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Tyr was wrong. Wrong and going to end up regretting it and there wasn't a damn thing that Harper could do about it.

He fiddled absently with the PAD in his hands.

Well.

Technically he could do a few things. Or at least he could try a few things, at least one of which he was reasonably certain would work out in his favor. Those odds would start souring quickly as time passed, but right this moment they weren't terrible.

Of course, that left him with a problem in the definition of 'favor' because the things he could do also involved the kinds of behind-the-back sneakiness that even Beka would have thrown him out on his ear for doing. And that was Beka when she'd given a damn.

Tyr wasn't Beka.

Of course, the fact that Tyr wasn't Beka meant that he did still give a damn, and never mind that that wasn't the kind of thing that would ever get said out loud, but...

Harper shook himself. What had happened with Beka was nothing he'd even been able to understand never mind fix, and it had nothing to do with his current situation. Which he liked. He really liked, actually.

He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed having someone to talk to, how lonely he'd been getting, until he'd gotten here and had someone willing to hold actual conversations with him again. It didn't much matter that he and Tyr sometimes went completely different directions when it came to their interests, either, because they always found something to argue about during meals, and Tyr was just as likely to seek him out as Harper was to go looking for Tyr in downtime even if he was far more likely to mask it in complaints about one thing or another.

Harper even enjoyed the roughing around, not that he was admitting that out loud just in case Tyr decided that it meant that he liked the self-defense lessons too. Once upon a time Beka used to mess his hair or throw an arm around his shoulders or whatever, and Trance had been pretty free with hugs too, but that had been a long time ago and he'd missed physical contact of the non-assault—or careful-assault, anyway; it was Tyr—kind almost as much as he'd missed having a conversation partner. And if Tyr could get a little growly and fussy sometimes and insisted on dragging him away from his projects to eat, at least he noticed. It hadn't been just Beka, by the time Harper had left Andromeda none of them had cared enough about him to notice much of anything.

Sometimes he wondered how long it had taken them to notice that he'd left at all.

He shook himself again. Water, bridge, etcetera, and he had more important things to worry about right now because going behind Tyr's back for something like this, though, even if he thought it was the right thing to do—even if it was the right thing to do—would end all that. He was pretty sure that Tyr wouldn't actually beat him for the offense, but he'd kick Harper off the ship for sure. He wouldn't have much of a choice, that much even Harper understood despite never having any interest in the captain-type stuff.

Part of Harper said that he should do it anyway. Tyr was his friend and this was his kid and the whole situation just sucked. Even if he did, though...aside from losing his place here, even in the best case scenario he could only get to the point of dropping the ship out of slipstream in front of whatever random station the kid and his grandmother were holed up on. Tyr had to be the one who took it from there because it wasn't like Harper could physically force the issue if he decided not to cooperate. And since right now he didn't seem inclined to do so, there was every possibility that Harper would risk everything for nothing.

"Professor."

He looked up at Tyr's even greeting as Tyr pulled himself into the narrow bay. "You're wrong."

Tyr sighed but didn't pretend that he didn't know what Harper was talking about as he took a seat on the bench at Harper's back. "And yet I have made my decision."

"But why?"

Tyr opened his mouth and then shut it again with a shake of his head, reaching out to tug Harper's hair hard enough to tilt his head back. "I have made my decision. Let it go."

Harper ignored the fingers still tangled in his hair and scowled up at him. He was getting the distinct feeling that he'd made the wrong decision earlier when he'd said that he didn't want to hear about whatever those genetic details Tyr had been talking around were. Not that he'd been lying, from a personal perspective he didn't give half a credit about Nietzschean genetics or their associated craziness with lineages or any of that, but there had to be a better reason as to why Tyr felt the need to keep Tamerlane hidden than anything Harper had heard thus far. Tyr wasn't stupid; he didn't do things without a good reason and there was no way that that wasn't about a billion times truer when it came to his kid.

"Let it go," Tyr repeated, releasing him with a light shove. And then sighed and nodded at the PAD. "Do I want to ask what you're working on?"

"You can ask, but it's not anything." Another scowl. "Yet. There's a time limit here. You know that, right?"

Tyr caught Harper by the collar and lifted him up to sit beside him on the bench, twisting the PAD out of Harper's grip with his free hand as he did so. "I am aware."


Five minutes of silence and Harper was already bouncing lightly on the bench beside him, fingers twitching, and Tyr debated returning the PAD to him if only to stop the incessant movement. Harper really was incapable of being still for any length of time. He didn't particularly want to encourage Harper to do anything...imprudent...though. And he certainly didn't trust his own feelings enough right now to drag him down to the gym.

He didn't even trust himself to go to the gym on his own at the moment, not after the damage he'd done to his hands before, because it was entirely possible that Harper was correct.

Well, no, Harper was absolutely correct that what Olma was doing was ridiculous. Tyr was obviously in favor of taking every reasonable precaution to keep his son safe and was perfectly willing to support many things, including the two of them moving as often as necessary, in keeping with that. But the idea that it was too much of a risk to allow him to even speak to his son? No.

But what Harper wanted to do was a risk in a far more serious direction, and certainly not one that Tyr was willing to take at this point in time. Perhaps Harper was right about being completely able to make it look like an accident, but even then...no. The answer was still 'no.' Not with so much having happened recently. A tracker planted in his ship's systems and not discovered until weeks later, the invasion of his ship, someone deliberately targeting the logs, encrypted or not, that revealed the existence of his son...

Harper switched from bouncing to rocking, and Tyr forced his hands to uncurl from the fists they'd begun to close into and shoved him lightly. "What is next on your repair list, professor?"

"What?"

"If you continue in the way you're going you're going to vibrate through the bench. You might as well use that energy for something useful." And hopefully it would be something that could occupy Tyr as well, at least for long enough that he wouldn't be able to change his mind about what Harper had offered.

Harper scowled at him again and then looked pointedly at the PAD. "I can think of something useful."

"And I can wring your neck. Yet you find me refraining."

Harper stuck his tongue out but also pushed himself up from the bench with a sigh. "If you remember which end of a soldering iron is which you could come help me with the racer's electrical systems."

Tyr would have preferred something that required some form of physical effort on his part, even if it was just lifting consoles, but under the circumstances he'd take what he could get. And he had wanted to quiz Harper about what precisely this thing would be when it was finished. As distractions went, it was...something.

Wedging themselves into the frame was a chore—and genuinely distracting since not paying attention had led directly to a few accidental collisions with the frame that were probably going to leave bruises and would have ended even worse for Harper if he hadn't been fully prepared to duck—but eventually they were situated in a way that let Harper work without continually elbowing Tyr in the face. Since it was fairly obvious that Harper didn't actually need his help with anything Tyr settled himself with the toolbox in his lap and spun one of the larger wrenches around his hand as he considered the metal molded around him. "You've called this thing a racer." It had the shape, he supposed, now that he was looking, with fins that indicated that it would be able to operate in at least marginal atmosphere as well as space, but there was still nothing in particular that would have attracted his interest if Harper wasn't so determined to get it working.

"Hm? Yeah. Was top of the line in its day." Harper's focus had sharpeneed on a half-dissected console, and he waved a hand vaguely at the toolbox. "Can you—green."

Tyr stared at the collection of disorganized tools in the box in his lap and then shook his head. "And how do I know that your green is my green?"

Harper looked back at him for a minute and then started snickering. "You're mean." He leaned back, reaching into the box and fishing something out that didn't look particularly green to Tyr before turning back to the console, and Tyr returned his attention to the frame around them.

"So this vessel is a compatriot of Dylan's, then?"

Harper snorted. "If it was High Guard, you'd have noticed. Nah, it's more like fifty or sixty so not old old, but I've seen some in worse shape used as asteroid skippers and it's crazy how well they maneuver. It'll be seriously impressive once it's back in space." A pause. "If we can get it into space."

"Because your insane insistence on participating in a water sport to which you're entirely unsuited isn't enough that you now plan to take up space racing?"

"Hey, I am an excellent surfer," Harper returned. "You're just jealous. But no. I mean, I'll be able to use it no problem, but without some kind of AI support I haven't got the reflexes to handle the kind of jinking it'll be capable of." A pause. "I'll need to run some numbers, but I'm not sure I've got the skeletal structure either, at least not with some updates to the grav generators."

"And myself?"

Harper twisted to look at him again. "Who do you think I was going to use as a test pilot?"

Tyr raised an eyebrow. "And when were you planning to inform me of that?"

"Probably about the time I launched you into space. It's more efficient that way, see?"