Rush wiped the dust off his hands and looked at the wall. Smooth metal, adequate lighting, he was not half done marvelling at how much better it was to be back on Destiny than stuck in the stone age down on the planet.

He crossed one arm over his chest, supported the elbow of the other on top of it, and touched the healing bite on his lower lip with his fingers, worrying it gently for the grounding effect of the ache.

It had seemed obvious at first that as soon as he was back in his place on board, everything would go back to normal. Here he needed no one to do physical labour for him, no one to keep an eye out for predators, or bring in food, or provide desultory conversation in the dark, not so much to break the silence as to prove that he wasn't alone.

Young was good at that, though. Good at being in a room as though he wasn't really there – somehow managing to provide the benefits of solitude and the benefits of company both at the same time.

Rush looked back at his equations in frustration. Bugger it. That was a factor he'd forgotten to take into account. He'd have to find a notation for it and figure it in.

He rubbed out workings until he had a swathe of clean metal and began again.

Sleep was how he'd started to approach the question. He'd blazed through work today with an efficiency that took him aback. He didn't want to think that interfering busy-bodies had been right all his life when they'd told him that rest would make him more productive, not less. Nonsense old folk-wisdom. There had been enough ill-defined talk like that in his recent decision making, it was time to apply some rigour.

So he had ended up here, trying to work out whether it made him more or less effective to get regular sleep, to eat regularly. And if he was solving that as a mathematical problem, why not go further and determine the influence of regular sex on his mental functioning?

But that too had seemed too simple, and he had begun to weigh the more unverifiable but real consequences of emotional, and possibly practical, support from Young against the inevitable backlash from the rest of the crew. How detrimental to his processing would be the sniggers, and the whispers that he'd somehow been tamed? How devastating would be the inevitable fallout when they ended up trying to kill each other again? Would it all be worth it?

These were all frustratingly difficult problems to model. And it didn't help that he was missing a significant datum – he didn't even know that continuance was an option.

He flung the chalk down, annoyed with himself. What was the point? What was the point of going through all of this analysis if he wasn't going to have the balls to even go and ask the question? Answers first. He could worry about the rest of it when he knew where he stood.

oOo

It's starting to sink in with them that we may never be going back, sir."

Twenty three forty five, and Lt. James had spent the last half an hour giving Young a run-down of the discipline problems in her squad. If he'd still been on the planet he would have been asleep right now, curled up in a warm nest of grass and fur with Rush. He was glad to be back, of course he was, but he could see why his earlier self had been so deeply, grindingly tired, and it was hard not to fret at the thought that he had left all of those things behind.

On the other hand, James' squad's problems were symptomatic of discipline problems throughout the ship. Nothing unexpected, but nothing he and his officers could afford to ignore.

"They don't know why they should have to adhere to the standards of some distant organisation millions of light years away," she said, "when we're out here all alone, and we could be making our own rules. I don't know what to tell them, to be honest, sir. I think they've got a point."

Well, that wouldn't do. He took his glasses off, set them down carefully on the desk, and fixed her with his sternest expression. No warmth, no bullshit, no doubt. "You tell them, lieutenant, in no uncertain terms, that they will be held to those standards because those standards make us who we are. We are not a bunch of thugs with guns like the Lucian Alliance, we are proud members of the USAF."

He leaned forward, deliberately intimidating. "And you can tell them that I will personally see to it that anyone who behaves in a manner that is unworthy of this uniform will be punished exactly as though they were on Earth. They had better not forget it."

Clearly restraining a desire to back away, James gave him an unsettled look, partly astonished and partly reassured. Not wholly convinced. He'd noticed before that no one quite knew how to take it when he was harsh. They weren't used to it. Truthfully, he'd worked damn hard to get to a point where they didn't have to get used to it. Where he could carry on looking unassuming and behaving as though the smooth running of the human machinery of Destiny happened all by itself with no real input from him.

But every so often it needed a nudge, and this was obviously one of those times.

"And then," he went on, more softly, "When you've made sure they know you hold the reins, you listen to them, off the record, and if you think their complaint is valid you bring it to me."

He backed off, smiled, and watched her relax in turn – still at parade rest, but her muscles no longer locked, her eyes relieved.

"If there's a better way of doing things, I'm willing to hear it and adapt," he offered. "But that has to take place slowly, in a measured process and under control. Tell your men things can change overnight and they'll want it all their own way at once. Then your authority will be shot and you'll be in deep shit, taking their orders instead of the other way around. You do not want that."

The hollow metallic beat of someone knocking on the wall outside punctuated his words. James' eyes flicked to the door as it opened without his permission, revealing Rush lounging in the door frame.

"No sir," James seemed thoughtful but resolute when she looked back. "I hadn't thought of it like that, but I see what you mean. No wonder the officers are paid so much more than the men."

"The ugly truth is that we have to keep on top of them 24/7, lieutenant. We're the only thing that stands between this ship and an anarchy of trained killers."

Young stood, with a hornet's nest of agitation lodged suddenly beneath his ribs. "If we have good people, it's because we have a system in place to keep them that way. We do not tamper with that system at a whim."

A moment's awkwardness, as Rush refused to move and James dithered over whether to squeeze past him on the way out. "If that's all? It looks like Dr. Rush has something to discuss with me."

"Of course, sir." She saluted and made for the door. Rush gave way at the last moment, stepping into the room before she passed.

Rush too had clearly been reacquainting himself with the luxuries of civilisation. He had laundered his shirts, his hair was washed and glossy, but the real shocker was that someone must have leant him a razor. He was clean shaven as he had been on Icarus, his hawk-like face fully revealed, nothing masking the look of amused curiosity, or the hint of uncertainty in the corner of his mouth.

"I didn't think you saw your role quite that clearly," he said, as Young slid out from behind his desk to come closer.

"Because of course, in all my years in the service, I would never have thought about how to do my job?"

Rush's look of amusement deepened. "Because y'give the impression you think it's all about family and love and all that rot. Whereas deep down you're as much of a cynical old bastard as I am."

This reflection seemed to please him, so Young didn't say'when it's working well it isabout family and trust and all the good things about being human. That doesn't mean it's not also about the brutalities of who's in control.' Rush didn't like ambiguity – would see the messy truth as some sort of moral failing, an inability to make up his mind.

"Pretty sure you didn't come here to discuss power and kinship structures in social interaction," he said instead, giving in to the impulse to reach out and stroke the backs of his fingers down Rush's newly smooth cheek.

Rush stepped away, making him drop his hand and his hopes.

"So what can I do for you?"

Rush seemed to think the desk was insulting him. He directed a bitter smile its way. Then he looked up and skewered Young through the eye with a hostile gaze. "I came to say that I presume our arrangementis over. I would have left it implicit, but I'm trying to apply some of that mutual cooperation we talked about."

The direct result of being pierced with that intent look was as always a combination of fright and desire. It took him a while to filter that out, to think through the words, and to figure out that Rush wasasking himif it was over, not telling him it was. The fright settled at the thought, and the desire urged him to take a step closer. "Why would you presume that?"

"Well," Rush jerked his head in the direction of the door, as if to indicate TJ in the distant infirmary, or perhaps just the departing Lt. James' statuesque charms. "Y'have better prospects now. Female ones. Ones that would accept your... authority... with considerably less difficulty than I would."

And that was true. He had wondered, in fact, whether being surrounded all day by Camile and James and especially by TJ, would reset something in him, take away his ability to look at Rush and see anything desirable. But if that was going to happen at all it had not happened yet. If anything he found the man more perfect by comparison - slight but sharp, delicate but formidable, something to be protected and feared at the same time. All encompassing.

Young brought up his hand again and smoothed a thumb along Rush's naked jaw. This time the scientist stood still for it, even tilted his head into the touch with a small triumphant smile.

"Well, lets just say I like the challenge." He tried to crowd in close, but Rush stepped away again, backing off towards the wall, and he knew this game well enough to lunge in and push the man, stumbling and bright eyed, until his shoulders met metal and he could go no further.

"But it's very much in your interests to stop right now," Rush said, mocking voice belied by the way he licked his split lip. Young pinned him in place with an arm across his chest and leaned in to capture his smart mouth, push with his tongue on the little wound and suckle it between his teeth.

Rush's voice dissolved into incoherence, but he hooked a leg around Young's hips and pulled him closer with all his considerable strength.

Young resisted, just to show that Rush was not the only one in this 'arrangement' capable of being contrary. "Why's that?"

There were really far too many reasons to count, but he was curious as to which one Rush would pick.

"It's not going to stay a secret on this ship, is it?"

Also very true. Young was all too aware of the unlockable door behind him, and the crew's tendency to walk in on him whenever they felt like it. It added a certain thrill of danger to his untucking of Rush's shirt, unwrapping him with the care and anticipation with which as a child he had slowly peeled his presents out of their paper. "Mm-hmn."

"So eventually someone will tell someone in Homeworld Command, where 'don't ask, don't tell' is a recent and vivid memory."

This was a question that deserved to be taken seriously. Young let up on the pressure, left Rush half-exposed, with one arm out of his shirt and the other still in, looking disgruntled and dishevelled and kind of adorable with it. "Yeah," he agreed. "Telford's been looking for an excuse to replace me for years, and this could very well be it."

"Seriously?" Rush wriggled his shirts off properly and dumped them on the ground, apparently disgusted by the stupidity, but slightly intrigued. "I was asking if you could stand the inevitable disdain. But you're seriously saying it could still be used to leverage you out of command?"

Young wasn't quite sure what to make of the intrigue - somewhere on a parallel track in the back of Rush's mind, had a new plan to depose him started up?

"It could. There's some pretty vocal Christian senators behind the funding of the SGC who wouldn't take kindly to the knowledge that Destiny's CO and chief scientist were literally in bed together. They could put plenty of pressure on the generals to maybe order me to stand down."

Young had never really thought that Rush was crazy. He was a little highly strung maybe, but on the whole more clinically rational than any man decently ought to be. But he sure had a crazy-person smile, all creases and teeth, that came out when he was feeling particularly pleased.

Rush bent his head as if to hide it, and began unbuckling Young's belt. "And that doesn't... bother you?" he asked, his voice doing something Young had to struggle to place. Delighted? Sinister? "You'd take that risk to be with me?"

Oh, it was touched.He was startled and moved by the discovery that someone felt he was worth the cost.

Young thought about how to reply. He could mention that he was not exactly happy at how interested Rush was in the prospect of a new way to destroy him. He could admit that if his moral failings motivated the SGC to pull out the stops and send Telford to replace him, he'd consider the supply line that came with him worth the cost. He might even dare share the unthinkable thought that if they merely told him to step down, he would refuse.

But those answers were not what was needed, in the context of standing pressed tight to his lover with one of Rush's hands up his shirt and the other pushing down his trousers, with Rush's face still averted and his smile beginning to take on again its old, defensive ironies. With the silence tightening long and wire thin around them both.

"If I'd have been there," he vowed instead, bowing his head and whispering it against Rush's grazed cheekbone, "outside the library, I'd have knocked those boys on their asses for you. I'd have helped you get your books. I'd have kept those bastards away while you studied. It's what I'm for."

Rush inhaled, sharp, as though Young had stabbed him, glanced up at him with eyes dark with agony. Looked away again, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, as if ashamed that he had given away so much.

"They'd have fucked you over too, if you had. There were too many of them. There still are. These days they do it with a smile, but if they think you've got a dream or a hope higher than theirs, they'll tear you apart as soon as look at you."

"Bring it on." The conversation had swung rapidly from no strings attached sex straight into a depth of intimacy he'd scarcely had with anyone, even Emily. He found it addictive and raw and kind of wonderful. "When you think what we've faced down already, nothing in this universe stands a chance against both of us working together."

"You're thirty years too late to be my protector," Rush snapped, grabbing Young's jacket and pulling him in to a kiss that was more like a punch to the mouth.

Young smiled and yielded to the pressure of tongue and teeth, let himself be hauled forwards, swung around and crammed into the bulkhead by Rush's angry energy. "But you'll let me try."

"Fuck you."

"If you like." He warded Rush's furious attentions off with a splayed hand on the man's chest. "But not until you give me a straight answer. Will you let me try?"

Rush gave him an intent look, steel sharp but strangely bright, like the anger was a thin cover over exultation. "Fuck you," he said again, still fighting to get closer, fighting for supremacy, fighting to bring them together. "Maybe."

Young laughed and gave in.