Young looked up from his book when he heard the tentative knocking at his door. Tugging off his glasses, he used them to mark his place, hauling himself up from where he had sunk down in the curious non-leather of his sofa.
Palming the door panel revealed Nicholas Rush, body half-turned away from him, looking down the hallway. Rush stood with his head bowed, left hand cradling the back of his neck. He wore a pair of military-issue pants and the matching tan tee-shirt. His hair was clean and looked as though some effort had been made to tame it. As he looked up, Young realized he was clean-shaven, perhaps for the first time in months.
Their eyes met and Rush looked almost surprised to see him standing there, in the doorway of his own quarters. When Young opened his mouth to speak, Rush shouldered past him, stepping into the room.
With a half-shrug, Young closed the door, following him over to where Rush sat on the sofa uninvited, hands clasped in his lap. He realized then the other man was barefoot. Overall, he appeared curiously vulnerable.
After a moment's hesitation, Young joined him on the sofa, hands on his knees. It was awkward, sitting elbow-to-elbow with Rush like this. He could smell the traces of Brody's liquor on him and wondered how sober the other man was to come to him like this.
Finally, Young spoke, eyes on the ceiling. "I'm... sorry. About Dr. Perry."
Rush nodded silently, hand curling up to his neck again.
"She was..." He cleared his throat. "She seemed like a very nice... person. I understand the two of you were... close."
"I didn't come here to talk about Mandy," Rush whispered, voice barely audible.
Young sighed. "Well, what did you come here for, Rush?" He asked, turning to look at him, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice. No matter how hard he made an effort with this man, something about him seemed determined to undo it in an instant.
Without warning, Rush's hands were fisted on the lapels of his jacket. The smaller man used this grip to pull himself up to kneel on the sofa, pressing his mouth to Young's with a reckless intensity that took his breath away.
For a moment, Young just sat there, stunned. He raised one arm to catch the other man by the scruff of his too-large shirt, pulling him closer as his other hand wrapped around to bury in his hair. Rush's teeth clacked against his with more violence than finesse and he twisted his mouth to better mesh them together, feeling the man's lips bruise under his.
The kiss ended when he finally wrestled Rush onto his back, pressing him into the sofa, kneeling above him with one knee on either side of him, still gripping his shirt and hair.
Rush's arms released his jacket, coming to fall on either side of his head and he held them there as though pinned. Young pulled back a bit, teeth raking against Rush's smooth chin as he caught his breath. He opened his palm on the back of his head, feeling the heavy weight of his skull, the softness of the clean hair. He inhaled, taking in the various smells clinging to that skin – clean laundry, the soap they'd managed to make, the acrid sharpness of alcohol and the earthy tones he had come to associate with Rush and Rush alone. He hadn't even realized he'd known his scent until that moment.
As he slid his mouth lower, tasting the skin at his throat before moving up again, just below his ear, Rush let out a soft sound more like a sob than not. Young pulled back further and looked at him, expression critical.
Rush lay on his back, eyes tightly closed, body half-turned away. He gripped his own wrist tightly in his right hand, knuckles white. His posture and expression stabbed at Young, a too-strong reminded of the night in Storage Bay 3 when he had come close to making yet another ultimate mistake with the man.
"Jesus, Rush..." Young grated out, levering himself up and away.
Those wide brown eyes snapped open, confused and searching. Rush sat up, grabbing for his arm in protest. "Wait, don't..."
"Look at you! You don't want to do this. You're frightened."
"I'm not!" He insisted stubbornly, tugging at Young's sleeve.
"You don't want to do this, Rush." He repeated firmly.
Rush responded by trying for another desperate kiss, but Young caught him by his arms, hands curling just above his elbows. He stared into the man's wild eyes for a moment, feeling as though he were being swallowed up in those depths, before wrenching him forward savagely by his bruising grip.
The smaller man's hands pressed against Young's chest, pushing away reflexively, and Young shook him in response, stilling him. "Is this what you want?" He snarled, voice hoarse and dark. "Is this what you want from me? You want me to hurt you? To make you?"
Rush shook his head, eyes wet, gaze sliding away. He huffed a series of breaths but could not manage to articulate anything.
Young released him, letting him fall back on his elbows on the sofa, before shoving away to stalk across the room. He paced the floor, back and forth, for a few moments, sucking in breaths as he ran his hands through his hair.
Rush continued to watch him, chest heaving with deep breaths of his own. Finally, Rush licked his dry lips reflexively and stood up. He came closer to Young, who stopped pacing to stare at him. Rush held up one hand as though soothing a frightened animal, saying softly, "...We need this. We both do."
Young flinched at the repetition and watched the hand come in contact with his arm, curving around his bicep, with almost detached interest. He followed the man's arm up to his shoulder and to his face, shaking his head, with his eyes and then with his fingertips. "Even if I thought for one second that you really meant that, this would still be a colossally bad idea."
"And why is that, Colonel?" He asked voice still as soft and gentle as Young had ever heard it. His expression was one of mild interest, but his throat twitched.
"Because you're you, Rush, and I'm me, and we are never going to make this work."
"It only has to work out for a little while..." Rush murmured, stepping closer, his other hand on Young's chest again.
It would be so easy to lean down, he realized, to close the distance between their mouths, to push him back or pull him forward. He wondered what Rush would do if he crushed him in an embrace or threw him to the floor. Somehow he knew he would both relish and dislike the answers to those questions.
Shaking his head, Young pulled away.
He walked the length of the room, coming up short when he realized this put him beside his bed. "You want to be punished, for the part you think you played in Dr. Perry's death. But you didn't kill her, Rush. It wasn't your fault."
Rush followed him silently, sitting on the bed awkwardly, curling his arms around himself, one on his shoulder, the other his waist. He looked down at his own feet, curving them inwards, the bones of his ankles stark and visible. His expression was haunted and hollow and it tugged at something in Young he couldn't even full realize.
With a sigh, Young plopped down beside him, causing the other man to rock from side-to-side as the bed settled under their combined weight. Gently, hesitantly, he lifted his arm to smooth down Rush's tousled hair, still sticking up in the back where his hand had mauled it.
Almost absently, Rush leaned into him, his head coming to rest in the crook of Young's shoulder. Young held his hand out awkwardly before settling it around his shoulder, embracing him.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Rush," He whispered, "Not anymore."
"I can see that," He replied, voice thick with emotion.
"You're tired. You're drunk..." He began softly, looking at the wall and not the man curling more and more into his side. "You're going to regret this in the morning."
Rush's dry laugh gave way into a quiet sob. Young looked down then as the man's face crumpled into tears. He had heard stories about people seeing Rush cry, but he'd never believed them until now. The other man brought his hands up over his face, muffling himself, shoulders shaking as he cried silently. "...Everything..." He whispered finally, "Every morning…"
Young nodded, petting his thumb across his shoulder as he continued to shake, tears gone dry now, but the pain that caused them clearly still there. Eventually, Rush wound up falling half-way across his lap, face still in his arms. Young held him sideways, saying nothing.
"I really am sorry about all this," Rush murmured finally, curling more or less into the fetal position, head braced on Young's thigh.
"Shut up and go to sleep, Rush." Young replied, settling back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. From this angle, all of the rivets and dimples and curves looked new.