PART ONE: Looking at the Stars - (J2, R)
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing on my ship?”
Jared starts and turns toward the voice, which belongs to an unusually attractive man wearing a half-baked uniform and thigh-holster which could possibly pass for a captain’s attire.
Or a pirate’s.
“Jared,” Jared introduces himself, sticking out a hand, which the other man pointedly ignores. “Jared Padalecki. Captain Ackles, I presume?”
“Just Jensen.” The man brushes past him into the front of the ship, which just might pass for the bridge of the most dilapidated piece of junk Jared has ever seen. “So you’re my fare.”
Jared follows, watching Jensen as he takes a seat in the only available chair and begins flipping switches and pushing buttons. Engines groan to life somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, accompanied by disturbing clanging noises and distressing vibrations and jerking sensations.
“How old is this ship?” Jared asks skeptically.
“What’s it to you? She’s a good ship,” Jensen assures him. “She’ll get you to Alexandria within a week.”
“A week?” Jared squeaks. “I have to be back in ten days. I can’t be away that long!”
“Alexandria’s ten parsecs away, my friend,” Jensen says, raising an amused eyebrow. “Even at maximum warp, you won’t make that in less than a week. You won’t find any faster transportation than my baby, I can promise you that.” He pats the control board affectionately.
“I was told I could make the entire trip in ten days,” Jared insists.
Jensen raises an eyebrow. “Who told you that?”
“Mark Sheppard,” Jared answers. “The shipping agent.”
“Yeah, Mark likes to embellish,” Jensen says with a lopsided grin. “I’ll bet he told you the trip would be cheap, too.”
Jared nods. “Ten thousand credits.”
“Ha! More like twenty,” Jensen scoffs.
“What? I can’t pay that!”
Jensen looks up at him, and Jared feels judged. More than that, he feels seen, pierced by a gaze that understands more of the ways of the world than Jared can imagine. As Jensen’s eyes sweep over him, appraising, Jared blushes.
“How much you got?” Jensen drawls, voice low and rumbling and sexy as sin.
“Ten thousand,” Jared answers, drawing in a shaky breath. “I’ve got ten thousand.”
“Well, you’d better have more than that,” Jensen remarks. “You’re expecting to buy that stone, aren’t you?”
Jared hasn’t said anything about the purpose of his voyage, and he sure as hell isn’t about to reveal it to this mercenary pirate type who might be a little too comfortable on the wrong side of the law. Jared’s mission is entirely legal. Retrieving artifacts from extinct civilizations for study and display at his university’s ancient history museum is what he does. Jared’s position as a professor at the university regularly requires him to travel.
Just not quite this far.
Or with such a colorful captain.
“My university has authorized me to negotiate up to a pre-determined price,” Jared says stiffly. “I’m not at liberty to discuss it with anyone but the trader on Alexandria. And I don’t have direct access to the funds.”
Jensen rolls his eyes. “Of course you don’t. Well, strap in, professor. Take-off’s a little bumpy.”
Jared glances around wildly as the ship lurches forward. When he sees a handle on the wall, he grabs for it to steady himself, only to find that it pulls out, revealing a seat with straps. He barely gets the seat down before the ship lurches again, sideways this time. Jared stumbles, falls awkwardly onto the seat, and scrambles to pull the straps over his shoulders and lock them in place.
“Here we go!”
The ship shoots forward at what seems to Jared an impossible rate of speed, then climbs steeply. He closes his eyes against the sight of the landing pad disappearing below them, at the stark blackness of space rising up in front of them, dotted with stars, and at the g-forces that cause his stomach to lurch. When the ship swoops downward suddenly, Jared struggles to keep his lunch, certain they’re about to crash.
“Oops, lost an engine,” Jensen mutters, punching buttons frantically.
“What?!” Jared shouts, clutching the edges of his seat so hard it hurts.
“Oh, come on!” Jensen slams his hand into the side of the control console and the ship lurches and climbs again, picking up speed as it breaks free of the planet’s gravity.
“What the hell was that?” Jared shouts.
“Fixed it!” Jensen calls out triumphantly. “Hold for capacitor leap.”
Jared frowns, looking around for a handle.
“Hold onto what?”
“Here we go!” Jensen shouts again. He punches some numbers into the computer, then hits a red circle on the center of the console.
The ship grinds to a halt, clearly the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
“Uh.” Jared frowns, lifts an eyebrow, and huffs out a skeptical breath. “I guess we’re not going anywhere.”
“Damn.” Jensen bangs his hand against the control console.
“Captain, I really think I need to find better transportation,” Jared says primly. “Now, if you would be so kind as to return me to the spaceport.”
“Shut up!” Jensen unbuckles his seatbelt, scrambles up and dashes toward the back of the ship, out of sight.
“Captain? Where are you going? What are you doing?” Jared can’t help feeling a little terrified at being abandoned on the bridge of a spaceship that clearly isn’t space-worthy.
Although the star-filled sky outside doesn’t appear to be moving, Jared has a sinking feeling they’re falling through space, dropping toward the nearest gravitational object, which is probably the planet they just left.
Panic rises in his chest as the seconds tick by. He’s about to unbuckle his seat belt to go in search of Captain Ackles when the ship suddenly lurches forward, pinning him down. Stars whizz by the portal as the g-force increases until he’s sure he’s being crushed. He opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out, making him dizzy with lack of air. The ship rattles beneath him. Just as he’s about to lose consciousness or feel the ship tear itself apart around him, it stops.
Not a dead stop, he realizes as he opens his eyes, only then acknowledging that he closed them against the moment of certain death. Rather, the ship seems to have stabilized. The g-force has stopped entirely and Jared feels only a pleasant vibration, hears a soothing hum that can only be the ship’s warp engines, working properly at last.
“Ha!” Captain Ackles swaggers by, slides into the captain’s chair, and pushes some buttons before patting the console affectionately. “That’s my girl.”
“You - you left,” Jared gasps, accusing. “You left me.”
Jensen turns in his seat and raises an eyebrow as he gazes at Jared speculatively.
“Well, somebody had to fix the wormhole capacitor,” he says.
“You don’t have an engineer,” Jared observes, willing himself to breathe normally.
“Nope,” Jensen agrees. “Nor a first officer. It’s just me, captain and crew.” He turns back to the control console, pats it with a proud smile. “I’m all she needs, though, isn’t that right, Baby?”
Jared winces and rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Get a room.”
“Ha.” Jensen smirks. “You’re just jealous.”
Jared opens his mouth to protest but finds himself blushing instead. Jensen is unnaturally attractive, even if Jared doesn’t appreciate his cocky arrogance.
“Not jealous,” he mumbles under his breath, ducking his head to hide his heated cheeks.
He feels Jensen’s eyes on him but refuses to look up, pretending instead to be fascinated by the seams on his vinyl seat.
“You know, you don’t need to sit here for the entire journey,” Jensen says. “Your sleeping quarters are just beyond the entry hatch on the starboard side. You’ve got your own food dispenser and a desk with communication access if you need to log into your system back home so you can get some work done.”
“Oh.” Jared blurts out, vaguely startled. He’d assumed he would be making the journey right here, next to Jensen.
The thought of which, weirdly, doesn’t bother him at all.
But of course Jensen wants him gone from his bridge. Jared’s just a passenger, a “fare,” as Jensen put it. Jensen doesn’t want him here. Jensen would rather be alone.
“Okay,” Jared says, surprising himself by how forlorn he feels. “Yeah. Of course. Thanks.”
The thought of spending the next week in complete isolation on this strange ship is a little daunting, but it sounds like that’s what’s expected.
As he unbuckles his seatbelt and gets up to leave the cockpit, Jensen calls after him.
“Hey.”
Jared pauses, looking back expectantly, half-hoping the captain will invite him to dinner, half disgusted with himself for the thought.
“Baby’s got a helluva pleasure program, if you wanna use it,” Jensen smirks, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “You can access it from your bunk with a verbal command. It’s non-visual, but the other sensory inputs are very lifelike. Almost like being in bed with a real girl.”
Jared shakes his head and frowns, aware that he’s blushing furiously again.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” he insists, turning away to leave the room.
“Or boy,” Jensen calls after him. “If that’s your thing.”
“No, thank you, Captain,” Jared calls back as he retreats to the back of the ship.
“No shame in it,” Jensen’s voice follows him. “Being out here for weeks at a time, a man needs something to stave off the loneliness, that’s all.”
“Oh my god,” Jared mutters under his breath as he closes the door of his cabin.
The space is small and cramped, of course, but there’s a portal that would show stars if they weren’t traveling through a wormhole at the moment, and the lighting is good and adjustable. Jared finds a clothing dispenser that provides pajamas, a washing receptacle for his clothes, and a small, cramped static shower which gives him at least the illusion of being clean when he steps out of it. The pajamas are remarkably roomy and comfortable, and Jared wonders how Jensen managed to program it to Jared’s physical specifications, since they’d barely met.
While his clothes are being cleaned, Jared counts the cash which is usually tucked into a pouch on the inside of his shirt, under his belt. All there. He breathes a sigh of relief as he tucks it temporarily back into the pouch and under his pillow. Given the uncertainty of his reception on Alexandria, the university authorized a cash payment for the stone in addition to the digital payment already allotted. Although he didn’t tell Jensen, Jared does have some room to negotiate with the natives on Alexandria.
Jensen’s fee for getting him there is fixed, of course. The digital transfer into Jensen’s account will have processed as soon as the Impala left the space dock. He’ll get a bonus payment if he gets Jared home safely.
Sometimes, Jared thinks his university sends him on these missions hoping to get rid of him. Especially this one. If it’s as dangerous as Jensen says, Jensen may never see that bonus.
It’s worth the risk, Jared tells himself as he boots up the communicator built into the tiny cabin desk. The stories about the Alexandria Stone go back several millennia, when it was owned by a great king who used it to keep peace in the galaxy for over a thousand years. The stone is known for its power to cure disease, open portals to other worlds, endowing its user with power beyond imagining.
The stories are just that, of course. There’s no historical evidence to back up the mythology surrounding the stone. According to legend, the stone was lost hundreds of years ago, the civilization it protected gone with it.
But when it was found in an ancient temple on Alexandra, in the exact location where it was rumored to have been lost so long ago, the discovery generated intense excitement among Jared’s colleagues in the field of Ancient Archeology. Jared’s expedition to recover the stone and bring it back to his university on Earth has been funded by several major players in the field, many of them retired professors or alumni of the university.
Jared will be expected to provide detailed notes of his journey, of course, so he opens the blog he started when he was first assigned to this expedition and adds his recent adventures, leaving out the part about how devilishly handsome his new ship’s captain is, of course.
When he finishes his blog entry, he reads through the latest issue of Ancient Archeology, programs the replicator to produce something that tastes vaguely like chicken noodle soup, then watches an episode of “Travels In Space,” with host Jake Abel. He chuckles at the show’s depiction of luxury accommodations on various cruise ships, comparing them to the reality of his cramped quarters and meager fare, knowing full well that most people who travel in space do it in the same cheap, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style that Jared’s doing. Jake likes to make luxury space travel look like the only way to go, but that’s why people watch his show. They know better, and the comparison is hilarious as well as comforting.
When the episode finishes, it’s still too early for bed. Jared’s already bored with sitting in his cabin, so he slips back into his now-clean clothes, tucking his money pouch back where it belongs, and goes exploring.
He tells himself he won’t disturb the captain. He’s not searching for him, doesn’t need the company.
But of course he hasn’t been able to get Jensen out of his mind. There’s something about the arrogant, cocky captain that Jared can’t put his finger on. It’s more than his attractiveness, although that’s certainly part of it.
When he ends up on the bridge after exploring the nearly-empty cargo hold, Jensen’s still in his captain’s chair. He’s got the lights down low, leaning back in the chair with one leg over one of the armrests, bottle of something dangling from his fingertips. He’s staring down at a screen, and as Jared draws near he catches a glimpse of what looks like a home movie of a little boy and girl, playing on a swing set together. The girl is younger, maybe only three, and the boy is pushing her, encouraging her to pump her legs to make the swing move on its own. Whoever holds the camera seems to say something because both children look up, into the camera, smiling broadly.
The boy looks like Jensen, Jared realizes in the moment before Jensen’s head snaps up and the screen goes blank.
“Professor?” Jensen swivels in his seat, fixing Jared with the pointed stare of someone who resents being disturbed.
Jared shuffles awkwardly. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
It occurs to Jared that Jensen isn’t the man he thought he was. There’s more to him than meets the eye.
Then he smirks, and Jensen’s bravado returns, the mask he obviously wears to conceal the vulnerable man underneath, the man who watches home movies of himself as a child when nobody’s around to call him on it.
“Something I can help you with?”
Jared shrugs. “I got my work done, ate some dinner, took a shower, took a look at your cargo bay.”
“I never said you could check out my cargo bay,” Jensen growls.
Jared shrugs. “Sorry.”
Jensen’s gaze sweeps down over Jared speculatively, maybe even a little appreciatively, or so Jared pretends. He raises the bottle to his lips, takes a sip, then offers it to Jared.
“Capernium whiskey. Best in the galaxy.”
Jared accepts the bottle, studies the label, nods, then takes a sip, letting it burn down his throat with a sigh before handing it back to Jensen.
“I visited Capernia last year,” he says. “Good food, too.”
Jensen nods before taking another sip. He gestures to the other chair, and Jared takes a seat.
“My work rarely takes me to nice places like Capernia,” Jensen reveals. “This bottle was payment for a ride to the Asteroid Belt.”
“Asteroid Belt?” Jared frowns. “Why would anybody want to go there?”
“Smugglers love it there,” Jensen explains. “Hard to navigate, gravity field makes detection tricky, lots of places to stash loot for later retrieval. Great place to hide out, too.”
“You sound like you go there often,” Jared notes wryly.
“Maybe,” Jensen hedges defensively. “Define ‘often’.”
Jared grins and shakes his head. Jensen hands him the bottle and he takes another swig.
“Your life sounds so exciting compared to mine,” Jared says, almost wistful. “Smugglers, outlaws, mysterious strangers. The most exciting thing I ever do is this. Artifact retrieval.”
Jensen whistles. “You’re headed to Alexandria, man. That’s pretty adventurous, I’d say. Most folks I know avoid that place like the plague.”
Jared frowns. “Why? I thought it was a civilized planet.”
“Was a civilized planet,” Jensen acknowledges. “Since the government coup about five years ago, society has pretty much broken down into factions. Gangs. These days, it’s as lawless as the Old Wild West.”
Jared shakes his head. “According to my department chair, there’s a perfectly stable government in charge there. They’ve offered security for my expedition.”
“Your intel sounds a little outdated,” Jensen notes, reaching for the bottle. “The current ‘government,’ as you call it, is just a tribal dictatorship with a gang of thugs to support it.”
“But they’ve agreed to hand over the Alexandria Stone,” Jared says. “For a price, of course.”
“Oh, there’ll be a price, all right,” Jensen smirks, taking another swig of whiskey. “Just not the kind you’re used to paying.”
Jared bristles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jensen shakes his head, hands the bottle to Jared.
“Never mind,” he says with a shrug. “None of my business anyway. You hired me to get you there. The rest is up to you.”
Jared takes a sip of the whiskey, clears his throat as he hands it back to Jensen.
“So. You have family back on Earth?”
“Do you?” Jensen snaps, obviously avoiding the question.
Jared nods. “Aging parents, little sister.”
Jensen raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of the whiskey, and smacks his lips.
“Little sister, huh? What’s the age difference?” he asks, looking down at the bottle instead of at Jared.
“Four years,” Jared answers. “She’s doing a post-doc in comparative religion right now. Harvard.”
“Sounds smart,” Jensen notes.
“She is,” Jared agrees proudly. “She takes after my mom.”
“And you,” Jensen says. “Professor.”
Jared takes the bottle when Jensen holds it out. Their fingers brush, and an electric bolt of energy tingles through Jared’s whole body, like lightning.
“What about you?” Jared presses after a long sip. “Any family?”
“Nah. Not anymore.”
Jared can feel Jensen’s sadness, his grief. It’s old grief, but it’s there. He doesn’t need to ask. He knows the little girl and the woman’s voice in that home movie are gone, probably long ago.
He raises the bottle. “To family.”
He takes a sip, hands the bottle to Jensen, who flinches as their fingers touch again.
“To family,” Jensen agrees before taking a sip.
“What about a girl?” Jensen asks. “You got one of those? Family of your own?”
Jared shakes his head, blushing again. “No time,” he admits. “Spent the last few years building my career, after twelve years of school. Too busy for anything else.”
Jensen shifts in his chair, smirks. “But you do take a little time off to have some fun, once in a while.”
Jared’s whole body tingles again. He wonders if there’s something in the whiskey.
“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, maybe a little too primly. “I’ve had my share of relationships. Just nothing long-term. Yet.”
“And nothing at the moment,” Jensen states, smirk growing so that it’s almost a leer.
Jared raises an eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me, Captain?”
Jensen starts, a look of surprise crossing his handsome features before he lowers his eyes as a flush rises to his cheeks. It’s a good look. His eyelashes are so long and thick that they look almost fake.
“Maybe,” he admits, eyes still lowered, almost shy. “You’re gorgeous, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Jared murmurs, heart fluttering in his chest.
Immediately, Jensen looks up, flashing a broad, bright smile. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes are adorable, Jared decides, wondering briefly what it would feel like to kiss them.
“Well, that’s settled, then,” Jensen announces, holding out the whisky bottle to Jared, who shakes his head with a little frown.
“What’s settled?”
“Our mutual attraction to each other.” Jensen shrugs. “Now we can fuck. I came prepared, just in case.”
As he pulls a small tube of lube from his pocket, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Jared’s mouth drops open.
“What?” he gasps. “No! That’s not happening, Captain. I can’t do that.”
“Can’t fuck?” Jensen’s gaze sweeps down over Jared’s body, settling in his lap. “I doubt that. You look like you’re built for long-hauling. I bet your stamina is pretty impressive.”
Jared makes a face. “Man, you need to work on your pick-up lines.”
He gets up to leave the bridge, feeling Jensen’s gaze on his ass, stops at the entryway as a sudden thought hits him.
“You know,” he says, turning toward Jensen, who lifts his eyes to Jared’s just a moment too late. “You’re not fooling me with this uncouth, boorish mask you like to wear. I saw what you were watching. You think you can save yourself from intimacy by being an asshole, you keep doing that. But I see you, Captain. I see you.”
As he turns away to head up the narrow passageway to his bunk, he hears Jensen mutter under his breath, “Don’t listen to him, Baby. He doesn’t see a thing.”
Jared rolls his eyes. Jensen has an entirely too personal relationship with this hunk of aging steel and chrome, or whatever spaceships were made of sixty years ago. If Jared cared enough, he might be jealous.
If thoughts of Jensen haunt his dreams that night, Jared does his best to ignore them.
//**//**//
Jared wakes up to silence. Stillness. There’s no comforting humming of engines, no occasional rattling as the ship struggles to stay together against the gravitational forces of the wormhole they’re traveling through.
The ship has stopped.
Jared pulls on his trousers and button-up over his boxers and t-shirt and pads barefoot out the door and down the narrow corridor to the bridge.
“Captain? Captain Ackles?”
Jensen is obviously not on the ship.
The hatch is open, and through it Jared can see the bustling activity of a spaceport, albeit a dark, shabby one. Robots and humans scurry around, delivering goods and supplies to parked vessels. Loudspeakers announce arrivals and departures in such garbled tones as to be basically incomprehensible.
The sharp crack of a weapon discharge followed by urgent shouts draws Jared’s attention to an open doorway on the ground floor a moment before a familiar figure dashes through it, several uniformed robots in pursuit.
“Get back inside! Get back inside!” Jensen gestures at him as he runs straight toward Jared, and Jared obeys without thinking, due mostly to the fact that weapons are aimed in his direction.
A moment later, Jensen bounds up the ramp to the hatch, turning for a moment to shoot at his pursuers before slamming his hand over the hatch door mechanism, which obediently slides closed with a whoosh and a click.
“What’s happening?” Jared gasps as he stumbles backward, out of Jensen’s way, not to mention out of the way of the weapon he just fired.
“Gotta go!” Jensen shouts as he barrels toward the bridge, pushing buttons like there’s no tomorrow.
Which, maybe, there isn’t. Apparently. Possibly. Whatever.
“What’s happening?” Jared repeats as he follows Jensen onto the bridge, grabbing bulkhead hand-holds as he feels the ship shudder under the impact of robotic weapons fire.
“Take a seat!” Jensen shouts as he slides into the captain’s chair, punching buttons and typing commands into the ship’s computer, frantic. “Strap in!”
Jared struggles to obey as the ship lurches, then sways, then shoots forward at an impossible (and probably illegal) speed. The forward view-screen displays the rushing lights of the spaceport on either side of the Impala for what feels like too long, swaying and bouncing off walls, probably killing a few people on the catwalks and ramps around the landing bay.
Then the starry blackness of space opens up ahead of them and the ship picks up speed.
“Don’t they need to lower the forcefield before we fly right into it?” Jared yells, his voice unnaturally high in his ears, more like a squeak.
“No time!” Jensen growls, punching in another set of numbers. The ship’s speed increases, barreling toward the window of space straight ahead of them.
“What are you doing!” Jared yells frantically. “We can’t break through it!”
“Watch me.”
Jared’s sure they’re about to die. He’s never been so sure of anything. He clutches the edges of his seat, closing his eyes against the inevitable.
At the last possible second, the ship turns sideways, smashes into the forcefield at an impossible angle. The air sizzles with what can only be the after-effects of a horrific electromagnetic explosion, the smell of smoking metal combining with something that almost smells like burning jet fuel.
Then, suddenly, silence. Stillness.
Dead. I'm dead. Jared thinks nonsensically, because he knows rationally that if he were, in fact, dead, he wouldn’t be able to think about it.
Tentatively, he opens one eye. Jensen’s looking at him with an expression of such shock and awe, it almost makes Jared believe they’ve survived somehow.
Then the ship shakes. Something’s hitting the Impala, repeatedly and rhythmically.
“Shit!” Jensen turns back to the controls, hitting buttons, typing coordinates into the computer that look completely random.
“What?” Jared recovers enough to recognize that he’s not, in fact, dead. “What’s happening?”
“They’re after us,” Jensen mutters as something hits the ship hard, making it shudder.
“No shit!”
The ship swoops and sways, dives and climbs at an impossible rate, obviously dodging whatever it is that’s shooting at them.
Jared’s grateful he didn’t eat anything this morning. His stomach doesn’t want to stay in his body, never mind its contents.
“Shit!” Jensen swears, slamming his hand against the side of the console.
“What?”
“Can’t use the capacitor,” Jensen explains. “Astroid field’s in the way.”
Jared’s stomach sinks as another volley of weapons fire explodes around them, some hitting their mark. He wonders how long the Impala can last under such a steady barrage.
Then Jensen’s face lights up.
“Maybe we can use the astroid field to shake them,” he mutters, half to himself, as the ship lurches sideways, then seems to flip onto its side as it heads in a new direction.
“What the,” Jared shouts, but can’t finish the sentence to save his life because the g-force is pushing him sideways against the bulkhead until he feels like his head might explode.
When the ship rights itself and shoots forward, Jared lets out an involuntary sigh of relief.
Then the ship lurches right and Jared almost loses whatever might have been in his stomach from the night before.
“What the hell!” he shouts as the ship suddenly rights itself and stops suddenly.
Stars dot the darkness on the primary view-screen. The sensation of sudden silence and solitude is overwhelming.
“Powering down,” Jensen announces, punching buttons. The bridge lights flicker off, making the star field outside seem brighter. Glowing red emergency lighting lines the floor, leading back down the corridor to the living quarters and cargo bay.
For several moments, Jared and Jensen sit quietly in the dark, waiting. When two brightly-lit objects zip past overhead, then disappear from sight, Jensen takes a deep breath.
“They can’t see us,” he says. “We don’t have a power signature. We’re just part of the asteroid.”
Jared nods, impressed. “Hiding out,” he says softly, as if he might be heard if he spoke normally. “For how long?”
“Till they stop looking,” Jensen says. “That could take a while.”
He unstraps himself from his seat and heads down the corridor toward the cargo bay.
“Wait!” Jared calls after him, struggling with his own seat straps. “What the hell were we doing on that space station in the first place?”
“Picking up supplies,” Jensen says with a shrug.
“And what kind of supplies necessitate running for our lives, exactly?”
Jensen ignores him, climbing down the ladder into the cargo hold without answering.
“Captain! I deserve an answer!” Jared plants his feet at the top of the ladder, hands on his waist, frowning down into the darkened cargo hold.
Jensen’s face appears at the bottom of the ladder.
“Not stealing, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says before ducking back into the bay, out of sight.
Just as Jared decides he’ll go down the ladder to see for himself, Jensen reappears, bottle in his hand. He holds it up for Jared to see.
“Scored another bottle of Capernium.”
Jared rolls his eyes. “Really, Captain? You almost got us killed for a bottle of whiskey?”
“Best in the galaxy,” Jensen reminds him with a wink. “At least we’ll have something to drink while we’re hiding out.”
Jared crosses his arms. “I don’t have time for this. You need to return whatever you’ve stolen so I can get on with my mission.”
“Those sentries aren’t after stolen supplies,” Jensen says, climbing the ladder. When he gets to the top, Jared steps aside. Jensen hands him the bottle and smirks. “They’re after me.”
“You?” Jared’s mouth drops open, then closes again when Jensen winks at him.
Jensen nods as he leads the way back up the corridor to the bridge. “It’s been a while since I needed to worry about it, but there was a bounty hunter on that space station, and she was definitely looking for me.”
“What did you do?” Jared asks, curious despite himself.
Jensen makes a face as he stops to open a compartment in the wall. The compartment is full of circuits and blinking lights, and Jensen uses a small tool to adjust something.
“I might have borrowed something that didn’t technically belong to me,” he admits with a shrug.
“Oh, so you are a thief,” Jared accuses, exasperated.
“I returned it when I was done,” Jensen insists. “And I did not steal the cargo in Baby’s hold. I’m just moving it. For a friend.”
“Oh, so you’re also a smuggler.”
Jensen slides the compartment door closed.
“Maybe,” he agrees. “Sometimes.”
Instead of proceeding down the corridor to the bridge, Jensen slides a larger compartment door open on the opposite side of the corridor. Jared watches as he punches code into a computer keyboard, uses a different small tool to check more circuits with blinking lights, then closes the compartment door.
“Baby took a hit to the aft capacitor relay,” he announces. “She’s gonna need repairs. More than I can give her here. As soon as we get underway, we’re gonna need to make another pitstop.”
Annoyance prickles behind Jared’s eyeballs and he resists the urge to rub them.
“This isn’t right, Captain,” he says sharply. “You were hired to take me to Alexandria, not stop over to pick up illegal cargo so you could get shot at and run us aground on an asteroid. We’re behind schedule as it is, and now you’re telling me we’ll need to make another stop. And why? Because this ship was damaged in your wild escape from that shady space station? How is this my concern? Why should I be delayed because you couldn’t resist smuggling contraband?”
Instead of answering, Jensen steps right into Jared’s personal space, reaching up with both hands to cradle Jared’s face, and steps up on tiptoe.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kiss you right now,” he murmurs as Jared goes hot all over with lust and embarrassment.
“You’re a thief,” he breathes, voice shaking. “And a smuggler. Probably worse.”
Jensen’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Maybe,” he agrees, pulling Jared’s face down so he can reach his lips.
The kiss is softer than Jared’s expecting. Gentler. Maybe even a little tentative. Jensen might pretend to be tough, but he’s got a soft core. The man isn’t just a swaggering, cocksure braggart.
When he pulls back, Jensen keeps his hands on Jared’s face for another moment, thumbs sweeping over his cheekbones as his eyes linger on Jared’s lips.
“Perfect,” he says, lifting his eyes to Jared’s. “Exactly how I imagined.”
Blood rushes to Jared’s groin as Jensen steps back, slipping the bottle out of Jared’s fingers with a lingering touch.
“We need to hide out for a few more hours,” Jensen says. “You should get something to eat.”
On cue, Jared’s stomach growls. He hasn’t eaten since last night’s supper, he realizes. That was at least fifteen hours ago, probably longer. No wonder he’s starved.
Horny and starving.
“Uh.”
“Go ahead, use my cabin,” Jensen says, gesturing toward the door to the quarters where Jared ate and slept the previous night. “I’ll be on the bridge if you need me.”
“Wait, your cabin?” Jared frowns.
“Only one on the ship, just like me,” Jensen says with a shrug.
Jared stares, flabbergasted, as the truth hits him. Jensen slept in his chair on the bridge last night. No wonder he was up so early.
“Well, shit,” Jared says, gesturing towards the cabin. “You’re welcome to join me. I mean, I really am hungry.”
Jensen grins, open and easy and charming as all hell.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
//**//**//
The synthetic food isn’t great, but even Jared has to admit that Jensen’s company makes up for it. Jensen tells a couple of stories of previous close-calls involving hiding out in this exact asteroid field, and Jared listens, rapt.
“We waited until the garbage barge came through, then latched on. The sentries never even noticed us. Figured we were just part of the garbage floating around the barge.”
“So can we do that? Is that your plan?”
Jensen tilts his head, and Jared wonders how a human being can have such perfect eyelashes. Maybe he curls them.
“We could,” Jensen nods. “It’s a little tricky, but that damn garbage barge is pretty punctual. Should be coming by in about three hours.”
“Okay,” Jared agrees. “What do we do till then?”
Jensen looks at him, green eyes steady with meaning, and Jared blushes.
“I barely know you,” he reminds Jensen. “You’re a scoundrel.”
“And you, professor, are very attractive when you blush.” Jensen tilts his head. “Scratch that. You are very attractive, period.”
“We’ve already established the mutual attraction thing, Captain.” Jared lowers his eyes, which of course land on the bed. It’s a little narrow, more of a bunk, really, which usually slides into the wall when it isn’t in use. But this morning, Jared had scrambled out of it pretty fast when he realized the ship had stopped moving, so it’s still pulled out, like a not-so-subtle invitation.
“I promise I’ll make it good for you,” Jensen assures him. “I used to be a sex worker.”
Jared chokes on his own spit. “What?”
Jensen shrugs. “I was a horny kid, what can I say? It was good money.”
Jared stares, his mind flooded with unwelcome thoughts of this beautiful man being used in ways Jared doesn’t even want to imagine. Willingly or not, the mere idea makes Jared shudder.
“So sex is just a tool for you,” he says. “It gets you what you want. Money.”
Jensen shrugs. “Money, pleasure, the keys to the Impala. But I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need to.” His gaze sweeps down over Jared’s body, making Jared shiver. “With you, it’d be nothing but pleasure.”
Then why does Jared feel like he’s negotiating some kind of business deal?
Jared takes a deep, shaky breath. “Like I said last night, Captain, I’m not doing that. I need to get to know you before I can be intimate with you. That’s just how I’m made.”
Jensen leans back in his seat, eyebrows raised, considering.
“You play hard to get long enough, professor, I might just fall in love with you.” It sounds like a confession. Or a threat. When Jensen ducks his head, huffs out an embarrassed laugh, and gets up to leave, Jared gets the impression he’s just seen the real Jensen, the vulnerable soul under all the layers of bravado and self-control.
Jared stares at the door long after it shuts behind Jensen, confused by his own feelings for the enigmatic man who just might be stealing his heart.
//**//**//
The plan goes better than Jared or maybe even Jensen expected. At the appropriate time, they strap themselves into their seats on the bridge, Jensen releases the Impala from the asteroid and attaches to the bottom of the garbage barge as it passes. Because he’s able to keep their engines powered down and just let gravity do its thing, the move goes smoothly. After an hour attached to the barge, Jensen detaches the Impala and lets her drift until they’re mostly out of range of any pursuing sentries.
“Setting coordinates for Arida,” Jensen announces as he types, then punches the input button. “Engaging wormhole capacitor in three, two, one.”
The ship rattles and shakes but somehow stays together. Jared feels the momentary crush of g-forces as the ship lunges forward, then seems to settle. Jared recognizes the comforting hum of the wormhole capacitor doing its thing, knows he won’t see any stars when he looks outside because they’re literally inside an artificial black hole.
Moving through space and time by literally bending it in on itself has never been something Jared could wrap his mind around. He’s not sure many people can. All he knows is, it’s the only way to travel, out here.
“So I’m guessing ‘Arida’ is the pitstop you mentioned earlier,” Jared suggests, once his heart has stopped racing fit to burst in his chest.
Jensen nods, still typing. “It’s Spanish for ‘dry,’” he explains. “You’ll see why when we get there. Arida is the driest, dustiest planet you ever saw. A real desert world.”
“And there’s a repair shop for your ship there?”
“Oh yeah,” Jensen nods. “Baby was born there. Or at least, put together from scrap there. The guys who run the shop are just about the best mechanics in the galaxy. Best friends, too.”
Jensen pats the Impala’s console thoughtfully, then turns his gaze on Jared.
“I can’t wait for you to meet them,” he says with a chuckle. “They’re gonna love you.”
Jared doesn’t have time to question Jensen’s meaning as the ship shudders and shakes again, the now-familiar motion telling Jared that the ship has exited the wormhole. When Jensen lights up the main view screen, a reddish-colored planet appears, reminding Jared of Mars.
“It may not look like it, but Arida has an atmosphere close to Earth’s,” Jensen assures him, apparently reading his thoughts. “Not much grows there, but underground water sources keep the people who live there alive. It’s too hot on the surface during the day, so everybody lives at the poles, where the sun never shines directly. Dust storms keep everybody indoors most of the time anyway.”
“Sounds like a great place to live,” Jared says, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
Jensen gives him another of his enigmatic looks. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” he says finally.
The space station orbiting Arida has a shuttle waiting for them to take them to the planet’s surface, along with a crusty old mechanic who introduces himself as Jim. Jim Beaver. Call me Jim.
“Jared,” Jared says, sticking out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Jim.”
“Uh-huh.” Jim shakes his hand but his gaze jumps immediately to Jensen. “Well, I can see what you see in this tall drink of water.”
“What?” Jared huffs out a startled laugh.
“We’re not together,” Jensen says almost simultaneously.
“Uh-huh,” Jim says skeptically, gaze shifting to Jared again. “Maybe not yet, but you are totally his type.”
Jared flushes to the roots of his hair. He doesn’t like to consider the notion of Jensen having a “type,” and he sure as hell doesn’t like to think about Jensen with anyone who might resemble Jared, in any way.
Then, on the planet’s surface, he meets Jeff Morgan.
Although Jeff’s at least ten years older than Jensen, with a greying beard and sharp, laughing blue eyes, Jared recognizes the resemblance immediately. He’s tall, for one thing. Not quite as tall as Jared, but definitely taller than Jensen. He has deep dimples that appear every time he laughs, which is often.
He’s also got a wicked sense of humor, cusses constantly, and touches a lot. A hand on the shoulder or on the upper back or the lower back when he’s guiding Jared into his house, a hand on Jensen’s forearm as he tells a story.
There’s obviously deep affection between the two men, and eventually Jared’s curiosity gets the better of him.
“So how did you two meet?”
They’ve finished their meal and opened the whiskey. Jensen and Jeff exchange glances over the table, and Jensen nods his permission.
“I bought out his contract at a brothel on Kendor,” Jeff says.
Jared’s eyes go wide.
“He rescued me,” Jensen corrects. “I was ready to get out, and I never would’ve been able to afford to buy my own freedom.”
“So you met at the brothel,” Jared clarifies.
“I was a fuckin’ customer,” Jeff says with a nod. “I took one look at Jensen and bought exclusive access for a week. When he told me he wanted out, I came up with a cash offer they couldn’t fuckin’ refuse, and here we are.”
“Did you want out before you two met?” Jared asks, watching Jensen’s lips curl around the edge of his glass as he takes a sip before answering.
“I was thinking about it,” Jensen admits. “But when Jeff walked in, I knew.”
“Fuckin’ love at first sight,” Jeff adds with a hearty laugh. “For both of us.”
“How old were you?” Jared presses.
“Twenty-one,” Jensen says, taking another sip of his whisky. “Eighteen years ago.”
Well, that answers that question.
“You think he looks good now? Imagine the fuckin’ beautiful boy he was at twenty-one and tell me I should’ve been able to resist him,” Jeff challenges.
Jared shakes his head. He can’t.
“I would’ve been seventeen and never even heard of Kendor,” he says. He glances at Jensen, who gazes back with an inscrutable expression, the one that sends shivers up Jared’s spine. Jensen wondered, he thinks. Now he knows. There are four years between them. Jensen’s older.
“So you two moved here?”
Jeff nods. “This was my dad’s place, his fuckin’ business, now it’s mine. The Impala was mine, too, originally.”
“Jeff taught me everything he knows,” Jensen says.
“Well, maybe not everything.” Jeff rolls his eyes. “He was a fast fuckin’ learner. Soaked it all up like a fuckin’ sponge. Starship maintenance and repair, engineering, parts storage and salvage. Turns out, Jensen’s a natural fuckin’ mechanic.”
“Then I got drunk one night and joined Starforce,” Jensen says.
Jared’s eyes go wide. Wonders never cease. “You joined the military?”
Jensen nods. “Learned to fly anything and everything. Docking and landing anywhere. Tactical maneuvers, firefights, combat strategies, the whole nine yards. Worked my way up to Star Elites. Served five years.”
Jared stares, impressed. “Then what?”
Jensen shrugs. “Then I quit.”
“You deserted?” Jared gasps, but isn’t really surprised.
“Nah, man. I served two tours, running missions. Then I quit. Honorable discharge.” Jensen shakes his head. “It’s a young man’s world. You gotta be under thirty. If I was still with them, they’d have me on desk duty by now, and I didn’t want that. That wasn’t me.”
Jeff picks up the story. “When he got back here, I could see the fuckin’ stars in his eyes. He wasn’t about to hang out here, repairing engines. He had the fuckin’ space bug. He wanted to be out there, among the stars. That’s where he fuckin’ belongs.”
“So you gave him the Impala and set him free,” Jared breathes.
Jensen and Jeff look at him, then at each other. Then they burst out laughing.
“Man, you should be a fucking romance writer,” Jeff says when he gets his laughter under control. “He fixed up the fuckin’ Impala, so I fuckin’ gave her to him. He was always free to go wherever he wanted.”
“But you and him.” Jared still hasn’t quite made sense of their relationship.
“Oh, it was fuckin’ good, for a while, not gonna lie,” Jeff says. “But I never meant for Jensen to feel obligated, and I sure as hell didn’t want to fuckin’ hold him back or tie him down. He was so young when we met, and he’d been in that brothel for so long, I wanted him to have a chance to fuckin’ explore the world. Figure out what he fuckin’ wanted to do.”
Jensen smiles fondly at his old mentor, savior, and lover. “I never had a father,” he says. “Raiders kidnapped my mother and little sister and me when I was seven, separated us, and sold me off to the brothel on Kendor. The brothel owners weren’t cruel, but they weren’t my family. Jeff’s family.”
“Aw, shut yer fuckin’ mouth,” Jeff mutters, grinning ear to ear.
“Jim Beaver, too,” Jensen goes on. “He runs the space station like it was his own private fill-up joint. Which it is, technically, since we’re so far out on the edges of nowhere.”
“Speaking of Jim, he texted a little while ago,” Jeff tells them. “The Impala should be ready to ship out by noon tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to stay here in my fuckin’ guest room. There’s only one bed, but it’s fuckin’ huge.”
“Thanks, Jeff.” Jensen gives his old friend another fond smile, and Jared decides right there and then that he’ll do whatever it takes to earn one of those from Jensen, one of these days.
“You don’t gotta fuckin’ thank me, kid,” Jeff scolds. “This place is your home, always. You know that.”
PART TWO
Jared starts and turns toward the voice, which belongs to an unusually attractive man wearing a half-baked uniform and thigh-holster which could possibly pass for a captain’s attire.
Or a pirate’s.
“Jared,” Jared introduces himself, sticking out a hand, which the other man pointedly ignores. “Jared Padalecki. Captain Ackles, I presume?”
“Just Jensen.” The man brushes past him into the front of the ship, which just might pass for the bridge of the most dilapidated piece of junk Jared has ever seen. “So you’re my fare.”
Jared follows, watching Jensen as he takes a seat in the only available chair and begins flipping switches and pushing buttons. Engines groan to life somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, accompanied by disturbing clanging noises and distressing vibrations and jerking sensations.
“How old is this ship?” Jared asks skeptically.
“What’s it to you? She’s a good ship,” Jensen assures him. “She’ll get you to Alexandria within a week.”
“A week?” Jared squeaks. “I have to be back in ten days. I can’t be away that long!”
“Alexandria’s ten parsecs away, my friend,” Jensen says, raising an amused eyebrow. “Even at maximum warp, you won’t make that in less than a week. You won’t find any faster transportation than my baby, I can promise you that.” He pats the control board affectionately.
“I was told I could make the entire trip in ten days,” Jared insists.
Jensen raises an eyebrow. “Who told you that?”
“Mark Sheppard,” Jared answers. “The shipping agent.”
“Yeah, Mark likes to embellish,” Jensen says with a lopsided grin. “I’ll bet he told you the trip would be cheap, too.”
Jared nods. “Ten thousand credits.”
“Ha! More like twenty,” Jensen scoffs.
“What? I can’t pay that!”
Jensen looks up at him, and Jared feels judged. More than that, he feels seen, pierced by a gaze that understands more of the ways of the world than Jared can imagine. As Jensen’s eyes sweep over him, appraising, Jared blushes.
“How much you got?” Jensen drawls, voice low and rumbling and sexy as sin.
“Ten thousand,” Jared answers, drawing in a shaky breath. “I’ve got ten thousand.”
“Well, you’d better have more than that,” Jensen remarks. “You’re expecting to buy that stone, aren’t you?”
Jared hasn’t said anything about the purpose of his voyage, and he sure as hell isn’t about to reveal it to this mercenary pirate type who might be a little too comfortable on the wrong side of the law. Jared’s mission is entirely legal. Retrieving artifacts from extinct civilizations for study and display at his university’s ancient history museum is what he does. Jared’s position as a professor at the university regularly requires him to travel.
Just not quite this far.
Or with such a colorful captain.
“My university has authorized me to negotiate up to a pre-determined price,” Jared says stiffly. “I’m not at liberty to discuss it with anyone but the trader on Alexandria. And I don’t have direct access to the funds.”
Jensen rolls his eyes. “Of course you don’t. Well, strap in, professor. Take-off’s a little bumpy.”
Jared glances around wildly as the ship lurches forward. When he sees a handle on the wall, he grabs for it to steady himself, only to find that it pulls out, revealing a seat with straps. He barely gets the seat down before the ship lurches again, sideways this time. Jared stumbles, falls awkwardly onto the seat, and scrambles to pull the straps over his shoulders and lock them in place.
“Here we go!”
The ship shoots forward at what seems to Jared an impossible rate of speed, then climbs steeply. He closes his eyes against the sight of the landing pad disappearing below them, at the stark blackness of space rising up in front of them, dotted with stars, and at the g-forces that cause his stomach to lurch. When the ship swoops downward suddenly, Jared struggles to keep his lunch, certain they’re about to crash.
“Oops, lost an engine,” Jensen mutters, punching buttons frantically.
“What?!” Jared shouts, clutching the edges of his seat so hard it hurts.
“Oh, come on!” Jensen slams his hand into the side of the control console and the ship lurches and climbs again, picking up speed as it breaks free of the planet’s gravity.
“What the hell was that?” Jared shouts.
“Fixed it!” Jensen calls out triumphantly. “Hold for capacitor leap.”
Jared frowns, looking around for a handle.
“Hold onto what?”
“Here we go!” Jensen shouts again. He punches some numbers into the computer, then hits a red circle on the center of the console.
The ship grinds to a halt, clearly the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
“Uh.” Jared frowns, lifts an eyebrow, and huffs out a skeptical breath. “I guess we’re not going anywhere.”
“Damn.” Jensen bangs his hand against the control console.
“Captain, I really think I need to find better transportation,” Jared says primly. “Now, if you would be so kind as to return me to the spaceport.”
“Shut up!” Jensen unbuckles his seatbelt, scrambles up and dashes toward the back of the ship, out of sight.
“Captain? Where are you going? What are you doing?” Jared can’t help feeling a little terrified at being abandoned on the bridge of a spaceship that clearly isn’t space-worthy.
Although the star-filled sky outside doesn’t appear to be moving, Jared has a sinking feeling they’re falling through space, dropping toward the nearest gravitational object, which is probably the planet they just left.
Panic rises in his chest as the seconds tick by. He’s about to unbuckle his seat belt to go in search of Captain Ackles when the ship suddenly lurches forward, pinning him down. Stars whizz by the portal as the g-force increases until he’s sure he’s being crushed. He opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out, making him dizzy with lack of air. The ship rattles beneath him. Just as he’s about to lose consciousness or feel the ship tear itself apart around him, it stops.
Not a dead stop, he realizes as he opens his eyes, only then acknowledging that he closed them against the moment of certain death. Rather, the ship seems to have stabilized. The g-force has stopped entirely and Jared feels only a pleasant vibration, hears a soothing hum that can only be the ship’s warp engines, working properly at last.
“Ha!” Captain Ackles swaggers by, slides into the captain’s chair, and pushes some buttons before patting the console affectionately. “That’s my girl.”
“You - you left,” Jared gasps, accusing. “You left me.”
Jensen turns in his seat and raises an eyebrow as he gazes at Jared speculatively.
“Well, somebody had to fix the wormhole capacitor,” he says.
“You don’t have an engineer,” Jared observes, willing himself to breathe normally.
“Nope,” Jensen agrees. “Nor a first officer. It’s just me, captain and crew.” He turns back to the control console, pats it with a proud smile. “I’m all she needs, though, isn’t that right, Baby?”
Jared winces and rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Get a room.”
“Ha.” Jensen smirks. “You’re just jealous.”
Jared opens his mouth to protest but finds himself blushing instead. Jensen is unnaturally attractive, even if Jared doesn’t appreciate his cocky arrogance.
“Not jealous,” he mumbles under his breath, ducking his head to hide his heated cheeks.
He feels Jensen’s eyes on him but refuses to look up, pretending instead to be fascinated by the seams on his vinyl seat.
“You know, you don’t need to sit here for the entire journey,” Jensen says. “Your sleeping quarters are just beyond the entry hatch on the starboard side. You’ve got your own food dispenser and a desk with communication access if you need to log into your system back home so you can get some work done.”
“Oh.” Jared blurts out, vaguely startled. He’d assumed he would be making the journey right here, next to Jensen.
The thought of which, weirdly, doesn’t bother him at all.
But of course Jensen wants him gone from his bridge. Jared’s just a passenger, a “fare,” as Jensen put it. Jensen doesn’t want him here. Jensen would rather be alone.
“Okay,” Jared says, surprising himself by how forlorn he feels. “Yeah. Of course. Thanks.”
The thought of spending the next week in complete isolation on this strange ship is a little daunting, but it sounds like that’s what’s expected.
As he unbuckles his seatbelt and gets up to leave the cockpit, Jensen calls after him.
“Hey.”
Jared pauses, looking back expectantly, half-hoping the captain will invite him to dinner, half disgusted with himself for the thought.
“Baby’s got a helluva pleasure program, if you wanna use it,” Jensen smirks, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “You can access it from your bunk with a verbal command. It’s non-visual, but the other sensory inputs are very lifelike. Almost like being in bed with a real girl.”
Jared shakes his head and frowns, aware that he’s blushing furiously again.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” he insists, turning away to leave the room.
“Or boy,” Jensen calls after him. “If that’s your thing.”
“No, thank you, Captain,” Jared calls back as he retreats to the back of the ship.
“No shame in it,” Jensen’s voice follows him. “Being out here for weeks at a time, a man needs something to stave off the loneliness, that’s all.”
“Oh my god,” Jared mutters under his breath as he closes the door of his cabin.
The space is small and cramped, of course, but there’s a portal that would show stars if they weren’t traveling through a wormhole at the moment, and the lighting is good and adjustable. Jared finds a clothing dispenser that provides pajamas, a washing receptacle for his clothes, and a small, cramped static shower which gives him at least the illusion of being clean when he steps out of it. The pajamas are remarkably roomy and comfortable, and Jared wonders how Jensen managed to program it to Jared’s physical specifications, since they’d barely met.
While his clothes are being cleaned, Jared counts the cash which is usually tucked into a pouch on the inside of his shirt, under his belt. All there. He breathes a sigh of relief as he tucks it temporarily back into the pouch and under his pillow. Given the uncertainty of his reception on Alexandria, the university authorized a cash payment for the stone in addition to the digital payment already allotted. Although he didn’t tell Jensen, Jared does have some room to negotiate with the natives on Alexandria.
Jensen’s fee for getting him there is fixed, of course. The digital transfer into Jensen’s account will have processed as soon as the Impala left the space dock. He’ll get a bonus payment if he gets Jared home safely.
Sometimes, Jared thinks his university sends him on these missions hoping to get rid of him. Especially this one. If it’s as dangerous as Jensen says, Jensen may never see that bonus.
It’s worth the risk, Jared tells himself as he boots up the communicator built into the tiny cabin desk. The stories about the Alexandria Stone go back several millennia, when it was owned by a great king who used it to keep peace in the galaxy for over a thousand years. The stone is known for its power to cure disease, open portals to other worlds, endowing its user with power beyond imagining.
The stories are just that, of course. There’s no historical evidence to back up the mythology surrounding the stone. According to legend, the stone was lost hundreds of years ago, the civilization it protected gone with it.
But when it was found in an ancient temple on Alexandra, in the exact location where it was rumored to have been lost so long ago, the discovery generated intense excitement among Jared’s colleagues in the field of Ancient Archeology. Jared’s expedition to recover the stone and bring it back to his university on Earth has been funded by several major players in the field, many of them retired professors or alumni of the university.
Jared will be expected to provide detailed notes of his journey, of course, so he opens the blog he started when he was first assigned to this expedition and adds his recent adventures, leaving out the part about how devilishly handsome his new ship’s captain is, of course.
When he finishes his blog entry, he reads through the latest issue of Ancient Archeology, programs the replicator to produce something that tastes vaguely like chicken noodle soup, then watches an episode of “Travels In Space,” with host Jake Abel. He chuckles at the show’s depiction of luxury accommodations on various cruise ships, comparing them to the reality of his cramped quarters and meager fare, knowing full well that most people who travel in space do it in the same cheap, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style that Jared’s doing. Jake likes to make luxury space travel look like the only way to go, but that’s why people watch his show. They know better, and the comparison is hilarious as well as comforting.
When the episode finishes, it’s still too early for bed. Jared’s already bored with sitting in his cabin, so he slips back into his now-clean clothes, tucking his money pouch back where it belongs, and goes exploring.
He tells himself he won’t disturb the captain. He’s not searching for him, doesn’t need the company.
But of course he hasn’t been able to get Jensen out of his mind. There’s something about the arrogant, cocky captain that Jared can’t put his finger on. It’s more than his attractiveness, although that’s certainly part of it.
When he ends up on the bridge after exploring the nearly-empty cargo hold, Jensen’s still in his captain’s chair. He’s got the lights down low, leaning back in the chair with one leg over one of the armrests, bottle of something dangling from his fingertips. He’s staring down at a screen, and as Jared draws near he catches a glimpse of what looks like a home movie of a little boy and girl, playing on a swing set together. The girl is younger, maybe only three, and the boy is pushing her, encouraging her to pump her legs to make the swing move on its own. Whoever holds the camera seems to say something because both children look up, into the camera, smiling broadly.
The boy looks like Jensen, Jared realizes in the moment before Jensen’s head snaps up and the screen goes blank.
“Professor?” Jensen swivels in his seat, fixing Jared with the pointed stare of someone who resents being disturbed.
Jared shuffles awkwardly. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
It occurs to Jared that Jensen isn’t the man he thought he was. There’s more to him than meets the eye.
Then he smirks, and Jensen’s bravado returns, the mask he obviously wears to conceal the vulnerable man underneath, the man who watches home movies of himself as a child when nobody’s around to call him on it.
“Something I can help you with?”
Jared shrugs. “I got my work done, ate some dinner, took a shower, took a look at your cargo bay.”
“I never said you could check out my cargo bay,” Jensen growls.
Jared shrugs. “Sorry.”
Jensen’s gaze sweeps down over Jared speculatively, maybe even a little appreciatively, or so Jared pretends. He raises the bottle to his lips, takes a sip, then offers it to Jared.
“Capernium whiskey. Best in the galaxy.”
Jared accepts the bottle, studies the label, nods, then takes a sip, letting it burn down his throat with a sigh before handing it back to Jensen.
“I visited Capernia last year,” he says. “Good food, too.”
Jensen nods before taking another sip. He gestures to the other chair, and Jared takes a seat.
“My work rarely takes me to nice places like Capernia,” Jensen reveals. “This bottle was payment for a ride to the Asteroid Belt.”
“Asteroid Belt?” Jared frowns. “Why would anybody want to go there?”
“Smugglers love it there,” Jensen explains. “Hard to navigate, gravity field makes detection tricky, lots of places to stash loot for later retrieval. Great place to hide out, too.”
“You sound like you go there often,” Jared notes wryly.
“Maybe,” Jensen hedges defensively. “Define ‘often’.”
Jared grins and shakes his head. Jensen hands him the bottle and he takes another swig.
“Your life sounds so exciting compared to mine,” Jared says, almost wistful. “Smugglers, outlaws, mysterious strangers. The most exciting thing I ever do is this. Artifact retrieval.”
Jensen whistles. “You’re headed to Alexandria, man. That’s pretty adventurous, I’d say. Most folks I know avoid that place like the plague.”
Jared frowns. “Why? I thought it was a civilized planet.”
“Was a civilized planet,” Jensen acknowledges. “Since the government coup about five years ago, society has pretty much broken down into factions. Gangs. These days, it’s as lawless as the Old Wild West.”
Jared shakes his head. “According to my department chair, there’s a perfectly stable government in charge there. They’ve offered security for my expedition.”
“Your intel sounds a little outdated,” Jensen notes, reaching for the bottle. “The current ‘government,’ as you call it, is just a tribal dictatorship with a gang of thugs to support it.”
“But they’ve agreed to hand over the Alexandria Stone,” Jared says. “For a price, of course.”
“Oh, there’ll be a price, all right,” Jensen smirks, taking another swig of whiskey. “Just not the kind you’re used to paying.”
Jared bristles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jensen shakes his head, hands the bottle to Jared.
“Never mind,” he says with a shrug. “None of my business anyway. You hired me to get you there. The rest is up to you.”
Jared takes a sip of the whiskey, clears his throat as he hands it back to Jensen.
“So. You have family back on Earth?”
“Do you?” Jensen snaps, obviously avoiding the question.
Jared nods. “Aging parents, little sister.”
Jensen raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of the whiskey, and smacks his lips.
“Little sister, huh? What’s the age difference?” he asks, looking down at the bottle instead of at Jared.
“Four years,” Jared answers. “She’s doing a post-doc in comparative religion right now. Harvard.”
“Sounds smart,” Jensen notes.
“She is,” Jared agrees proudly. “She takes after my mom.”
“And you,” Jensen says. “Professor.”
Jared takes the bottle when Jensen holds it out. Their fingers brush, and an electric bolt of energy tingles through Jared’s whole body, like lightning.
“What about you?” Jared presses after a long sip. “Any family?”
“Nah. Not anymore.”
Jared can feel Jensen’s sadness, his grief. It’s old grief, but it’s there. He doesn’t need to ask. He knows the little girl and the woman’s voice in that home movie are gone, probably long ago.
He raises the bottle. “To family.”
He takes a sip, hands the bottle to Jensen, who flinches as their fingers touch again.
“To family,” Jensen agrees before taking a sip.
“What about a girl?” Jensen asks. “You got one of those? Family of your own?”
Jared shakes his head, blushing again. “No time,” he admits. “Spent the last few years building my career, after twelve years of school. Too busy for anything else.”
Jensen shifts in his chair, smirks. “But you do take a little time off to have some fun, once in a while.”
Jared’s whole body tingles again. He wonders if there’s something in the whiskey.
“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, maybe a little too primly. “I’ve had my share of relationships. Just nothing long-term. Yet.”
“And nothing at the moment,” Jensen states, smirk growing so that it’s almost a leer.
Jared raises an eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me, Captain?”
Jensen starts, a look of surprise crossing his handsome features before he lowers his eyes as a flush rises to his cheeks. It’s a good look. His eyelashes are so long and thick that they look almost fake.
“Maybe,” he admits, eyes still lowered, almost shy. “You’re gorgeous, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Jared murmurs, heart fluttering in his chest.
Immediately, Jensen looks up, flashing a broad, bright smile. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes are adorable, Jared decides, wondering briefly what it would feel like to kiss them.
“Well, that’s settled, then,” Jensen announces, holding out the whisky bottle to Jared, who shakes his head with a little frown.
“What’s settled?”
“Our mutual attraction to each other.” Jensen shrugs. “Now we can fuck. I came prepared, just in case.”
As he pulls a small tube of lube from his pocket, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Jared’s mouth drops open.
“What?” he gasps. “No! That’s not happening, Captain. I can’t do that.”
“Can’t fuck?” Jensen’s gaze sweeps down over Jared’s body, settling in his lap. “I doubt that. You look like you’re built for long-hauling. I bet your stamina is pretty impressive.”
Jared makes a face. “Man, you need to work on your pick-up lines.”
He gets up to leave the bridge, feeling Jensen’s gaze on his ass, stops at the entryway as a sudden thought hits him.
“You know,” he says, turning toward Jensen, who lifts his eyes to Jared’s just a moment too late. “You’re not fooling me with this uncouth, boorish mask you like to wear. I saw what you were watching. You think you can save yourself from intimacy by being an asshole, you keep doing that. But I see you, Captain. I see you.”
As he turns away to head up the narrow passageway to his bunk, he hears Jensen mutter under his breath, “Don’t listen to him, Baby. He doesn’t see a thing.”
Jared rolls his eyes. Jensen has an entirely too personal relationship with this hunk of aging steel and chrome, or whatever spaceships were made of sixty years ago. If Jared cared enough, he might be jealous.
If thoughts of Jensen haunt his dreams that night, Jared does his best to ignore them.
//**//**//
Jared wakes up to silence. Stillness. There’s no comforting humming of engines, no occasional rattling as the ship struggles to stay together against the gravitational forces of the wormhole they’re traveling through.
The ship has stopped.
Jared pulls on his trousers and button-up over his boxers and t-shirt and pads barefoot out the door and down the narrow corridor to the bridge.
“Captain? Captain Ackles?”
Jensen is obviously not on the ship.
The hatch is open, and through it Jared can see the bustling activity of a spaceport, albeit a dark, shabby one. Robots and humans scurry around, delivering goods and supplies to parked vessels. Loudspeakers announce arrivals and departures in such garbled tones as to be basically incomprehensible.
The sharp crack of a weapon discharge followed by urgent shouts draws Jared’s attention to an open doorway on the ground floor a moment before a familiar figure dashes through it, several uniformed robots in pursuit.
“Get back inside! Get back inside!” Jensen gestures at him as he runs straight toward Jared, and Jared obeys without thinking, due mostly to the fact that weapons are aimed in his direction.
A moment later, Jensen bounds up the ramp to the hatch, turning for a moment to shoot at his pursuers before slamming his hand over the hatch door mechanism, which obediently slides closed with a whoosh and a click.
“What’s happening?” Jared gasps as he stumbles backward, out of Jensen’s way, not to mention out of the way of the weapon he just fired.
“Gotta go!” Jensen shouts as he barrels toward the bridge, pushing buttons like there’s no tomorrow.
Which, maybe, there isn’t. Apparently. Possibly. Whatever.
“What’s happening?” Jared repeats as he follows Jensen onto the bridge, grabbing bulkhead hand-holds as he feels the ship shudder under the impact of robotic weapons fire.
“Take a seat!” Jensen shouts as he slides into the captain’s chair, punching buttons and typing commands into the ship’s computer, frantic. “Strap in!”
Jared struggles to obey as the ship lurches, then sways, then shoots forward at an impossible (and probably illegal) speed. The forward view-screen displays the rushing lights of the spaceport on either side of the Impala for what feels like too long, swaying and bouncing off walls, probably killing a few people on the catwalks and ramps around the landing bay.
Then the starry blackness of space opens up ahead of them and the ship picks up speed.
“Don’t they need to lower the forcefield before we fly right into it?” Jared yells, his voice unnaturally high in his ears, more like a squeak.
“No time!” Jensen growls, punching in another set of numbers. The ship’s speed increases, barreling toward the window of space straight ahead of them.
“What are you doing!” Jared yells frantically. “We can’t break through it!”
“Watch me.”
Jared’s sure they’re about to die. He’s never been so sure of anything. He clutches the edges of his seat, closing his eyes against the inevitable.
At the last possible second, the ship turns sideways, smashes into the forcefield at an impossible angle. The air sizzles with what can only be the after-effects of a horrific electromagnetic explosion, the smell of smoking metal combining with something that almost smells like burning jet fuel.
Then, suddenly, silence. Stillness.
Dead. I'm dead. Jared thinks nonsensically, because he knows rationally that if he were, in fact, dead, he wouldn’t be able to think about it.
Tentatively, he opens one eye. Jensen’s looking at him with an expression of such shock and awe, it almost makes Jared believe they’ve survived somehow.
Then the ship shakes. Something’s hitting the Impala, repeatedly and rhythmically.
“Shit!” Jensen turns back to the controls, hitting buttons, typing coordinates into the computer that look completely random.
“What?” Jared recovers enough to recognize that he’s not, in fact, dead. “What’s happening?”
“They’re after us,” Jensen mutters as something hits the ship hard, making it shudder.
“No shit!”
The ship swoops and sways, dives and climbs at an impossible rate, obviously dodging whatever it is that’s shooting at them.
Jared’s grateful he didn’t eat anything this morning. His stomach doesn’t want to stay in his body, never mind its contents.
“Shit!” Jensen swears, slamming his hand against the side of the console.
“What?”
“Can’t use the capacitor,” Jensen explains. “Astroid field’s in the way.”
Jared’s stomach sinks as another volley of weapons fire explodes around them, some hitting their mark. He wonders how long the Impala can last under such a steady barrage.
Then Jensen’s face lights up.
“Maybe we can use the astroid field to shake them,” he mutters, half to himself, as the ship lurches sideways, then seems to flip onto its side as it heads in a new direction.
“What the,” Jared shouts, but can’t finish the sentence to save his life because the g-force is pushing him sideways against the bulkhead until he feels like his head might explode.
When the ship rights itself and shoots forward, Jared lets out an involuntary sigh of relief.
Then the ship lurches right and Jared almost loses whatever might have been in his stomach from the night before.
“What the hell!” he shouts as the ship suddenly rights itself and stops suddenly.
Stars dot the darkness on the primary view-screen. The sensation of sudden silence and solitude is overwhelming.
“Powering down,” Jensen announces, punching buttons. The bridge lights flicker off, making the star field outside seem brighter. Glowing red emergency lighting lines the floor, leading back down the corridor to the living quarters and cargo bay.
For several moments, Jared and Jensen sit quietly in the dark, waiting. When two brightly-lit objects zip past overhead, then disappear from sight, Jensen takes a deep breath.
“They can’t see us,” he says. “We don’t have a power signature. We’re just part of the asteroid.”
Jared nods, impressed. “Hiding out,” he says softly, as if he might be heard if he spoke normally. “For how long?”
“Till they stop looking,” Jensen says. “That could take a while.”
He unstraps himself from his seat and heads down the corridor toward the cargo bay.
“Wait!” Jared calls after him, struggling with his own seat straps. “What the hell were we doing on that space station in the first place?”
“Picking up supplies,” Jensen says with a shrug.
“And what kind of supplies necessitate running for our lives, exactly?”
Jensen ignores him, climbing down the ladder into the cargo hold without answering.
“Captain! I deserve an answer!” Jared plants his feet at the top of the ladder, hands on his waist, frowning down into the darkened cargo hold.
Jensen’s face appears at the bottom of the ladder.
“Not stealing, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says before ducking back into the bay, out of sight.
Just as Jared decides he’ll go down the ladder to see for himself, Jensen reappears, bottle in his hand. He holds it up for Jared to see.
“Scored another bottle of Capernium.”
Jared rolls his eyes. “Really, Captain? You almost got us killed for a bottle of whiskey?”
“Best in the galaxy,” Jensen reminds him with a wink. “At least we’ll have something to drink while we’re hiding out.”
Jared crosses his arms. “I don’t have time for this. You need to return whatever you’ve stolen so I can get on with my mission.”
“Those sentries aren’t after stolen supplies,” Jensen says, climbing the ladder. When he gets to the top, Jared steps aside. Jensen hands him the bottle and smirks. “They’re after me.”
“You?” Jared’s mouth drops open, then closes again when Jensen winks at him.
Jensen nods as he leads the way back up the corridor to the bridge. “It’s been a while since I needed to worry about it, but there was a bounty hunter on that space station, and she was definitely looking for me.”
“What did you do?” Jared asks, curious despite himself.
Jensen makes a face as he stops to open a compartment in the wall. The compartment is full of circuits and blinking lights, and Jensen uses a small tool to adjust something.
“I might have borrowed something that didn’t technically belong to me,” he admits with a shrug.
“Oh, so you are a thief,” Jared accuses, exasperated.
“I returned it when I was done,” Jensen insists. “And I did not steal the cargo in Baby’s hold. I’m just moving it. For a friend.”
“Oh, so you’re also a smuggler.”
Jensen slides the compartment door closed.
“Maybe,” he agrees. “Sometimes.”
Instead of proceeding down the corridor to the bridge, Jensen slides a larger compartment door open on the opposite side of the corridor. Jared watches as he punches code into a computer keyboard, uses a different small tool to check more circuits with blinking lights, then closes the compartment door.
“Baby took a hit to the aft capacitor relay,” he announces. “She’s gonna need repairs. More than I can give her here. As soon as we get underway, we’re gonna need to make another pitstop.”
Annoyance prickles behind Jared’s eyeballs and he resists the urge to rub them.
“This isn’t right, Captain,” he says sharply. “You were hired to take me to Alexandria, not stop over to pick up illegal cargo so you could get shot at and run us aground on an asteroid. We’re behind schedule as it is, and now you’re telling me we’ll need to make another stop. And why? Because this ship was damaged in your wild escape from that shady space station? How is this my concern? Why should I be delayed because you couldn’t resist smuggling contraband?”
Instead of answering, Jensen steps right into Jared’s personal space, reaching up with both hands to cradle Jared’s face, and steps up on tiptoe.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kiss you right now,” he murmurs as Jared goes hot all over with lust and embarrassment.
“You’re a thief,” he breathes, voice shaking. “And a smuggler. Probably worse.”
Jensen’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Maybe,” he agrees, pulling Jared’s face down so he can reach his lips.
The kiss is softer than Jared’s expecting. Gentler. Maybe even a little tentative. Jensen might pretend to be tough, but he’s got a soft core. The man isn’t just a swaggering, cocksure braggart.
When he pulls back, Jensen keeps his hands on Jared’s face for another moment, thumbs sweeping over his cheekbones as his eyes linger on Jared’s lips.
“Perfect,” he says, lifting his eyes to Jared’s. “Exactly how I imagined.”
Blood rushes to Jared’s groin as Jensen steps back, slipping the bottle out of Jared’s fingers with a lingering touch.
“We need to hide out for a few more hours,” Jensen says. “You should get something to eat.”
On cue, Jared’s stomach growls. He hasn’t eaten since last night’s supper, he realizes. That was at least fifteen hours ago, probably longer. No wonder he’s starved.
Horny and starving.
“Uh.”
“Go ahead, use my cabin,” Jensen says, gesturing toward the door to the quarters where Jared ate and slept the previous night. “I’ll be on the bridge if you need me.”
“Wait, your cabin?” Jared frowns.
“Only one on the ship, just like me,” Jensen says with a shrug.
Jared stares, flabbergasted, as the truth hits him. Jensen slept in his chair on the bridge last night. No wonder he was up so early.
“Well, shit,” Jared says, gesturing towards the cabin. “You’re welcome to join me. I mean, I really am hungry.”
Jensen grins, open and easy and charming as all hell.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
//**//**//
The synthetic food isn’t great, but even Jared has to admit that Jensen’s company makes up for it. Jensen tells a couple of stories of previous close-calls involving hiding out in this exact asteroid field, and Jared listens, rapt.
“We waited until the garbage barge came through, then latched on. The sentries never even noticed us. Figured we were just part of the garbage floating around the barge.”
“So can we do that? Is that your plan?”
Jensen tilts his head, and Jared wonders how a human being can have such perfect eyelashes. Maybe he curls them.
“We could,” Jensen nods. “It’s a little tricky, but that damn garbage barge is pretty punctual. Should be coming by in about three hours.”
“Okay,” Jared agrees. “What do we do till then?”
Jensen looks at him, green eyes steady with meaning, and Jared blushes.
“I barely know you,” he reminds Jensen. “You’re a scoundrel.”
“And you, professor, are very attractive when you blush.” Jensen tilts his head. “Scratch that. You are very attractive, period.”
“We’ve already established the mutual attraction thing, Captain.” Jared lowers his eyes, which of course land on the bed. It’s a little narrow, more of a bunk, really, which usually slides into the wall when it isn’t in use. But this morning, Jared had scrambled out of it pretty fast when he realized the ship had stopped moving, so it’s still pulled out, like a not-so-subtle invitation.
“I promise I’ll make it good for you,” Jensen assures him. “I used to be a sex worker.”
Jared chokes on his own spit. “What?”
Jensen shrugs. “I was a horny kid, what can I say? It was good money.”
Jared stares, his mind flooded with unwelcome thoughts of this beautiful man being used in ways Jared doesn’t even want to imagine. Willingly or not, the mere idea makes Jared shudder.
“So sex is just a tool for you,” he says. “It gets you what you want. Money.”
Jensen shrugs. “Money, pleasure, the keys to the Impala. But I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need to.” His gaze sweeps down over Jared’s body, making Jared shiver. “With you, it’d be nothing but pleasure.”
Then why does Jared feel like he’s negotiating some kind of business deal?
Jared takes a deep, shaky breath. “Like I said last night, Captain, I’m not doing that. I need to get to know you before I can be intimate with you. That’s just how I’m made.”
Jensen leans back in his seat, eyebrows raised, considering.
“You play hard to get long enough, professor, I might just fall in love with you.” It sounds like a confession. Or a threat. When Jensen ducks his head, huffs out an embarrassed laugh, and gets up to leave, Jared gets the impression he’s just seen the real Jensen, the vulnerable soul under all the layers of bravado and self-control.
Jared stares at the door long after it shuts behind Jensen, confused by his own feelings for the enigmatic man who just might be stealing his heart.
//**//**//
The plan goes better than Jared or maybe even Jensen expected. At the appropriate time, they strap themselves into their seats on the bridge, Jensen releases the Impala from the asteroid and attaches to the bottom of the garbage barge as it passes. Because he’s able to keep their engines powered down and just let gravity do its thing, the move goes smoothly. After an hour attached to the barge, Jensen detaches the Impala and lets her drift until they’re mostly out of range of any pursuing sentries.
“Setting coordinates for Arida,” Jensen announces as he types, then punches the input button. “Engaging wormhole capacitor in three, two, one.”
The ship rattles and shakes but somehow stays together. Jared feels the momentary crush of g-forces as the ship lunges forward, then seems to settle. Jared recognizes the comforting hum of the wormhole capacitor doing its thing, knows he won’t see any stars when he looks outside because they’re literally inside an artificial black hole.
Moving through space and time by literally bending it in on itself has never been something Jared could wrap his mind around. He’s not sure many people can. All he knows is, it’s the only way to travel, out here.
“So I’m guessing ‘Arida’ is the pitstop you mentioned earlier,” Jared suggests, once his heart has stopped racing fit to burst in his chest.
Jensen nods, still typing. “It’s Spanish for ‘dry,’” he explains. “You’ll see why when we get there. Arida is the driest, dustiest planet you ever saw. A real desert world.”
“And there’s a repair shop for your ship there?”
“Oh yeah,” Jensen nods. “Baby was born there. Or at least, put together from scrap there. The guys who run the shop are just about the best mechanics in the galaxy. Best friends, too.”
Jensen pats the Impala’s console thoughtfully, then turns his gaze on Jared.
“I can’t wait for you to meet them,” he says with a chuckle. “They’re gonna love you.”
Jared doesn’t have time to question Jensen’s meaning as the ship shudders and shakes again, the now-familiar motion telling Jared that the ship has exited the wormhole. When Jensen lights up the main view screen, a reddish-colored planet appears, reminding Jared of Mars.
“It may not look like it, but Arida has an atmosphere close to Earth’s,” Jensen assures him, apparently reading his thoughts. “Not much grows there, but underground water sources keep the people who live there alive. It’s too hot on the surface during the day, so everybody lives at the poles, where the sun never shines directly. Dust storms keep everybody indoors most of the time anyway.”
“Sounds like a great place to live,” Jared says, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
Jensen gives him another of his enigmatic looks. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” he says finally.
The space station orbiting Arida has a shuttle waiting for them to take them to the planet’s surface, along with a crusty old mechanic who introduces himself as Jim. Jim Beaver. Call me Jim.
“Jared,” Jared says, sticking out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Jim.”
“Uh-huh.” Jim shakes his hand but his gaze jumps immediately to Jensen. “Well, I can see what you see in this tall drink of water.”
“What?” Jared huffs out a startled laugh.
“We’re not together,” Jensen says almost simultaneously.
“Uh-huh,” Jim says skeptically, gaze shifting to Jared again. “Maybe not yet, but you are totally his type.”
Jared flushes to the roots of his hair. He doesn’t like to consider the notion of Jensen having a “type,” and he sure as hell doesn’t like to think about Jensen with anyone who might resemble Jared, in any way.
Then, on the planet’s surface, he meets Jeff Morgan.
Although Jeff’s at least ten years older than Jensen, with a greying beard and sharp, laughing blue eyes, Jared recognizes the resemblance immediately. He’s tall, for one thing. Not quite as tall as Jared, but definitely taller than Jensen. He has deep dimples that appear every time he laughs, which is often.
He’s also got a wicked sense of humor, cusses constantly, and touches a lot. A hand on the shoulder or on the upper back or the lower back when he’s guiding Jared into his house, a hand on Jensen’s forearm as he tells a story.
There’s obviously deep affection between the two men, and eventually Jared’s curiosity gets the better of him.
“So how did you two meet?”
They’ve finished their meal and opened the whiskey. Jensen and Jeff exchange glances over the table, and Jensen nods his permission.
“I bought out his contract at a brothel on Kendor,” Jeff says.
Jared’s eyes go wide.
“He rescued me,” Jensen corrects. “I was ready to get out, and I never would’ve been able to afford to buy my own freedom.”
“So you met at the brothel,” Jared clarifies.
“I was a fuckin’ customer,” Jeff says with a nod. “I took one look at Jensen and bought exclusive access for a week. When he told me he wanted out, I came up with a cash offer they couldn’t fuckin’ refuse, and here we are.”
“Did you want out before you two met?” Jared asks, watching Jensen’s lips curl around the edge of his glass as he takes a sip before answering.
“I was thinking about it,” Jensen admits. “But when Jeff walked in, I knew.”
“Fuckin’ love at first sight,” Jeff adds with a hearty laugh. “For both of us.”
“How old were you?” Jared presses.
“Twenty-one,” Jensen says, taking another sip of his whisky. “Eighteen years ago.”
Well, that answers that question.
“You think he looks good now? Imagine the fuckin’ beautiful boy he was at twenty-one and tell me I should’ve been able to resist him,” Jeff challenges.
Jared shakes his head. He can’t.
“I would’ve been seventeen and never even heard of Kendor,” he says. He glances at Jensen, who gazes back with an inscrutable expression, the one that sends shivers up Jared’s spine. Jensen wondered, he thinks. Now he knows. There are four years between them. Jensen’s older.
“So you two moved here?”
Jeff nods. “This was my dad’s place, his fuckin’ business, now it’s mine. The Impala was mine, too, originally.”
“Jeff taught me everything he knows,” Jensen says.
“Well, maybe not everything.” Jeff rolls his eyes. “He was a fast fuckin’ learner. Soaked it all up like a fuckin’ sponge. Starship maintenance and repair, engineering, parts storage and salvage. Turns out, Jensen’s a natural fuckin’ mechanic.”
“Then I got drunk one night and joined Starforce,” Jensen says.
Jared’s eyes go wide. Wonders never cease. “You joined the military?”
Jensen nods. “Learned to fly anything and everything. Docking and landing anywhere. Tactical maneuvers, firefights, combat strategies, the whole nine yards. Worked my way up to Star Elites. Served five years.”
Jared stares, impressed. “Then what?”
Jensen shrugs. “Then I quit.”
“You deserted?” Jared gasps, but isn’t really surprised.
“Nah, man. I served two tours, running missions. Then I quit. Honorable discharge.” Jensen shakes his head. “It’s a young man’s world. You gotta be under thirty. If I was still with them, they’d have me on desk duty by now, and I didn’t want that. That wasn’t me.”
Jeff picks up the story. “When he got back here, I could see the fuckin’ stars in his eyes. He wasn’t about to hang out here, repairing engines. He had the fuckin’ space bug. He wanted to be out there, among the stars. That’s where he fuckin’ belongs.”
“So you gave him the Impala and set him free,” Jared breathes.
Jensen and Jeff look at him, then at each other. Then they burst out laughing.
“Man, you should be a fucking romance writer,” Jeff says when he gets his laughter under control. “He fixed up the fuckin’ Impala, so I fuckin’ gave her to him. He was always free to go wherever he wanted.”
“But you and him.” Jared still hasn’t quite made sense of their relationship.
“Oh, it was fuckin’ good, for a while, not gonna lie,” Jeff says. “But I never meant for Jensen to feel obligated, and I sure as hell didn’t want to fuckin’ hold him back or tie him down. He was so young when we met, and he’d been in that brothel for so long, I wanted him to have a chance to fuckin’ explore the world. Figure out what he fuckin’ wanted to do.”
Jensen smiles fondly at his old mentor, savior, and lover. “I never had a father,” he says. “Raiders kidnapped my mother and little sister and me when I was seven, separated us, and sold me off to the brothel on Kendor. The brothel owners weren’t cruel, but they weren’t my family. Jeff’s family.”
“Aw, shut yer fuckin’ mouth,” Jeff mutters, grinning ear to ear.
“Jim Beaver, too,” Jensen goes on. “He runs the space station like it was his own private fill-up joint. Which it is, technically, since we’re so far out on the edges of nowhere.”
“Speaking of Jim, he texted a little while ago,” Jeff tells them. “The Impala should be ready to ship out by noon tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to stay here in my fuckin’ guest room. There’s only one bed, but it’s fuckin’ huge.”
“Thanks, Jeff.” Jensen gives his old friend another fond smile, and Jared decides right there and then that he’ll do whatever it takes to earn one of those from Jensen, one of these days.
“You don’t gotta fuckin’ thank me, kid,” Jeff scolds. “This place is your home, always. You know that.”
PART TWO