Dr. Rush was excellent at pretending. He pretended to hate everybody, and he pretended that he wanted people to hate him. He pretended he'd never felt grief over Gloria's death. He pretended he'd never known Mandy.

And right now, he and Colonel Young were pretending they were gay.

It was the silliest, most frivolous thing, but if Dr. Rush had to give the situation props, at least it had brought the two of them a little closer. They didn't have the time for fighting when they were making schemes, after all. And their shouting rate had gone down six percent.

The problem was, Rush suspected people weren't convinced.

"You think we're being thorough enough?" he brought up casually when it was just himself and Young in the Apple Core.

"Thorough enough?" Young repeated without interest, not looking up. Rush hesitated.

"Well, we've been very subtle thus far in this … game. Are you sure that that's the right approach?"

Young's expression was carefully blank as he waited for Rush to go on.

"People expect chemistry," Rush told him, unsure whether to gesture of keep his hands on the console. With Gloria, he'd have gestured. With Eli, he'd not have moved.

With Colonel Young …

"If we don't have chemistry," said Rush, "or something like it, we'll have a difficult time convincing anyone we're dating. We'd be like the ambiguously homosexual boy who dates the ambiguously homosexual girl and neither of them hold hands or kiss. Unconvincing."

Young mulled that over. "You're saying we need to hold hands? Or kiss?"

Rush stared down at the console as his heart almost stopped. Suddenly, he was having difficulty reading the symbols and bright words before him.

"Rush?" said Young.

"Yeah," he breathed, then tried again, a little more forcefully. "Well, it wouldn't hurt to be in practice."

Young was silent.

"Yeah," he said eventually. "I guess not."

Neither of them, it seemed, could breathe. It was another slow, quiet thirty seconds before Rush could force himself to push back from the console and come closer. His fingertips were tingling from something he hadn't felt in years – not love. Nerves.

Eyes on each other.

Chest to chest.

And then both of them moved forward and they were kissing. Young's lips were soft and wet, pliable and almost unresponsive so that just the smallest bit of pressure gave Rush access to his mouth.

Both of them pulled away too soon.

"Right," said Rush brusquely, swiping at his mouth and coloring. Young nodded rapidly, not quite meeting his eyes.

"Right."

Hoping to hide his blush (and his burning ears), Rush turned back to the console and started pressing keys. He wasn't doing anything – just staring straight ahead and listening to the deafening silence roaring past his ears.

The colonel shuffled.

"Right," he said again, "well, I'm needed in, uh …"

"Yeah," said Rush.

Young left without another word.

Young didn't normally spend his lunch hour with Camille Wray, but sometimes the woman just couldn't be got rid of. On most days, she was a vaguely irritating blob of HR issues and complaints about things that, frankly, Young wasn't sure they needed. On days like this, where the colonel's mind was definitely elsewhere, Camille became something like a human-ized Jar-Jar Binks.

Not that Everett knew who Jar-Jar was.

"So you'll talk to Inman?" Camille prompted at the end of a long, accusatory rant that Young hadn't heard. He nodded. "Good. Now tell me –" She leaned forward, switching to a more secretive volume. "What's with you and Rush?"

Young gaped at her. "What?"

"I thought you two were dating."

"We are! We –" He forced his voice out of 'shrill, lying' tone and into 'gravelly, calm' tone. "We are very happy together."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Then why's he sitting over there?"

With a feeling of dread lodged in his throat, Young turned to follow Camille's gaze and saw Rush eating alone at a table across the room, his back to them, his shoulders hunched.

Damn it.

"He doesn't like you," he told Camille apologetically. "Maybe you should go."

Camille's eyes narrowed. "Patently untrue," she snapped. "I'm his only friend here. Try again."

Damn it. Damn it. Shit.

"We're arguing," Young confessed. "Um … Rush wants to … ship."

Camille stared at him.

"Fix the ship," said Young quickly, nodding. "He wants to fix the ship."

"And you don't want that?"

Shit. Shit. Damn it.

"No, no, no!" said Young. "Of course I do. But, er – Rush, he wants to – wants to work at night. And that is our time."

"Your time," Camille repeated.

"Yeah."

"Your time with your lover, Rush."

"Yeah."

"Your lover," Camille stressed, staring into his eyes. "RUSH."

It occurred to Young that lovers did not typically refer to one another by surnames.

"Nick," he said, "does not allow me to use his first name. Um. Bad memories."

Camille waited.

"Of his wife."

…

"And Dr. Perry."

…

"His dad molested him," Young invented, "and called him Nick. Bad memories."

With a roll of her eyes, Camille grabbed Young by the arm and pulled him out of his seat, towards Rush's table.

"Oh, Nicholas!" she said with a clearly false air of brightness and look-who-I-found-ness. "Colonel Young and I were just talking about you!"

Rush looked up at her, pointedly avoiding Young's eyes. "Don't call me Nicholas," he said.

Young took a moment to personally congratulate himself and promise to do something nice for God.

"Nick, then?" Camille suggested. Quite affably, Rush shrugged.

Damn it. Shit. Fuck.

"OK, you two," said Camille in a no-nonsense voice, her arms crossed. "Is something going on? Did you two break up?"

"No," said Young.

"Yes," said Rush.

"Yes," Young said quickly.

"N –" Rush started.

…

…

"Yes."

"Yes, you've broken up?" Camille checked. Simultaneously, both men said,

"No."

Colonel Young pinched the bridge of his nose and struggled not to cry.

"Okay," said Camille quite slowly. "Why don't you tell me what's going on? Start at the beginning."

"None of your business," Rush said tersely. Camille gave him the evil eye. Young gave him a thumb's up.

Finally, after a long stare-down, Camille held up her hands in defeat.

"If you want to avoid the problem," she sniffed, "then I won't try to help you."

Rush and Young watched her walk away– then Young turned back at Rush.

Rush's eyes flicked up to him.

Young jumped and glanced away.

Rush studied his hands.

They looked at each other.

"Bye," they said.

Life support was fine. Power was fine. Shields were fine. Weapons were fine.

Brody was overseeing repairs, and therefore the opposite of a nuisance.

Volker was gone, and therefore not a nuisance.

Park was blind, and therefore not much of a nuisance, since she wasn't pushing buttons or asking about his day.

Eli was determinedly hovering. He, it goes without saying, was a NUISANCE.

"Sooo," said Eli slowly. This, Rush had come to learn, was an art that Eli used when he felt awkward or bored. Common people called it small talk. Rush called it torture. "I heard you and Young got in a fight today."

"Nope," said Rush.

Silence.

"OK, well," Eli started up again, "I'm pretty sure that's a lie. Because I saw you guys at lunch."

Rush scoffed. "Like you really need more lunch."

"Ass."

"Skinny ass," Rush corrected. "As opposed to you, the –"

"Is it your sex life?" Eli overrode him. Rush blanched. "Lots of people break up because their sex life is unsatisfactory, like the guy wants to do BDSM and the girl wants him to poop on her."

Rush worked very, very hard on erasing that image from his mind.

"So?" Eli prompted. "Does Colonel Young want to poop on you?"

"OUT," Rush barked, his arm swinging toward the door. Eli had the balls to look affronted, like he'd done nothing wrong.

"It's just a question –"

"OUT!"

"OK! Geez! I'm leaving!" He stepped toward the door, hands up in surrender. "See?" he said. "I'm out."

Rush turned his head very slowly and leveled Eli with something that was less a glare and more two burning orbs of death-fire-shit-did-you-guys-see-that? trying to crawl into him and feed.

"Out," he hissed.

Eli was gone.

It took a week of avoiding each other and the efforts of half a dozen crew members to convince Rush and Young to look at one another again.

"Are you two fighting?" Park asked on day one after The Incident. "I can feel you avoiding each other from here."

"It's like you looked into Rush's eyes and finally saw his soul," Volker joked on day two after The Incident. "And now you're scared for your life and won't let him touch your -"

"If it's about your sex life, I can give you guys my Kinko," Eli offered on day three, holding up a standard Kino someone had painted pink. "You know, so you can tape it if you want. Who knows, it might add a little spice!"

"Do people … use this …. Kinko?" Young asked warily. Eli nodded, face bright.

"Yeah, of course. So if you don't wanna tape, you can always just watch. Ah, here, look –"

"NO."

It all culminated in this: one very frustrated Colonel Young. One adamantly-refusing-to-deal-with-or-acknowledge-the-problem Dr. Rush.

One deserted room in the more private part of Destiny.

"So," said Young, arms crossed, "you wanna tell me why you've given up on our arrangement?"

"Arrangement?" Rush scoffed. "You mean our deception against Destiny and its crew?"

Young sighed through his nose and counted to ten. Two sentences – two sentences in, and he was already counting to ten! "Yes," he hissed. "Our deception. "

"I haven't given up on it," Rush sniffed. "I simply think our approach is … hard to believe."

"Hard to believe?" Young gaped at him. "Rush, it's us pretending to be gay. For each other. The entire premise is hard to believe!"

"Which is why our approach to it should be a little more realistic."

Young turned away, pressing the palm of his hand to his forehead. "Explain," he commanded. With a roll of the eyes, Rush complied.

"When we weren't dating," he said sardonically, "we were at each other's throats. Now we're public. We're like that sickening teenage couple swallowing each other's tongues in the middle of a crowded store."

"I thought we were the ambiguously gay duo that wouldn't show affection?"

Rush didn't respond. Suddenly, the beginnings of realization bloomed in the colonel's mind.

"Is this because we kissed?" he asked.

Rush looked away.

"It is!" Young exclaimed. "You're self-conscious or – or awkward, whatever – because we kissed! What, are you regretting it? You think it changes things?"

Looking surly, Rush just shrugged.

"It was your idea!" Young cried. Rush still wouldn't so much as glance at him, and the colonel knew that nothing he said would get across if he continued like this. He grabbed the scientist's shoulders and looked him in the eye.

"Rush," he said, "it was your idea. So you can't be uncomfortable about – about the fact that you kissed a man. Obviously. I mean, you're perfectly willing to moan my name so people think we're having sex – you're not troubled by the idea. So what is this about?"

He tilted his head down, waiting for an answer. Rush's eyes flicked to the floor and he tried to shift away.

"Did you enjoy it?" Young asked, half-joking.

Rush went absolutely still. Young caught the change and furrowed his brow, curiosity piqued.

"Did you?" Young repeated. Uncertainty filled his voice and he scrutinized Rush's face for any sign.

Rush let out a growl, rolling his shoulder out of Young's reach in a quick and angry motion, stumbling back a few steps. "Of course not!" he spat. His lip curled to show his teeth and his eyes bore into Colonel Young's.

Young let his hands fall back numbly.

"Liar," he said.

And Young kissed him again.

A/N: Cu Chulainn speaking. You know that scene up there where Young and Rush kissed for the first time? Almost didn't happen. Almost mimicked real life.

My boyfriend and I had been dating for - oh, one year and two months - and we hadn't kissed yet, and the only time we'd held hands was when he was blinded by his allergies and needed to be led to McDonald's. Blind boyfriend, frail girlfriend, bad bad baaad part of town.

So we're driving home one night and he starts this speech about how his parents instilled all sorts of "boundaries" in him, rules he can't break even though he knows he's allowed to by now. Boundaries that have held him back and which he intends to cast aside right. Now.

And then he grabs my hand.

Cu Chulainn: O.o
Boyfriend: *stares straight ahead*
Cu Chulainn: ... Oh, honey. *pets*

He's a silly one.