in Jaejoong’s eyes before they became darker than Yoochun had ever seen them.

“You’re a hunter, then,” Jaejoong said and Yoochun was left looking between the two men in confusion. Changmin was many things, including being an annoying bastard at times, but Yoochun had difficulty believing he was involved in hunting down people just because of their genetic code.

“Jaejoong, you’re wrong. I’m sure there’s a mistake.”

“There’s no mistake, Yoochun,” Changmin said with a small sigh. “You gave him the sob story, I’m sure. I’ll bet you left out the part about your kind being known as the ‘Destroyers of Worlds,’ didn’t you?” Changmin sneered at Jaejoong and raised the pistol. “It makes them seem like such victims when you leave that part out,” he said to Yoochun.

“I never said we were innocent. We had our part to play in our fate, but the destruction of every last member of our race is a bit of a high price to pay, don’t you think? There is no one left alive, now, who was alive then.”

Changmin laughed. “Do you think I care right now? I know what your people did in the past, and this is no more than what you deserve. Look at you! Shooting a mother who has turned her life around and given up her past, given up who she was, her family, everything about her life before four years ago is over. But you didn’t care. All you cared about was the payday, wasn’t it?”

“If that was all I really cared about, she and your daughter would be dead.”

Changmin let out a strangled scream, and Yoochun moved without thinking, shoving Jaejoong aside and sending the cuff skidding across the floor with a metallic clatter as Jaejoong fell to the floor and Changmin fired. The bolt missed Jaejoong, but Yoochun let out a short yell, clutching at his arm and the smoking hole between his shoulder and his elbow. The bolt had only hit muscle and not bone, but it hurt worse than anything he had ever felt before and he was breathing heavily as he stared at Changmin.

Jaejoong got to his feet and Changmin leveled his weapon at him, but Yoochun stepped in the way, his eyes watering both from the pain in his arm and the pain that his friend that he had known and trusted for so long was turning out to be someone Yoochun didn’t even recognize.

“Move, Yoochun,” Changmin said. “I don’t want to have to tell your poor mother that both of her sons are dead.”

“You won’t shoot me,” Yoochun tried to put as much belief in his voice as he could, but he wasn’t as sure of that as he would have been just a minute before.

“Don’t be so sure, Yoochun. I’m not the kid you grew up with, anymore. I will do what I have to, and if that means shooting you, then I will. You won’t be the first of your family who got in the way at the wrong time.”

Yoochun frowned for a moment, then shook his head.

“Yoohwan? You are the bastard that killed my brother?”

Changmin sighed. “I didn’t want to, Yoochun, but I had a job to do, and he got in the way. He made his own decisions.”

Yoochun was beyond thought as he launched himself across the few feet that separated him from Changmin, hitting him with all of his weight behind him, knocking them both to the floor and the pistol from Changmin’s hand. He didn’t realize he was screaming as he did his best to make sure his fists made contact with any and every part of Changmin they could. Changmin grabbed onto his arm, pressing his thumb viciously against the wound and Yoochun screamed, falling back and rolling away as Changmin released him, going for the gun that had slid away. Yoochun looked over and saw a black, leathery-looking hand reach out and pick up the weapon and looked up as he slowly got to his feet.

Jaejoong was different, his skin dark and black, slick-looking where it stretched across thin fingers, longer than they had ever been before and across his cheeks, the cheekbones much more prominent, a different version of the man he knew, but still Jaejoong. Yoochun struggled to catch his breath, his chest tight with asthma triggered by the stress of the wound and his attack on Changmin, but he did his best to pull air into his lungs and control his breathing as he stared at Jaejoong. The purple eyes flicked to him and he saw there the man he knew, the man he trusted. For a moment, he forgot the gun, forgot Changmin and all he could think was how beautiful Jaejoong was like this.

He was jerked from his thoughts as Changmin’s arm circled his throat, pulling him back against a thin chest and nearly cutting off what little air he could pull into his lungs with how tight he was held. He felt cold metal against his temple and a look at Jaejoong confirmed that Changmin was holding a gun to his head. Yoochun didn’t need to see it, he just had to see the pain, the concern in purple eyes to know. Jaejoong raised the energy weapon that Changmin had dropped when Yoochun attacked him, but it wasn’t pointed at Changmin.

“No!” Yoochun forced the word past the pressure and pain in his chest and coughed, trying to choke out more words. The fit ended quickly enough, and Changmin’s hold tightened on Yoochun’s throat once more.

Jaejoong looked at Yoochun as he pressed the barrel of the energy pistol to his own head.

“Remember me.”

Yoochun screamed as a flash of light burst from the end of the barrel and the light left Jaejoong’s eyes as his entire body went slack. He was there milliseconds after the lifeless body hit the ground, crying, feeling for a pulse, begging Jaejoong to not be dead while brushing his thick hair off his face. He felt the pressure in his chest growing, knew it was getting impossible to breathe, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered.

He heard a commotion, the klaxon sounding in the hanger again, and he looked up at the emergency personnel that rushed into the cargo bay and came toward him. He looked back at Jaejoong, at the face that had returned to looking human and wondered if he had imagined seeing something else, if it had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination before it became too hard to breathe and he fell into the welcoming abyss.

Epilogue

Yoochun smiled a little as he heard the distinctive laugh of his new engineer. The man had found him one day not long after the events on the Alpha Five substation. Yoochun had been hospitalized for a day for his wound and the asthma attack that had caused him to lose consciousness. He had been visited by detectives from the larger station on the largest moon of Alpha Five, but he had not added anything to what they had pieced together from the crime scene in Yoochun’s cargo bay. They did tell him, though, that family had come to claim Jaejoong’s body.

Changmin was being let go with a reprimand and a two-year suspension of his bounty hunting license. Changmin had claimed that the prisoner had gotten free during transport and tried to stow away on Yoochun’s ship, then had held Yoochun hostage and shot him after he was discovered before he could hide. Changmin had not been able to explain the obvious suicide beyond that Jaejoong had been mentally unstable. The licensing board had decided that the incident was allowed to happen because Changmin had shown poor judgement in his methods of transport and restraint and ordered the suspension.

Changmin or Victoria called once a week, and had every week in the two months since the incident, but he never answered their calls. Yunho had called to say he had been told that Yoochun had “bonded with the prisoner” in Changmin’s terms, and to offer his condolences. Yoochun had seen the censure in his eyes, but he appreciated that he had the sense to keep those thoughts to himself. He had also transferred the payment Jaejoong had promised him to Yoochun’s bank account, though Yoochun had done nothing more with it than move it to an unused savings account.

He had finished the cargo run he had accepted on Alpha Five and had been getting ready to leave Alpha Three a day and a half later when a young man wandered in through the open cargo bay doors and whistled.

“Wow, this is kind of impressive for a ship this size.”

“Sorry,” Yoochun had said. “But what are you doing on my ship?”

“Oh! Sorry, I forgot. I was asking around for work and several people said you might be looking for an engineer. I’m Junsu.”

Yoochun had shaken the extended hand without thinking about it, then stepped back.

“I do need an engineer,” Yoochun said, “but the pay will vary depending on how much work we get.”

“That’s to be expected,” Junsu answered, smiling widely. “Especially when one isn’t exactly an upright, law-abiding operation.”

Yoochun had stopped at that, his eyes widening, and Junsu had just laughed, and a loud, raucous laugh that reminded him of the dolphins he had seen at the waterpark as a kid. Then he winked.

“I hear you might need a pilot, too. My cousin will be looking for a job in a few months, I’m told. He’s the best pilot in three sectors.”

Yoochun had hired Junsu on the spot, and now, after two months, he was sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Junsu had gone over the engine, grumbled some about his rear end having trouble getting into some of the tight spaces and grumbled more about the rough maintenance Yoochun had managed to do, but the engine was running better now than it ever had, Yoochun was sure.

He finished signing the paperwork for the shipment of cargo he had just accepted. They were far out on the edges of the known galaxy, but still the paperwork followed. He wondered, sometimes, if there was anywhere in the galaxy that didn’t have paperwork and red tape.

“Yoochun!”

He turned at Junsu’s call and stopped, his breath caught in his chest as he saw who was with him. He smiled slowly at first, a little hesitant, but the smirk he got in return and the flash of purple in the brown eyes changed his smile to a grin as he walked across the cargo bay and pulled the man into his arms, whispering into his ear, “Welcome back, Jaejoong.”

Poll Round 29: One Week