Title: Unfulfilled, part 2 of 2

Author: Hephaistion's Thighs

With help from: LuckyCloverg69 and Ima_Pseudonym ^_^

Rating: Adult, R

Pairing: Searle/Capa, Mace/Capa

Warnings: Wet dream, angst, jealousy, Harvey abuse, possible spousal abuse, sabotage, sex, voyeurism, awkwardness, length (5,040 words), ending of questionable satisfaction

Reviews: Will be loved and possibly cuddled. 3

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Part 2

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The black strands of Capa's hair were soft between his fingers. Everything about him radiated beauty. He watched Searle with trust in his eyes, and for once he really saw him. He let Searle close to him, and into him.

Capa was hot and tight, impossibly so. Falling into him, Searle was reminded of the dreams Capa had told him about, falling helplessly into the Sun and burning up. Searle heard him gasp into his ear as he came. Searle continued moving in him, chasing the incineration he craved.

Searle gasped harshly, and all the pale skin and soft lips and blue eyes were lost to him. There was the dark ceiling above him, and no one else in the room.

.

Mace didn't deserve to have what Searle dreamed about. No, Searle amended that thought to make it less personal. Mace shouldn't be with Capa.

He hoped Capa stayed out of love with Mace. They might have been bringing each other some needed comfort, but Mace just wasn't good enough for Capa. Capa deserved better than to get stuck with an older man like Searle, and he deserved much better than to get stuck with an aggressive emotionally immature control freak like Mace.

Searle's own psychological well-being had tipped downward somewhat. He was functioning professionally, but how could he not be affected? The man he loved was being regularly fucked by someone who really wasn't good enough for him.

He had the feeling that he ought to object more. He didn't have a real reason, though. Mace may not be what Capa deserved, but he was making Capa happy.

.

Dinner time on board Icarus, Capa brought the main dish to the table for everyone to serve themselves and took a seat next to Mace. The usual seating of the crew shifted around, but it used to be that Capa would tend to sit next to Searle.

"Ugh," Harvey mumbled in complaint, "I can't even tell what this is."

"It's pasta," Capa said. The communications officer had moved past passive-aggressively resenting Capa's cooking on to making small snide comments instead. Capa's cooking wasn't that different from anyone else's, Harvey just needed somewhere to vent his frustration.

"But what's in it?" Harvery wondered. Capa just shifted awkwardly in his seat; he couldn't help that the rehydrogenated meat substitute they had was weird, but he had thought it would make the pasta dish more interesting. "With as few meal options as there are, somehow you still manage to mess it up every time."

"If you want to eat the same identical crap every day, I'm sure you can take his shifts," Mace snapped suddenly. Everyone looked at him for a moment. "I'm sick of you bitching about it..."

"It's not my fault your boyfriend can't cook," Harvey muttered.

Mace choked on his food and Searle saw Capa look mildly horrified.

"That's mature," Cassie scolded Harvey. She assumed he was resorting to the schoolboy taunt of calling someone gay because he couldn't think of a smarter reply.

"You think I'm joking? I hear them going at it all the time." Harvey's room was next to Capa's.

Now Mace looked pissed and Capa looked very embarrassed, and the rest of the crew was watching them.

"Is he serious?" Cassie asked Capa.

Capa nodded. Harvey gestured with his hand as if to say, 'I told you so,' but then he shrank back in his seat at the look Mace was giving him. Kaneda and Searle had known about Mace and Capa's relationship, but none of the rest of the crew had.

Corazon just blinked and went back to her meal. She wasn't impressed by two guys stuck on a space ship together for years having sex.

"You're gay?" Trey asked Mace with astonishment. Mace was like the navigator's big brother that he looked up to, and there wasn't anything about the engineer that read as the typical image of homosexuality.

"Do we have to talk about this?" Mace asked.

"No..." Trey backed off, but he was obviously curious.

Mace huffed a sigh. "Yes, I'm gay. I've been gay my whole life, not just because we're out here."

After a few more awkward silent seconds, Capa commented, "I notice no one's expressing surprise that I'm gay."

"I didn't mean, I just-" Trey hurried to amend.

"It's okay, I was joking." It was usually only Searle who understood Capa's sense of humor.

Cassie did look genuinely taken aback by the news, however. She had been nurturing a passive crush on Capa almost as long as Searle had been in love with him.

.

Searle didn't know when Mace started abusing Capa. He suspected that the first time he saw it wasn't the first time it had happened. The engineer could have left all sorts of angry marks on Searle's frail physicist before any of them escaped the confines of Capa's clothing.

The one everyone saw was the bruise on Capa's cheekbone.

"Capa!" Cassie immediately hovered closer to Capa with mothering concern at breakfast. "What happened?"

Capa offered her a small, supposedly abashed smile. "I tripped, reading and walking at the same time."

"Oh," she touched his face gently, "Did you have Searle look at it?" Her eyes turned to the doctor and so did Capa's.

"No, not yet."

Searle took Cassie's place next to him, holding Capa's face to examine the mark.

"Can this wait until after breakfast?" Capa asked.

Searle nodded, taking his hands away with a tight-lipped smile. As the crew ate their meal, he watched Mace closely. The man was entirely silent, and it would seem like he wasn't giving anything away, but just the slight change in his mannerisms, the air of defensiveness around him, gave away his guilt.

.

Searle decided upon the most direct approach once he had Capa in the medical bay. "Has Mace hit you before?"

Capa's blue eyes widened slightly. "What?"

"The bruise is from Mace, isn't it?"

"No, I told you, I tripped."

"Capa, I'm trained to know when people are lying."

"Why would Mace hit me?"

"I'm wondering that, and I'm hoping you'll tell me," Searle said.

"I tripped," Capa repeated. Searle was silent and Capa continued, "I'm clumsy! You probably have that written down somewhere!"

Searle sighed and stood, taking Capa's hands in his own. He turned them both palm-up and examined them, then raised his eyes back to Capa's. "No marks on your hands. When people trip, they try to catch themselves."

"I was holding papers."

Searle was sure he was lying.

Finally, Searle dropped his eyes and his loved one's hands. He got an ice pack and pressed it to the bruise. "I want you to know that I'm here for you, whatever you need. It's not okay for you to get hurt, Capa."

Capa took the ice pack from him and held it in place himself. "I'm fine. Mace didn't do this."

.

"I didn't hit Capa."

It wasn't Searle who confronted Mace, Mace came to him; Capa must have told him what Searle thought. "I'm not trying to blame anyone, I just want to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"It didn't happen at all!" Mace said.

"Unfortunately, Mace," Searle was trying to be professional about this, "I can't take your word for it. We need to talk about this."

"You can talk about your crazy theory all you want, but I already know I didn't do anything." The engineer seemed awfully defensive for an innocent man.

"I just want everyone to be safe."

"Then we should talk about the seven-inch ridge between each section of the ship," Mace said. "He said he tripped over one of those and hit his head on the wall. I'm no threat to Capa."

"We both know you could be a threat to anyone on the ship if you had a mind to be." Searle looked at him seriously. Mace wasn't a huge brute, but he was six feet tall and built powerfully by military regimen. Capa looked tiny next to him; his narrow body could disappear in Mace's embrace, and Searle didn't find that endearing at all.

"I don't have a mind to-!"

Searle cut him off, "You and Capa haven't always gotten along, so I know the potential for conflict is there. And I know that Capa has a bruise, and I need to know what caused it."

"It's not from me," the other insisted again. He glared at Searle, who had discovered that the sunglasses he'd become accustomed to wearing were very useful for unnerving people.

"You ought to know that Capa's not stupid," Mace continued. "If I were a danger to him, I would be a danger to the mission, and he wouldn't let that go unchecked."

Mace had a point, but since Searle had him talking, he wanted to see if he could get him to say more. He continued to stare at him from behind the darkened glass.

"You just don't want us to be together," Mace accused.

"My opinions on your relationship don't really matter unless it's creating an unsafe situation," Searle replied.

"I didn't hit him. He can take care of himself, you're not his father." Mace was responding to Searle's intimidation by getting up in his face.

"I don't have to be his father to care about him," Searle said.

The engineer's brows drew together. He didn't speak for a long moment, until, "You love him."

Searle didn't say anything, because he was frozen and he couldn't deny it. Mace wasn't supposed to be this perceptive, but then again, the man must have known something of what it was like to love Capa.

"You're in love with him," Mace repeated. "That's what this is about."

"Any feelings I might have aren't relevant..." Searle tried.

"No, they're totally relevant! I don't know why I didn't see it before. You'd much rather that I did hit him, so you could order us apart!"

"He doesn't love you," Searle said suddenly.

Now it was Mace's turn to freeze.

"Let me know if that's changed, but when I spoke to him, he told me he didn't love you." The doctor knew this wasn't professional, but he was well aware of what he was doing.

Mace took a step back, and a scowl replaced his shocked expression. "Fuck you, Searle." He left.

.

Searle was watching the video screens again a few days later when the result of his sabotage played out. Mace and Capa were playing chess in the Payload, quiet discussions and silences spanning between them.

"Do you love me?" Searle could tell it made Mace uncomfortable to bring it up; the man wasn't good at emotional stuff.

Capa's eyes widened. "What?"

"I mean... it's okay if you don't, I just... wanted to know."

"Why are you asking me now?"

"Searle said you didn't," Mace said.

Capa frowned. "Searle doesn't live in my head."

"He said you said you didn't love me," Mace clarified.

"What? When?"

"I don't know. Is it true?"

It took a while for Capa to answer. "I'm not sure, Mace. I never thought about it."

"We've been doing this for months and you never once thought about whether or not you love me?" Mace was trying not to sound hurt. He wasn't supposed to care or have expectations.

"Is it important to you?"

"It matters to me! Do you feel anything for me at all?"

"Of course I do," Capa said quietly.

"Do you love me?" Mace demanded.

"I don't know!" Capa wasn't ready for such a sudden confrontation of his feelings. He didn't have it all sorted out in his head, he needed more time to solve it, like an equation.

"Is it Searle? Do you love him?"

"What?" Searle watched Capa's face closely, but it didn't give any indications of the man's feelings for him; the physicist was focused on Mace right now.

"Are you in love with Searle?" Mace asked again.

"No," Capa answered. Searle's heart sank. He rationalized that Capa could just be saying that because he thought it was what Mace wanted to hear, but still, hearing Capa say it sent his heart deep into the pit of his stomach. "Where is this coming from?" Capa asked, "Did Searle say I loved him?"

"No, but he kind of implied... He's in love with you, Capa." Now Searle felt what could be best described as 'oh shit'.

"What are you talking about?" This conversation caught Capa off guard on so many levels.

"He is. He doesn't want me to be with you," Mace said. When Capa didn't say anything, he continued, "Would you rather be with him?"

"No, Mace," Capa shook his head. "There's nothing going on between me and Searle."

"Do you love me?" the mechanic asked once more.

Capa swallowed. "I don't know." He didn't have a better answer.

Mace got up and started to leave.

Capa got up too, "I need more time. I need to think..."

"You don't have to analyze everything! You should just know!" Mace shouted. Searle did notice that although he was angry, he wasn't being violent toward Capa. Maybe his theory was wrong.

They just stared at each other for a moment. "If you don't know, the real answer must be No."

"Wait, please..."

Mace left, only stopping briefly to say, "Well I love you. Don't tell anyone."

.

Searle watched Capa sit alone in the Payload for over an hour before leaving the medical bay. Capa let him in, but he didn't seem happy to see him. He didn't say anything when Searle approached.

"I'm here because I saw you looked troubled," Searle informed him.

"So these cameras feed into the medical bay after all..." Capa was silent for a while. "Did you see my conversation with Mace?"

The doctor nodded. Capa had contemplated it before, the possibility that Searle could be watching anything on the ship at any time, but he wasn't aware of it on a daily basis. He thought about his rendezvous with Mace in the Payload and thought perhaps they should have taken these activities to one of their bedrooms instead.

"Why would you tell Mace I don't love him?"

"You said you didn't, when I interviewed you about your new relationship with him."

"That was ages ago."

"Do you love him now?" Searle asked.

"Like I told him, I don't know yet." Capa sounded irritated and depressed. His relationship with Mace was important to him. "Why did you do it?" He wanted a real answer.

"Because Mace was right about me." Searle appeared calm, but in truth he felt extremely nervous and exposed. He had meant for Capa to never find out about his love for him.

Blue eyes stared at him.

"I'm in love with you, Capa."

Even though Mace had told him about this earlier, the physicist still appeared very taken-aback. Searle couldn't help but think he looked kind of adorable in his startled state. "...I don't know what you want me to say."

"You don't have to say anything," Searle said. "No action is required on your part. I never planned to act on it myself."

"How... What makes you think you're in love with me?" This was very confusing to him. He didn't have many certain relationships, but Searle was supposed to be his friend.

Searle's eyebrow raised at the phrasing of that question. "Which one of us is the psychologist here?"

Capa smiled. Spending so much time with Searle had rubbed off on him.

"There's a lot to love about you," the doctor said. He sat down next to him, not too close, trying to encourage a more casual mood. There was some part of himself that hoped this revelation of his love to Capa would eventually result in a passionate romance between them, but mostly, he just didn't want to lose his trust.

"I think it's just outer space," Capa said after a while.

Searle shook his head. "Not true. I was in love with you on Earth."

"You never said anything." Searle just looked at him. Capa suddenly gestured at the other man's face, "Would you take those off? You're freaking me out!"

Searle removed the sunglasses. "I didn't say anything because the mission was too important for that."

"No one ever bothered with me on Earth," Capa said.

"You're not saying... Mace wasn't your first, was he?"

Now the physicist looked slightly affronted. "Of course not. How old do you think I am?"

"I know you're an adult..." Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure exactly how old Capa was. It popped up every time he accessed his profile, but he hadn't really noticed it. The young physicist was many times wiser than his age; it was hard to judge him.

"I'm twenty-nine. People seem to forget that."

Searle had to admit he would have guessed Capa's age closer to twenty than thirty. How had he gotten to be twenty-nine so quickly?

"You're the third person to tell me they love me lately, and I'm only sure I believe one of you," Capa said.

This really caught Searle's attention for two reasons; of course he hoped it was him Capa believed, and he was interested to hear he was the third and not just the second. "Cassie said she loved you?"

Capa nodded. "She's just lonely, she's not really in love with me at all. I think she wants to adopt me more than sleep with me, anyway. She still sees the seventeen year old boy the press fixated on because he designed a dark matter bomb. Kaneda and Corazon do too, really. They all treat me like a kid they need to take care of, while Harvey and Trey are intimidated by me. Almost the whole crew has idealized me into an unreal Sun-saving entity they can store all their hopes in."

Capa stopped for a moment, but there was definitely more coming. Searle waited quietly. Capa wasn't normally prone to anything even approaching ranting, so if he was letting his feelings out now, Searle wouldn't hinder him in doing so.

"It doesn't help my social skills any." They both knew Capa was lacking in that department. "I don't think I could be friends with them even if I wanted to be. I wish I were friends with Cassie. We ought to be friends." He was quiet for a while again. "But none of them even know me."

Then the younger man shifted awkwardly, self-conscious about what he had said. "I think you're my friend." The introduction of love into the equation made his concept of their relationship unstable now. "You know, right, that I'm not what the papers say? I'm not..." Robert Capa wasn't an angel sent to save mankind. "I'm just a guy, who's good at physics."

The doctor gave a small smile. "I know. I've psychoanalyzed you hundreds of times, remember." But he did wonder. He thought he knew Capa. He was sure he knew who he was. But was he really in love with Robert Capa, or with the idea of Robert Capa? He stored the thought away for later contemplation.

Searle fidgitted a little himself before he spoke again, "You mentioned Cassie, Kaneda, Corazon, Harvey, and Trey. Not Mace?"

Capa shook his head. "Mace never bought into any of that. He's committed to the mission, but he has no blind faith in it or me. He never believed my bomb will work just because it has to." Capa shivered for a moment. The bomb, the bomb, his only obsession, one which the whole world was all too happy to let him have.

"Remember... A long time ago, on Earth, in training, we were talking about how Mace and I couldn't seem to get along; we hypothesized that it was because Mace saw me as just a piece of equipment necessary for the mission?"

Searle nodded; he recalled.

"But we were wrong," Capa sounded almost excited when he spoke, "Mace just wasn't already carrying around a preconceived notion of who I was. The only way he thought about me was from what I was giving him. With the bomb and mission - and my skill for handle people being what it is - I never initiated any kind of real human interaction with him. How was he supposed to treat me like a full person if I wasn't showing him any evidence of being one?"

Searle continued to silently take in Capa's words. He was glad the other was talking so readily, even though he wished Capa didn't have so many thoughts about Mace. The physicist had obviously spent too much time around him, if he were able to examine how people thought this thoroughly.

"It took me getting bored enough out here to actually approach him, and now we're... friends." Another relationship in limbo.

"It's him you believe," Searle stated.

Capa looked apologetic. "Yes." They were both quiet for a while. "I don't know what to think about what you said."

"You don't have to do anything about it. It doesn't change anything, and I'm not going to interfere in things between you and Mace."

"I'm not sure I have a thing with Mace," Capa sighed.

"I may be biased, but I assure you I'm only speaking as a professional when I remind you that you don't have an obligation to Mace. If at a point you don't want a relationship with him any longer, you don't have to continue being involved with him just because he might want you to."

Capa was quiet. He didn't want things with Mace to end. But he didn't think he should go over his Mace issues any further at this point, not when he also had a Searle issue. "You love me?" he asked.

Searle nodded. "You don't believe me?"

"I'm not sure." It confused him.

Searle smiled again, even if it wasn't real. "Don't worry about it." He saw Capa open his mouth to speak again, and he patted his knee, "Just focus on the mission. All this other stuff, it's negligible."

"Searle..."

But Searle was hurting, so he left, leaving Capa confused and guilty just like Mace had.

.

On this ship in space with practically nothing but time on their hands, Searle just needed time to think.

Searle spent a full day doing what could only be described as brooding over the fact that now Capa knew he loved him and that hadn't changed anything. He wished he could make him believe him. He slowly settled with the reality that he shouldn't be so disappointed; this had always been the most likely outcome: awkwardness, not romance. He was the younger man's shrink and possibly his only real long-term friend, he couldn't spring the fact that he loved him on him in the middle of his confusion about the man he was already involved with and expect it to go smoothly.

He thought more about everything Capa had told him, and he was mildly annoyed when he found he thought Capa was right. And when he re-analyzed the situation from Capa's perspective, he even came to realize that Mace was more right for Capa than he was.

Searle admitted to himself that he was guilty of some of the behaviors that bothered Capa in the rest of the crew. He saw Capa as a real person, but he still also saw him as the embodiment of mankind's only hope. By contrast, Mace had determination, not hope, so he didn't lay this heavy hope on Capa's shoulders. No wonder Capa was finding refuge in him.

Mace saw Capa as a man with a job, while the rest of the crew, Searle included, were incapable of separating Capa's identity from his capacity as a bomb detonator. Searle hadn't acted on his love for Capa because of the mission, but Mace had actually gone for it. Searle could join Capa in the belief that Mace really was in love with him.

.

The captain came to talk to Searle the day after the next.

"I need you to brief me about the situation with Capa," was the request.

Searle paused for a split second - for a moment he thought Kaneda was referring to his personal situation with Capa. But no, of course he meant Capa's mental state. Searle had observed that their resident physicist had been quite distressed over the past few days, and Kaneda was far from oblivious to it.

"Some interpersonal drama has unfolded between Capa and Mace," Searle began. "Mace has expressed love for him, and Capa found himself unable to return the sentiment. The situation hasn't resolved and their involvement with each other is experiencing a strained hiatus." Searle sighed.

"This is just the kind of situation we wanted to avoid." The captain was not pleased.

Searle nodded. He knew it was his job to keep emotional drama from becoming an issue on board. Letting Capa get stressed out was a serious matter.

"Can you help them come to a resolution?" Kaneda asked.

The psychologist considered. "My recommendation would be to give them some time to reach a resolution on their own. It would be healthier than trying to push them into something." People weren't made to just be 'fixed' when it came to emotions.

"Alright. We'll give it a few more days."

Searle hadn't brought up that part of Capa's stress was caused by himself.

.

He found Capa sitting in the observation room. He wondered if he was there just because he wanted to look at the sun, or if he were hoping to encounter Searle. The doctor sat quietly beside him.

"I'm sorry I didn't respond very well when you told me."

"It's okay," Searle replied. It was; he didn't hold it against him.

"I should have at least said thank you."

Searle smiled, a real one this time. God he was so in love with Capa, he found even the man's abashedness endearing. "You're welcome."

"I still don't know what to do. You're my friend," Capa said helplessly.

"I'll always be your friend." Several minutes passed in silence. "Do you think you could ever love me?"

Capa considered. "I think the capacity is there." He hesitated, "I had quite a crush on you when we first met, and for some time afterward," he confessed.

Searle stared at him. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better?" Though really, this didn't make him feel better, this made him feel like a complete idiot who had missed his chance.

"No, it's true." Capa blushed even as he smiled. "I didn't think I'd ever tell you that."

Huh. "I don't want to push you into anything, especially not during the mission..." Searle began.

"Wait," Capa stopped him, "I'm sorry, Searle. You're my friend. I think I could have loved you, but... I couldn't now, not anymore."

Searle watched him, and nodded slowly. He could tell that Capa didn't want to hurt him, so he tried to not be hurt. "I'm your friend. You need a friend much more than a lover."

"That's probably true."

"Is that not the reason?"

Capa unconsciously worried his bottom lip with his teeth. He shrugged after a moment. "I've known you for so long." The relationship was good, but it couldn't really change. Friendship was all it could be. "And now I'm..."

Capa's thought died before reaching his lips, and Searle pondered what he would have said. "Now you're with Mace."

Capa shifted in his seat. "Maybe. I don't know." This seemed to visibly distress him.

"Tell me about it," Searle requested. He did want to know about the physicist's feelings toward Mace, because he cared about him, even if he knew now that Capa would never love him. Being a psychologist made this easier.

"I miss him." A pause, "And it's not just the sex. That was nice, but that's not what I miss."

Searle should have made them stop as soon as he saw them masturbating together. That kind of connection, while positive at its base, still pulled in strong emotions and built them up, and now those emotions were in jeopardy. That's just what happened with people, but it wasn't supposed to happen on this ship. But it was too late now - Searle couldn't make them stop, so he was going to have to help things as they were.

"Are you upset about what happened with Mace because you feel guilty for not reciprocating his love?" he asked.

"I would love him if I could."

Capa looked sad and even smaller than usual.

"Why can't you? You're capable of love, aren't you?"

"Inherently..."

"Is this the same way you can't love me?" Searle asked.

Capa shook his head slightly. "It's not that. It's... The mission is too important, I can't..."

Searle understood what he meant. It wasn't actually that Capa wasn't able to love Mace, he wasn't allowed to. He hadn't thought about it before because he wasn't supposed to, and bringing love into the equation meant that the relationship would be some form of commitment, and commitment to anything on board other than the mission could not be tolerated.

"Capa, don't make the same mistake as me. You don't have to do anything, but if you love him, love him. I trust you to always be able to put the mission first."

Capa thought on this for a while. "Thank you."

Searle patted his shoulder, "It's okay."

Capa got up and started to leave. He stopped, "Searle, I'm sorry. That I can't..."

"It's okay. Go talk to Mace."

.

The next night, Searle was given out of bed by dreams. It was still early in the evening, so he hoped if he got his mind sorted out quickly, he could get a decent amount of sleep.

He stopped short in the doorway to the observation room, finding it occupied. Capa and Mace were sitting together, the physicist's back to the engineer's chest, Mace's legs on the outside of Capa's.

Their quiet voices reverberated around the room, but Searle couldn't make out their words. They looked so peaceful. Mace's arms came to circle Capa and their fingers entwined.

Searle left without alerting them to his presence. He was Capa's friend, and didn't hope for anything more.

.

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