The Sky Full of Ghosts 2/? "Mail order omega in space" AU
(space is a strange and dangerous place, but I promises fic has a happy ending)
The trip from New Boston, out to where Jordie is on the fringe, is eight weeks. After the first, Tyler knows it’s gonna be hell. Moving goods and people to the fringe is just a side-line to the shipping company. The real money is in getting raw materials from the fringe to the core. The space is tight, people sleeping in shifts to get the most use out of the honeycomb beds and tight-packed seating, the limited area that they bother to pressurize. Crowded and ugly. The hormone suppressants Tyler’s on make him feel queasy, off-balance.
He plays the virtual reality piloting game Jordie sent him to escape, lying in his coffin-sized space. He’s glad to have it since there’s next to nothing to do all day. He thinks about the things he left behind-the reader with all of his books and music on it, his favorite coat. He’d left with nothing but Jordie’s gift in his pocket, a thumbnail sized chip with all of their communication on it, all of their letters and videos.
Corresponding with a ship making a long series of jumps to cover immense distances is kind of hit-and-miss. Jordie sends him messages about twice a week, cheap-to-send notes about the preparations he’s making for Tyler’s arrival, sweet little still images of his soft eyes, bushy beard and gentle smile. Tyler gets them two at a time sometimes and then crafts his own replies--telling Jordie how much he’s looking forward to seeing his ship, meeting his brother and his crew. How very much it means to him, to have Jordie as a part of his new life.
Then…one week, everybody else gets mail, and there’s nothing for him, and he can’t fathom why the other messages in the packet went through and his didn’t, but the idea that Jordie just didn’t send him anything is equally perplexing.
It’s a relief when his mail pings the next time when everyone else’s does, but his relief collapses when he opens his mail and Jordie hasn’t messaged him. It’s from Jordie’s brother Jamie. He’s only had one previous contact from Jamie, a photo of Jordie drunk and grinning and shooting the camera a rude gesture, a note that said “Just seems fair to let you know what you’re really getting yourself into. No, but seriously, welcome to the family”. His heart clenches when he sees Jamie’s face for the first time ever, his devastated eyes, the naked sorrow. Sending video to a ship is painfully expensive. There’s no. No good reason for this man to have sent him one.
“I wanted you to know,” Jordie’s brother says to the camera, “Before you arrived. There. There was an accident. Jordie, he…he died. He’s gone. I didn’t want you to land and him not be here. This wasn’t…I’m so sorry. When you get here, we’ll figure it out. You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
Tyler stares at the little screen. Cycles through lost, angry, betrayed, disappointed. His plans crushed to dust, his future in doubt. He lies in his slot and refuses to get up when the shift changes and he’s supposed to be sitting in a chair. The woman he’s sharing with looks at him, walks away mumbling.
Nobody interferes with him for the rest of the journey. He hears whispers of bad luck and cursed and thinks they might be true.
He pulls himself together in the few days left before the transport ship lands. Washes when it’s his turn on the shower rotation. Forces himself to eat at least half of what’s in his ration each day. He tries to be strong even though he doesn’t feel like he is doing a good job of it.
Jamie is a big dude, tall and thick and solemn. Dark eyes carry a world of grief, of pain. He meets Tyler at the station. “I’m sorry it’s me,” are the first words he says, looking at Tyler like the sight of him twists a knife in his guts. Like he can’t look away, even though he wants to. “Jordie wanted this moment like breathing. You were the only thing he talked about for the past half a year.”
He carries Tyler’s bag, the things he bought on his way to the shuttle that took him out of New Boston. Tyler is real glad he does; it’s hard to be on ‘solid’ land after so long in transport, disorienting to not have the constant hum of the engines, the microscopic corrections of the synthetic gravity system. He’s swaying when he walks, can’t seem to put his feet down where he wants them.
Even with the stink of suppressants on him, Tyler catches attention, alphas turning their heads, flaring nostrils as they catch his scent. They watch him with longing, loneliness, so many of the local omegas having left for better lives in the core.
Jamie takes him to a place where boxes are being unloaded from a tiny ship, and Tyler recognizes the logo from Jordie’s pride-filled notes about his baby, his “Dalla’s Star.” They sit on crates and Jamie gives him something alcoholic that burns the hairs of his nose when he sniffs it.
“I want you to know,” Jamie says, painfully serious. “That you’ll be taken care of. For the love I have for Jordie, for the love he had for you. I will not let anything bad happen to you if I have it in my power to help you. We. We’d saved some money; it took two years. Enough for him to pay the transportation for an omega to come here. There’s not much left, but. That’s for you. It’s not enough to send you back, and it’ll take me a while to get the funds together, paying someone else to do the work he used to. Or…” he takes a deep breath and powers through, “Or you could find another alpha and ask them to help you with the cost to get back to the core.”
Tyler nods, trying to process, trying to work through his options.
“Jordie made you a promise,” Jamie continues on, voice soft and dark eyes near-hidden behind his eyelashes, so earnest even though he can’t actually look at Tyler. “And if what you want is a spouse, an alpha who will protect and cherish and honor you, do his best to love you, then I would consider it the greatest gift I could be given to have the chance to be that for you.”
Tyler’s chest feels tight; it’s all too much, too soon.
“Can I think about it?” he asks.
Jamie nods, stiff, like he’s near falling apart himself. “Of course. As long as you need. There’s rooms here on the station you can rent, or Jor… Jordie’s room is empty for now, until I hire someone on. Probably need two to fill his skill sets; I don’t know how I’m gonna…”
He catches himself rambling, takes a sharp breath.
“Whatever you need, just please. Please tell me.”
Tyler thinks that if he doesn’t need anything that he’ll just make something up, give Jamie some excuse to help him, that it would be a kindness to let him be useful.
“I’d like to lay down,” Tyler says, and Jamie nods, stands and shoulders Tyler’s bag.
“It’ll be a little noisy with the unload, but they should be done soon,” Jamie tells him, leads him through claustrophobically tight hallways to a narrow hatch, into a small room that’s mostly bed. It smells warm, like a living person slept here just a few nights ago. Tyler sits down on the edge of the bed.
“Do you need…” Jamie starts, and Tyler shakes his head. He just needs to be alone. Needs to process this, needs to figure out what he’s going to do with the rest of his fucking life without Jordie. He holds himself together until Jamie backs out of the door and closes it, and then he breaks down, like he couldn’t do on the transport, big ugly sobs, crying until his chest aches and his eyes burn, crying for Jordie and himself, crying for Jamie, who seems like a good guy and didn’t deserve to get stuck with someone he never chose, a complete stranger.
He’s not sure how late it is when there’s a knock. “Brought you something to eat,” Jamie calls through the door, but he’s gone when Tyler opens it, leaving a disposable box of meat and rice and savory sauce, an insulated cup of some fruity-tasting tea.
Tyler knows it’s childish and unfair, but after the crowded and impersonal world of the transport ship, he just needs a few days, and he hides in Jordie’s room, exploring Jordie’s stuff, playing the game Jordie sent him (that feels like a lifetime ago), sleeping and thinking. Lots of thinking.
He finally emerges when he’s too stir-crazy to be inside those four walls any longer. Follows his nose towards fresh food and finds Jamie and a tall man with broad shoulders and a sly smile eating in a tiny kitchen.
“Tyler,” Jamie says, unsure. Like if he says it wrong, Tyler will disappear back into the depths of his sorrow.
“Hey,” the man says, and offers his hand. “Antoine. Roussel. I keep this bucket in the sky.” He has a soft roll of an accent to his voice, and teeth that are too even, too bright to be real.
“Tyler,” he replies on instinct, “I…” and he doesn’t anything. Isn’t anything.
“Nice to have you on board,” Roussel says anyway.
Jamie passes him a bowl of soup, bright red and chunky, and Tyler takes one of the seats that’s bolted to the floor.
“We were just talking staffing issues,” Jamie says. “An old friend of mine has agreed to sign on, Hilary Knight. She’s a good prospect, I think. She’ll be here in about a hour and then we can get off this rock.”
“No, please no,” Antoine protests, but a smile plays at the corner of his lips, dances in his eyes. “The woman is mean. So mean.”
Jamie shrugs like that sounds fair. “Anyway, she’s smart, strong, another beta, and tough as shit. Knows when to push and when to back off. I thought she’d be nice to have around since we’ve got…”
An unbonded omega aboard, Tyler thinks. He nods and takes a bite of the food. It’s not bad, kind of a slightly sour broth with chunks of the same stuff in solid form throughout it.
“She’s never done any picking before, but she should be strong and agile enough. She’s got zero-G and space-walk experience.”
“I see my opinion is so valued around here,” Antoine grumbles, at the same time Tyler asks “Picking? What?”
Jamie freezes and looks guilty. “Uh, what did Jordie tell you we did for a living?”
“Interplanetary transport and delivery of goods.” Tyler narrows his eyes. What the hell.
Jamie rubs the back of his neck, and Antoine snorts.
“You’ve heard of the Cormarin belt?” Jamie asks, and Tyler nods. Everybody’s heard of it, a ring of space debris that makes a wide belt around the sun Cormarin. Thousands of years old, it’s the debris from an alien war, unbelievably vast. The remains of a hundred million ships, scattered with the shattered bones of planets and moons. It’s the source of most new tech these days, a gray area of salvage law. The government tries to keep people out, but policing it is difficult. There’s always some idiot willing to fly in, risk dying by meddling with technology that’s beyond human understanding.
Some idiot like-
“Fuck. He. Jordie, he was there, wasn’t he? What did you call it, picking?”
Jamie flinches like Tyler hit him.
“Yeah,” he admits. “He. He picked something up. It was round, about this big…” he cups his hands together, leaves a space for something small, delicate. Nothing to be afraid of.
“He must have pressed a button. Or just moving it set it off. A grenade or something. He just. There was a flash, a perfect globe of light. Everything inside it was vaporized when I could see again. It cut through the bulkhead, the wall. It was all destroyed. Jor. He was gone. Just gone.”
Tyler feels sick. “And you’re gonna what, go back there? Go and and and risk your life?”
He puts his bowl down hard enough that it sloshes over the edge, turns and runs back to his room and the tiny bathroom cubicle and vomits into the toilet. Red hits the bowl, spatters like blood before the autovac sucks it away. He feels Jamie behind him more than he hears him.
“What the fuck?” Tyler asks, his voice a ragged whine, “What the fuck, he died for nothing! For money! I don’t. I don’t. Why?!”
“Tyler.” Jamie’s hand is light but warm on Tyler’s shoulder and he turns, presses his forehead to Jamie’s shoulder, trying to shut out the sight of this place, of this shitty shitty situation. “Tyler, he died so he could live. The thing about transport, yeah, we do some of that too, but it’s not enough to keep a ship like this in fuel and parts. Not enough to have a tech like Roussel on board. Picking the belt keeps us out of debt, keeps us out of danger. Keeps us from having to do things that are actually illegal to get by. We’re the first in our family to not be working the mines, Jordie and I. It’s. It’s the only way an alpha out here can hope to get an omega. Hope to get the money together to bring one out or make one stay. And I know it’s scary. I know it’s not safe. But it’s all we’ve got. The best we’ve got. Nobody wanted to die. I swear to you, Tyler, I promise. He didn’t throw away the chance to meet you for some thrill-ride, for some adrenaline junkie fun.”
Tyler’s shaking, not crying exactly, but trembling, and Jamie holds him, so strong and solid. Jamie holds him until Tyler can breathe again.
===============
The trip from New Boston, out to where Jordie is on the fringe, is eight weeks. After the first, Tyler knows it’s gonna be hell. Moving goods and people to the fringe is just a side-line to the shipping company. The real money is in getting raw materials from the fringe to the core. The space is tight, people sleeping in shifts to get the most use out of the honeycomb beds and tight-packed seating, the limited area that they bother to pressurize. Crowded and ugly. The hormone suppressants Tyler’s on make him feel queasy, off-balance.
He plays the virtual reality piloting game Jordie sent him to escape, lying in his coffin-sized space. He’s glad to have it since there’s next to nothing to do all day. He thinks about the things he left behind-the reader with all of his books and music on it, his favorite coat. He’d left with nothing but Jordie’s gift in his pocket, a thumbnail sized chip with all of their communication on it, all of their letters and videos.
Corresponding with a ship making a long series of jumps to cover immense distances is kind of hit-and-miss. Jordie sends him messages about twice a week, cheap-to-send notes about the preparations he’s making for Tyler’s arrival, sweet little still images of his soft eyes, bushy beard and gentle smile. Tyler gets them two at a time sometimes and then crafts his own replies--telling Jordie how much he’s looking forward to seeing his ship, meeting his brother and his crew. How very much it means to him, to have Jordie as a part of his new life.
Then…one week, everybody else gets mail, and there’s nothing for him, and he can’t fathom why the other messages in the packet went through and his didn’t, but the idea that Jordie just didn’t send him anything is equally perplexing.
It’s a relief when his mail pings the next time when everyone else’s does, but his relief collapses when he opens his mail and Jordie hasn’t messaged him. It’s from Jordie’s brother Jamie. He’s only had one previous contact from Jamie, a photo of Jordie drunk and grinning and shooting the camera a rude gesture, a note that said “Just seems fair to let you know what you’re really getting yourself into. No, but seriously, welcome to the family”. His heart clenches when he sees Jamie’s face for the first time ever, his devastated eyes, the naked sorrow. Sending video to a ship is painfully expensive. There’s no. No good reason for this man to have sent him one.
“I wanted you to know,” Jordie’s brother says to the camera, “Before you arrived. There. There was an accident. Jordie, he…he died. He’s gone. I didn’t want you to land and him not be here. This wasn’t…I’m so sorry. When you get here, we’ll figure it out. You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
Tyler stares at the little screen. Cycles through lost, angry, betrayed, disappointed. His plans crushed to dust, his future in doubt. He lies in his slot and refuses to get up when the shift changes and he’s supposed to be sitting in a chair. The woman he’s sharing with looks at him, walks away mumbling.
Nobody interferes with him for the rest of the journey. He hears whispers of bad luck and cursed and thinks they might be true.
He pulls himself together in the few days left before the transport ship lands. Washes when it’s his turn on the shower rotation. Forces himself to eat at least half of what’s in his ration each day. He tries to be strong even though he doesn’t feel like he is doing a good job of it.
Jamie is a big dude, tall and thick and solemn. Dark eyes carry a world of grief, of pain. He meets Tyler at the station. “I’m sorry it’s me,” are the first words he says, looking at Tyler like the sight of him twists a knife in his guts. Like he can’t look away, even though he wants to. “Jordie wanted this moment like breathing. You were the only thing he talked about for the past half a year.”
He carries Tyler’s bag, the things he bought on his way to the shuttle that took him out of New Boston. Tyler is real glad he does; it’s hard to be on ‘solid’ land after so long in transport, disorienting to not have the constant hum of the engines, the microscopic corrections of the synthetic gravity system. He’s swaying when he walks, can’t seem to put his feet down where he wants them.
Even with the stink of suppressants on him, Tyler catches attention, alphas turning their heads, flaring nostrils as they catch his scent. They watch him with longing, loneliness, so many of the local omegas having left for better lives in the core.
Jamie takes him to a place where boxes are being unloaded from a tiny ship, and Tyler recognizes the logo from Jordie’s pride-filled notes about his baby, his “Dalla’s Star.” They sit on crates and Jamie gives him something alcoholic that burns the hairs of his nose when he sniffs it.
“I want you to know,” Jamie says, painfully serious. “That you’ll be taken care of. For the love I have for Jordie, for the love he had for you. I will not let anything bad happen to you if I have it in my power to help you. We. We’d saved some money; it took two years. Enough for him to pay the transportation for an omega to come here. There’s not much left, but. That’s for you. It’s not enough to send you back, and it’ll take me a while to get the funds together, paying someone else to do the work he used to. Or…” he takes a deep breath and powers through, “Or you could find another alpha and ask them to help you with the cost to get back to the core.”
Tyler nods, trying to process, trying to work through his options.
“Jordie made you a promise,” Jamie continues on, voice soft and dark eyes near-hidden behind his eyelashes, so earnest even though he can’t actually look at Tyler. “And if what you want is a spouse, an alpha who will protect and cherish and honor you, do his best to love you, then I would consider it the greatest gift I could be given to have the chance to be that for you.”
Tyler’s chest feels tight; it’s all too much, too soon.
“Can I think about it?” he asks.
Jamie nods, stiff, like he’s near falling apart himself. “Of course. As long as you need. There’s rooms here on the station you can rent, or Jor… Jordie’s room is empty for now, until I hire someone on. Probably need two to fill his skill sets; I don’t know how I’m gonna…”
He catches himself rambling, takes a sharp breath.
“Whatever you need, just please. Please tell me.”
Tyler thinks that if he doesn’t need anything that he’ll just make something up, give Jamie some excuse to help him, that it would be a kindness to let him be useful.
“I’d like to lay down,” Tyler says, and Jamie nods, stands and shoulders Tyler’s bag.
“It’ll be a little noisy with the unload, but they should be done soon,” Jamie tells him, leads him through claustrophobically tight hallways to a narrow hatch, into a small room that’s mostly bed. It smells warm, like a living person slept here just a few nights ago. Tyler sits down on the edge of the bed.
“Do you need…” Jamie starts, and Tyler shakes his head. He just needs to be alone. Needs to process this, needs to figure out what he’s going to do with the rest of his fucking life without Jordie. He holds himself together until Jamie backs out of the door and closes it, and then he breaks down, like he couldn’t do on the transport, big ugly sobs, crying until his chest aches and his eyes burn, crying for Jordie and himself, crying for Jamie, who seems like a good guy and didn’t deserve to get stuck with someone he never chose, a complete stranger.
He’s not sure how late it is when there’s a knock. “Brought you something to eat,” Jamie calls through the door, but he’s gone when Tyler opens it, leaving a disposable box of meat and rice and savory sauce, an insulated cup of some fruity-tasting tea.
Tyler knows it’s childish and unfair, but after the crowded and impersonal world of the transport ship, he just needs a few days, and he hides in Jordie’s room, exploring Jordie’s stuff, playing the game Jordie sent him (that feels like a lifetime ago), sleeping and thinking. Lots of thinking.
He finally emerges when he’s too stir-crazy to be inside those four walls any longer. Follows his nose towards fresh food and finds Jamie and a tall man with broad shoulders and a sly smile eating in a tiny kitchen.
“Tyler,” Jamie says, unsure. Like if he says it wrong, Tyler will disappear back into the depths of his sorrow.
“Hey,” the man says, and offers his hand. “Antoine. Roussel. I keep this bucket in the sky.” He has a soft roll of an accent to his voice, and teeth that are too even, too bright to be real.
“Tyler,” he replies on instinct, “I…” and he doesn’t anything. Isn’t anything.
“Nice to have you on board,” Roussel says anyway.
Jamie passes him a bowl of soup, bright red and chunky, and Tyler takes one of the seats that’s bolted to the floor.
“We were just talking staffing issues,” Jamie says. “An old friend of mine has agreed to sign on, Hilary Knight. She’s a good prospect, I think. She’ll be here in about a hour and then we can get off this rock.”
“No, please no,” Antoine protests, but a smile plays at the corner of his lips, dances in his eyes. “The woman is mean. So mean.”
Jamie shrugs like that sounds fair. “Anyway, she’s smart, strong, another beta, and tough as shit. Knows when to push and when to back off. I thought she’d be nice to have around since we’ve got…”
An unbonded omega aboard, Tyler thinks. He nods and takes a bite of the food. It’s not bad, kind of a slightly sour broth with chunks of the same stuff in solid form throughout it.
“She’s never done any picking before, but she should be strong and agile enough. She’s got zero-G and space-walk experience.”
“I see my opinion is so valued around here,” Antoine grumbles, at the same time Tyler asks “Picking? What?”
Jamie freezes and looks guilty. “Uh, what did Jordie tell you we did for a living?”
“Interplanetary transport and delivery of goods.” Tyler narrows his eyes. What the hell.
Jamie rubs the back of his neck, and Antoine snorts.
“You’ve heard of the Cormarin belt?” Jamie asks, and Tyler nods. Everybody’s heard of it, a ring of space debris that makes a wide belt around the sun Cormarin. Thousands of years old, it’s the debris from an alien war, unbelievably vast. The remains of a hundred million ships, scattered with the shattered bones of planets and moons. It’s the source of most new tech these days, a gray area of salvage law. The government tries to keep people out, but policing it is difficult. There’s always some idiot willing to fly in, risk dying by meddling with technology that’s beyond human understanding.
Some idiot like-
“Fuck. He. Jordie, he was there, wasn’t he? What did you call it, picking?”
Jamie flinches like Tyler hit him.
“Yeah,” he admits. “He. He picked something up. It was round, about this big…” he cups his hands together, leaves a space for something small, delicate. Nothing to be afraid of.
“He must have pressed a button. Or just moving it set it off. A grenade or something. He just. There was a flash, a perfect globe of light. Everything inside it was vaporized when I could see again. It cut through the bulkhead, the wall. It was all destroyed. Jor. He was gone. Just gone.”
Tyler feels sick. “And you’re gonna what, go back there? Go and and and risk your life?”
He puts his bowl down hard enough that it sloshes over the edge, turns and runs back to his room and the tiny bathroom cubicle and vomits into the toilet. Red hits the bowl, spatters like blood before the autovac sucks it away. He feels Jamie behind him more than he hears him.
“What the fuck?” Tyler asks, his voice a ragged whine, “What the fuck, he died for nothing! For money! I don’t. I don’t. Why?!”
“Tyler.” Jamie’s hand is light but warm on Tyler’s shoulder and he turns, presses his forehead to Jamie’s shoulder, trying to shut out the sight of this place, of this shitty shitty situation. “Tyler, he died so he could live. The thing about transport, yeah, we do some of that too, but it’s not enough to keep a ship like this in fuel and parts. Not enough to have a tech like Roussel on board. Picking the belt keeps us out of debt, keeps us out of danger. Keeps us from having to do things that are actually illegal to get by. We’re the first in our family to not be working the mines, Jordie and I. It’s. It’s the only way an alpha out here can hope to get an omega. Hope to get the money together to bring one out or make one stay. And I know it’s scary. I know it’s not safe. But it’s all we’ve got. The best we’ve got. Nobody wanted to die. I swear to you, Tyler, I promise. He didn’t throw away the chance to meet you for some thrill-ride, for some adrenaline junkie fun.”
Tyler’s shaking, not crying exactly, but trembling, and Jamie holds him, so strong and solid. Jamie holds him until Tyler can breathe again.
===============