Finally had time to update! Life has been quite busy. Many thanks to everyone who reviewed and also to Kimmy and CleanWhiteRoom as always for beta and cheerleading!
After watching Rush in deep communion with a pot of tea and a bacon sandwich, a lunch time which had been largely silent, although surprisingly not too uncomfortable, they had returned to Homeworld Command. Young had attended the personnel briefing and Rush the science briefing. Unsurprisingly the personnel briefing was shorter, but it had been followed up by a long private discussion with O'Neill where he had been considerably less circumspect about certain issues than he had in the briefing.
Young was not sure what had happened in the science briefing. He knew that Gutierrez had come storming in at the end of the personnel briefing to talk urgently to Telford in a corner and when he had found Rush after his chat with O'Neill, Rush appeared to be in an excellent mood, deep in animated discussion with a scientist Young thought was called Jones.
"You done?" He asked Rush when Rush noticed his arrival.
Rush nodded and Young waited a few moments as he finished up with the now effusive Doctor Jones.
"What was all that?" He asked Rush as they walked away. "Gutierrez came running to Telford looking like you'd just stolen his candy."
"Gutierrez wants to know how the manufactory works." Rush said. "He's entirely focussed on that."
"Okay." Young said, "Is that a problem?"
"Gutierrez wants to know how it makes stargates." Rush sounded irritated. "But even if we get a grip on how to programme it, it'll be a long time before we understand how it does that. He tried to take over the briefing to get me to explain what I know about the manufactory." His eyes flicked down to the small notebook in his hand, Young wondered where the hell he had acquired one in such a short space of time.
Young gave him a curious look. "Why didn't you want to tell him?"
"Firstly I don't like him," Rush said with a snort, "and secondly if I let him get started on that he'll never let up. There's a lot more useful things that they can use immediately. Like the recipe for the dome glass. Jones is working on the latest ship at Area 51. The dome glass is better than anything they've got at the moment. I'm five years out of date on what they're building, but I know they don't have anything as good as that." His lip twitched with amusement, "I redirected the conversation, and as soon as they realised what I was talking about one of his colleagues had Doctor Jones beamed across from Area 51 by some ship or other to take notes on the content and process."
Young laughed. "Is it going to help?"
"Help?" Rush said incredulously. "It's going to change the way they build the ships. It's just increased the area they can put to windows five fold, it's that much stronger and more heat resistant than what they're using. You'll be getting a request for Doctor Jones to come and view the remains of the dome." He flipped a page in the notebook. "He's zero G certified though."
Young was genuinely impressed with Rush's manipulation of the science team, though it occurred to him to muse how often he himself had been offered an alternative to distract him from his original plan.
"Luckily I remembered the recipe." Rush said.
Young wondered if Rush had memorised it deliberately. Probably, although whether it was altruism or simply to put off Gutierrez he wasn't sure. He thought it was probably a combination of the both. Rush disliked Gutierrez, but Young thought Rush would have wanted something useful as a distraction, something productive. Rush seemed to abhor time wasters. Or at least those who he personally viewed as wasting his time. "I didn't realise you had got that far into the system." Young said
Rush shrugged, looking up from the notebook. "Dome panels, bulkhead and hull panels are probably the simplest things the manufactory makes, one substance, one piece, straightforward shape. If everything else was as simple as that I'd be building another shuttle." He gave a sour laugh.
"You can do that?" Young asked surprised, slightly more loudly than he had intended.
Rush scowled. "No." He admitted. "I can't. Not yet. I've managed to identify a limited number of parts the manufactory is capable of making, all of them made of a single substance, because I've been able to identify the substance in question. I've also identified squingies," the word was said with some distaste, "because it was making them when we were there, so I could see what the computer said it was making."
Young laughed.
"I think," said Rush shooting him a glare, "once I work out how it defines dimensions, I'll be able to get it to make a limited number of useful objects as long as they're made of one substance."
"Like what?"
"Glass jars and bottles for starters."
Young stared at him.
Rush gave him a withering look. "Lieutenant Johansen is storing medicines in washed out shampoo bottles." he said. "And silica is common and easy to get hold of. It also doesn't matter if that goes wrong. The last thing I'm gonna be doing is testing the process on something important that can fail at an inopportune moment, am I?"
Young nodded, it made sense. "Look," he said, "I need to write that email."
"Fine, I can wait." Rush said.
"You don't have to." Young replied. "You can go back."
"It won't take you five minutes." Rush said. "I can wait. I ought to check my own, it's been a while."
"How long?"
"Five years."
Young laughed. "Why am I not surprised."
"I've had better things to do." Rush said flatly.
Young tilted his head and looked at him. "Isn't there anyone you wanted to stay in touch with? You said, when you said about your..." he made a vague gesture to Rush's scar, "uh, accident, that you had family."
Rush gave him a cold look. "Not that I've been in contact with for a good while." He said. His tone made it clear this was not a topic he wanted to discuss. Young gave him a quizzical look, but left it.
"No friends that will miss you?"
"No." Rush said. "I should check on a few financial matters myself though."
Young found O'Neill's secretary and arranged with the man for access to a couple of computers. The man found them a room with three desks in, Young handed over his own papers for storage till he came back and watched as Rush bundled his notes and the small notebook and gave them to the secretary who put them in a box file labelled "Dr N Rush" and left them to it.
"You get your own box file now." Young noted. "Intending to come back?"
Rush gave him a sideways look from here he sat at the other desk.
"Now I have a reason to," Rush said pointedly, "yes. Dr Jones wants some input on the dome glass and working with him reduces the time Gutierrez gets on Destiny." Rush said with malice.
"I had no idea the world of science was so emotionally charged." Young said.
Rush ignored him in favour of logging on to the computer.
Young logged in and sat there, slowly constructing an email to Emily. It took him a while, and he reread it a couple of times to ensure it read business like and polite enough, the last thing he needed was more hassle with lawyers.
Rush was still working at the computer opposite and Young read through the last email from his youngest brother, giving the collated family gossip and some photographs of his nieces and nephews. He composed a reply, giving general news he was well, a very vague paragraph noting there had been technical problems around his latest posting and he was having to wrestle with engineers, and that typically the heating had gone out and they'd all been double bunking till it was fixed. Having told them it had once again been a problem in his last email, he added his bad knee was getting better again. The email looked a little short still so he wrote that he was finally getting on better with the lead civilian on his command and that miraculously the food was improving. It looked enough.
He checked it, making sure it contained nothing of any real import, but would satisfy their need for news and sent it, knowing it would be screened anyway. His brother knew that for undisclosed reasons lines of communication were sketchy and would forward it on to the rest of the family. He really ought to see about getting at least one of them read into the programme, but they were used to his "overseas" postings and classified work and after Emily, well he was not sure seeing them in someone else's body as worth it. Better to keep in touch by email.
He looked up. Rush was evidently finished and was watching him.
"You alright?"
"I emailed Emily." Young said, a little sharply. "It's done."
"Good. Are you alright?" Rush repeated.
Young turned off the computer. "Yes, I'm alright, I'm not going to have a meltdown or anything." He stood. "Are you done?"
Rush nodded.
"Lets go home then." Young said.
Rush gave him a quizzical look.
"What?" Young demanded, beginning to be a little irritated.
"Home?" Rush asked.
"Yes." Young said. "Destiny. Home."
Rush looked at him, Young knew what he was thinking and wanted to say something cutting to shut him up, stop any smug comments, but Rush simply nodded once. "Home then." He said.
It was about five in the evening when they opened their eyes in the stones room on Destiny. Rush disappeared immediately without a word or backward glance. With a slightly rueful shake of his head Young followed him out the door. He went to his quarters and caught up on paperwork for an hour, got some dinner then went through a briefing with Scott and Camile and packed his bag ready for his shore leave. Rush was still as elusive as usual and Young had no idea where he was. He sat and made notes on the briefing at Homeworld Command for Camile and giving up for the evening stripped and slid into bed.
It seemed large and cold and he had to stifle a sudden flare of anxiety. He and Rush would be sharing a shelter and a bed again on Big River and an even smaller bed than usual. If his body betrayed him again there was a much greater chance it would be obvious. He tried to rationalise his thoughts, telling himself about human nature, involuntary reactions and dreaming. It still took him a long while to go to sleep.
A slightly hurried handover before he left through the stargate, followed by a long day of physical labour on the planet kept most of the worries out of his mind though. They were ranging out from the camp in small groups this time to forage for supplies of three different things, a kind of nut, some red berries and a plant which had a leafy top which was good for salad and a white edible root. Calvos had evidently been hard at work as they were now outfitted with large baskets on shoulder straps to collect their supplies in and could carry a good amount before needing to return to off load.
He was in a group with Rush, Calvos and Barnes, following the river in one direction on the far bank, the closer bank having already been foraged out. Mostly they were finding the nut trees and roots. This planet luckily appeared to be at the height of it's growing season, unlike Thick Woods, where the forage was mainly meat, leafy products and some roots and bark as it was early summer there. They made two or three trips, each time walking further up the river, striking out from it until it was almost invisible then coming back. The nut trees were along the banks of the river itself, but the rooted plants and the berries on low bushes were found out in the grasslands often in small clumps that were visible from the river.
Rush had not said much to him, but although Young was not exactly ignoring him or avoiding him, he was staying busy, ensuring there were not many opportunities for conversation. Rush did not appear to notice, or if he did he had not said anything about it. Everything was going fine so far at least.
They stopped for lunch after the third trip. Inman was sorting the haul into crates and nets in the now hard packed dirt area between the shelters.
"How are we doing?" Young asked her, lowering himself to the ground next to her carefully, so as not to drop his food.
"We're doing very well on the nuts and the leaves. I'd like more of the berries, but we seem to have harvested out the area around the stargate." She regarded the crate of berries in front of her and looked up. "They freeze well though." She said. "We should have berries for some time, won't need to eat them quickly."
"Are you going to need a second freezer room?" Brody asked.
Young turned and realised Rush and Brody had sat down nearby with their own dinner, close to where Becker was peeling and slicing roots to dry in long strips in the sun.
"Well, I wouldn't say no." Inman said.
Brody nodded and looked at Rush, who finished his mouthful of meat and salad filled wrap before speaking.
"There's no suitable candidate close to the existing freezer." He tilted his head to look at them. "But it would probably be safer to have one further away anyway, in case of damage to that area. We could try the room next to the Armoury, there are two around the right size on that corridor and there is no one living on that corridor. They all look like storage compartments." He looked at Young questioningly, surprising Young a little.
"Sounds good." Young agreed readily. "How long will it take you to do it?"
"Now we know how?" Brody asked. "About half a day with three of us."
Rush nodded in agreement.
"Do it." Young said. "When you get back."
He quickly finished the rest of his food, then stood and went to assemble the empty baskets for the next trip out.
xxxoooxxx
The small encampment was quiet and still as Rush opened the doorway of the small shelter. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust from the moonlight to the brighter light of the animal fat lamp and he blinked for a second in the entrance.
Young was still awake; working on the knotting Rush had seen him fiddling with earlier with Calvos after dinner. The far end of whatever he was working on had a loop which was hooked around his sock clad big toe, and he had completed about a foot of the reasonably complex pattern, leaning over to squint at it by the lamp light.
Rush squinted at the handicrafts not quite figuring what the long strip was. Young looked up at Rush, unhooked it from his foot, rolled it up and moved out of the way so Rush could come fully into the shelter.
"Inman taken over watch?" Young asked him. Rush nodded, scooting onto the pallet and stretching himself out.
Young sprawled next to him. Rush wondered why he had stayed awake, it was past this planet's midnight. He watched as Young rolled onto his back and stretched out muscles tightened by hunching over his handicrafts. He looked tense.
"You enjoy it?" Rush gestured at where Young had deposited the rolled up bundle of string.
Young nodded. "I don't get to make stuff often." He said. "I'm not sure I'm much good at it."
Rush shrugged. "It looked like you knew what you were doing." He offered tactfully.
Young gave him a wry smile. "It's something to keep me busy. Are you looking forward to getting back on Destiny?" He said, changing the subject seemingly deliberately.
"I've got a lot to do." Rush said, trying to keep his tone neutral. "If I'm goin' to get all of the repairs done I want."
"You realise this level of repairs is not going to be sustainable once Destiny is underway again?" Young told him with a serious expression. "We can't rely on this level of resupply, and we've been lucky that the worst thing we've had so far is half the crew being allergic to the plants on one of the planets. It's a lot better position than we can expect to be in the future."
"Yes," Rush said acidly, "I'm perfectly aware of that. We've done more foraging in the last two weeks than we've managed over practically the whole of our time on Destiny."
"Just so I'm sure you know." Young said.
"Oh I know Colonel, I know." Rush did not try to keep the sharpness out of his voice.
Young rolled over from where he was staring at the roof of the shelter. "Hey, relax, I'm glad you're getting the repairs done."
Rush turned his head to stare at him. "How nice to feel appreciated." He said with a hard edge of sarcasm, waiting for Young to make some sort of comment about his focus or obsession. When the comment came it was not what he expected.
"I don't just keep you around to keep the bed warm you know." Young said facetiously.
Rush stared at him for a moment, then snorted. "You'd be sadly disappointed if you did." He said. "I don't put out half as much heat as you do. Ready for bed?" He asked and watched a couple of difficult to read expressions pass over Young's face.
He could not fail to have noticed Young's discomfort over the last couple of days or his uncharacterisic silence since they had arrived on the planet this morning. He was fairly sure he knew the reason. Not that it was unduly worrying him, it had not been anything deliberate or done by choice.
He pursed his lips in thought a moment. "Look, Young…" He paused, Young had frozen, staring at him. "I can see you're uncomfortable since the last time we were," he sought the way of putting it least likely to result in Young shutting down on the conversation, "sharing a bed."
Young looked yet more uncomfortable.
"I'm not entirely oblivious," Rush continued somewhat awkwardly, "I know what happened." He could see the flush creeping up Young's neck, even in the dim light. "I didn' take it personally. It happens. It's not as if you were awake."
Young appeared mortified.
"I'd not have mentioned it if I didn' think it was bothering you, I was gonna ignore it."
"I thought you'd missed it." Young admitted.
"I kinda had an idea what it was, and when I woke up in the morning and you'd left your underpants drying..."
Young flushed.
Rush wondered if this was really a good idea, but spoke again. "Look Young, I've woken up in bed with you in an inconvenient position myself, not through anything I did. You've shared beds off world, you must've had this sort of thing before."
Young sucked in a breath. Rush wondered if he was going to get up and leave.
"I've never…had…accidentally…come while in bed with another man though."
He actually felt sympathy for Young in this regard. Young had had that happen, then found himself in a situation where he had to sleep in the same bed as Rush before he had had time to process it. Despite that, Rush was still not particularly entranced by the idea of having to manage Young's awkwardness for any longer than he had to. Better to rip the plaster off now in one go.
Rush shrugged. "All men do it in their sleep, presuming they're physically capable. Given that, it was inevitable one of us would, even though neither of us are that young anymore. Fifty fifty chance, possibly slightly weighted in your favour as I'm older maybe."
Young sighed, hauled off his pants and slid into bed. "I promise not to say anything when it happens to you." He muttered.
Rush snorted and blew out the lamp. In the sudden smoky darkness he stripped to his underwear and slid into bed, spooning up behind Young with a hand on his shoulder. With the clear skies it was a chill enough night he was going to appreciate the warmth. Young lay there stiff and uncomfortable for a while. Rush patted Young's shoulder and slid his arm round his waist.
"Relax." He said. "I think I feel pretty safe you're no' likely to molest me and I'm cold."
Young grunted irritably, but relaxed slowly, and they went to sleep.
By the third day Young had loosened up. He had not had a reoccurrence of the event that had embarrassed him so much. The clear skies meant warm days but much cooler nights and by the second morning waking up in the shelter he was back to appreciating waking up curled against another warm body before the sun took the chill off the air.
The third afternoon was their R and R period and after spending a couple of hours after lunch packing the accumulated supplies for travel, they were all free to do what they wanted. Barnes and Calvos had decided they were going swimming in the river, which seemed like a good enough idea to most of the party.
The sun was warm enough for it to still be pleasant, but Young had to admit to surprise when they went skinny dipping. Rush just gave a bark of laughter and sat down in a sunny patch nearby. Young watched the rest of the party follow the pair into the water, although Brody was too shy to strip and kept his underpants on. Still it wasn't like they were here with any changes of clothes. He contemplated the river for a moment then went back to the campsite and found soap.
It was not great soap, made from herbivore fat, yellowish, hard and rather harsh on the skin, but it was soap. He walked back to the river a little way away from the horse play, somewhat further up the river, out of sight of the main party. He stripped off and leaving his clothes hung within reach on a convenient overhanging branch he walked into the river with his back to the bank. It was a little chilly, but he gritted his teeth, ducked right under to get his hair wet and grabbing the soap again, settled to have a really good scrub down.
He was scrubbing soap through his hair when he was startled by a splash near the bank. He squinted over his shoulder, blinking against the soap that ran into his eyes, making them burn. He caught a glimpse of skin but had to turn and rinse his streaming eyes.
"Well, are you going to share that soap then?"
He almost jumped out of his skin at the voice from directly behind him, the noise of wading covered by his own splashing of his face. He caught a glimpse of Rush out of the corner of his eye, and flinched, turning away.
"Come on then." Rush demanded.
A hand appeared in the edge of his vision and he put the soap in it quickly. He turned a little further away, trying to ignore the sound of splashing next to him as he rinsed the soap out of his hair. Rush gave a short laugh.
"I thought you soldiers had to get used to communal showers an' all that."
"Not quite the same as skinny dipping." Young said. "You startled me."
There was another snort. "Well don't worry, I don't think I'm likely to molest you either."
He finished rinsing off and turning away from Rush, waded out of the water. On the bank he scraped water off himself and sat down on a wide flat rock to dry off. Out in the river Rush was facing away from him scrubbing himself down briskly with what appeared to be a sock. He looked away quickly, but not before he noted that despite a reasonable amount of lean muscle, Rush was still much too thin. Flushing, he pressed as much water as possible out of his hair, pulled on his pants over skin still slightly damp and lay back to soak up the sun.
He kept his eyes closed when Rush came out of the water, but did open them briefly when Rush sprawled out next to him on the warm rock. Young dozed.
The chill woke him, a breeze drifting over him and bringing up goosebumps on the side of him that was cold. He opened his eyes realising that the other side was warm as it had Rush pressed up against it sound asleep. He pulled his watch very carefully out of his pocket and realised they had been asleep for just over two hours.
The sun had moved and their rock was now in the shade, which was why the chill had woken him. He shivered suddenly and Rush woke with a start, the arm across Young's chest momentarily flexing hard. Rush looked up at him.
"The sun moved." Young said. "We're in the shade. We need to move."
Rush let go of him and sat up, pushing the hair off his face and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He pulled his mobile phone from his pants pocket and looked at it. "Two and a half hours since we left them."
"Better get back to camp I guess before they miss us." Young said, sitting up next to him.
He reached out and grabbed his tshirt pulling it on and shrugging into his jacket. They both pulled on shoes and socks and walked back to the camp.
The camp was quiet. Brody was near the fire working on some sort of craft project which looked like a mat woven of reeds, Greer was sprawled out on a blanket reading and Calvos and Barnes were heads together over another project.
"Good walk?" Brody asked.
Greer opened his eyes and gave them a significant look.
"Yeah." Rush said. "Very relaxing."
Young nodded slightly to Greer with a grateful look as Brody went back to his project. Young wondered what Greer had seen, assuming he had come after them. When they had woken, Rush had been lying up against the length of his side, an arm thrown across him. Had Greer seen that? Greer, after that one look, had turned back to his book and was reading again. Young sighed. Greer was trustworthy, closed mouthed. If he did know he would keep it to himself. Still, it may be something he would have to address later.
This was becoming more complicated than it had initially seemed. In all ways.
Greer did not mention it though. The rest of the afternoon was quiet. Rush had picked up some of his carving again, although he had not sat down close enough for Young to see what it was, and Young picked up the belt he was working on. So far it seemed to be going well, the knotting solid and even. It was calming and slightly meditative working on the repetitive pattern, and he allowed his mind to start turning over the thoughts that had been tugging at the back of his mind since they had got out of the river.
He was completely overreacting, he must be. He had showered with other guys, bathed in rivers with other guys, slept in the same tent, bed, even sleeping bag with other guys. One weird unforeseen occurence had made him massively overreact. He needed to chill out, calm down and stop panicking about this every time anything remotely triggering of the memory happened.
He told himself firmly, he was going to stop going over and over it and just get back to enjoying having some company. He was straight, Rush was straight, they both appreciated the company and both of them were old enough to know how men's bodies worked. Sometimes all of their own random accord.