Thanks to everyone who has asked for more. Life's been a bit crazy recently, but I'm still writing!
Rush woke, groggy and disoriented, like a bad hangover without the headache. He was in bed with Young again. He regarded the splinted hand on the pillow in front of him, he remembered that well enough. His hand throbbed evilly, no doubt what had woken him. He began putting his memories of the previous night in order, he hated being fucking doped up.
He had kissed Young, kissed him to shut him up and make him stay. He allowed himself a small smile for the completely shocked look on Young's face, then frowned. This was getting out of hand. He needed to back off, he needed to get some space from this. This was guaranteed to end badly, however much he had wanted Young not to leave. He had not wanted to be alone, doped up and disoriented the preceding night. He would have done better convincing TJ she needed to keep him in the infirmary, but then she would have had to have stayed with him, or Cole or Varro.
And Young was there, available and willing, needing and consistent. Caring. Even now he was pressed up against, him, hand on Rush's stomach, face in the back of Rush's neck, radiating warmth. Getting under Rush's skin. Their relationship had altered beyond all recognition, become this uncontainable thing that was rapidly spiralling out of Rush's control.
A relationship. For all he was avoiding the thought, he had to admit the inevitability of it all considering their actions in relation to each other. That was what it was.
Sometimes it seemed like the whole situation was the source of a constant low level of worry. Until he found himself falling asleep, wrapped up in the other man and it felt safe from the nightmares that haunted him. Until he was drowning in a drugged daze and Young promised to stay.
He shifted uncomfortably. Young made a slight grumbling noise without fully waking and burrowed his face further into the nape of Rush's neck, arm tightening around Rush's waist. Rush forced himself to relax.
The only other person who knew, TJ, seemed to think that this was a good thing, that whatever they had was improving their effectiveness. It was certainly true that he was getting more sleep and it was true that Young was on a more even keel with someone else keeping an eye on him, aware of Telford and stopping Young losing his rag with him.
Consciously he knew that it was a fear of getting involved with someone that had sparked his actions the day before, but he still could not help being angry, with himself that he had lost control and with Young for forcing the issue. Three kisses was all it had taken. A ghost sensation, the memory of lips on his, soft and dry, passed over him and his breath hitched a moment, before he let it all out in a sigh.
Young had also been right about this being addictive. He should walk out, make his apologies, tell Young to fuck off if need be, to leave him alone. This could not end well.
But he knew he would not, not yet at least. He found himself craving the contact, not in the daytimes when he was busy, but when he was alone in his bed, when he was cold and there was nothing between him and the thoughts and memories that recurred again and again. He would not give this up, not while the only warm thing in his life was a man he could not bring himself to hate anymore, no matter their previous actions.
He slumped a little in the bed. Young mumbled, arm shifting around his waist again, foot tucking between Rush's ankles.
Carefully he reached out left handed and picked up his mobile phone. It was half five in the morning. He shifted to ease the throbbing in his other hand and Young woke.
"Wuh?"
He felt Young's head lift from the pillow.
"What's the time?" Young asked blearily.
"It's half five." Rush said and pulled himself a little free, gingerly lifting his splinted hand away from the pillow.
Young's head fell back to the pillow. He felt Young pull himself away carefully from behind him and lifting his hand above his head out of the way of his movement, rolled to face Young.
"You okay?" Young asked him, leaning back a little to give his hand room.
"My hand hurts." Rush said flatly, carefully putting it back down on the pillow in between them.
Young did not rise to the bait, just chuckled. "Yeah, it would." He looked into Rush's face, suddenly more serious. "I'm sorry Nick."
"What for?"
Young shifted. "You know." He said evasively, looking down.
Rush paused as Young lay there, looking uncomfortable. "I was stoned on painkillers last night, but I have a fair recollection of returning the favour." He offered finally.
They lay there awkwardly.
"I told TJ." Young said.
"I guessed."
Young blinked a couple of times.
"What did she say?" Rush asked.
"She laughed and told me to do it again."
Rush frowned slightly. Young tensed.
"Why?"
Young was silent for long moments before he spoke. "Because I said I thought it was the right thing to do, because it felt right at the time." He said very quietly. "I didn't know what to say to you, didn't know how to…"
They fell silent again.
"Look," Rush said finally, "this…what we're doing…"
"Yeah?" Young said awkwardly.
"This relationship is difficult." Rush said.
"Relationship." Young said with a wry laugh.
"Yeah." Rush said.
Young laughed. "TJ accused me of being in denial about being in relationship."
"What else do you call this?" Rush asked sourly. "Don't get me wrong, I've no designs on your body, but this does seem to have developed into a mutually dependent situation."
"Mutually dependent." Young said wryly. "Nice way of putting it."
"Well how would you put it?" Rush demanded.
"We look out for each other, we sleep together, we even hang out occasionally. It's been going on for months." Young said. "Yeah, this is a relationship." He admitted ruefully.
Rush laughed.
"This is really fucked up." Young said.
"You're telling me." Rush replied. "We are not telling anyone."
"Not that I disagree, but what if they find out?"
"They'd better not." Rush growled.
Young grinned. Rush scowled.
"TJ told me she thought we were good for each other." Young said.
"She told me she thought whatever we had was improving our effectiveness." Rush told him.
Young laughed at him. "Yeah, she would tell you that."
Rush glared across the pillow at him. "She's probably right." He admitted.
Young reached out and brushed his fingers lightly across Rush's fingertips where they poked out of the makeshift cast. "Are you gonna be alright?"
"I don't have much choice do I? And it's my own fault."
"What are you going to tell the crew?"
"Well I'm not going to tell them I freaked out because Colonel Young kissed me am I?" Rush grimaced. He sighed. "I'll say I was tired and slipped and caught my hand at a bad angle on a bulkhead."
"Sounds plausible." Young said. "You usually need more sleep."
Rush scowled. "Well I won't be doing it again, sleep or no." He said somewhat irritatedly. "Whatever you do to me."
Young flushed and looked away.
"It wasn't that bad." Rush muttered. "I wouldn't keep beating yourself up about it. You've done worse."
Young sighed. "Yeah, just don't do it again?" He asked.
Rush was silent. Young looked over at him curiously, Rush shifted uncomfortably and his hand twinged, he squinted against the pain.
"You should see TJ for some more painkiller." Young reached out carefully and put his hand on Rush's shoulder.
"Yeah." Rush agreed. "Maybe."
His tone of voice evidently did not convince Young he was likely to comply.
"You don't have to have enough to knock you out." Young told him. "Just enough to function. Come on, lets get some breakfast, then you can get some more tea from TJ."
xxxoooxxx
Over the next few days Young saw little of Rush in the daytime, he was deep in the planning stages of fixing the dome with the team that would be undertaking the first repairs when they dropped out of FTL for the next layover of sufficient length. Young suspected he was also avoiding him to some extent.
At nights though, Rush was in his bed more often than not. He was largely silent and often Young could smell the slightly acrid herbal scent of TJ's tea as he moved close. Young allowed him to slip wordlessly into his bed and curl up by his side, facing away with his broken hand resting on a pillow.
His mind appeared to be playing tricks on him though and there were moments he felt he was seconds away from leaning forward and kissing the other man's pained face before the painkiller tea kicked in.
Young did not act though or push him to speak, just quietly wrapping an arm round the other man and snuggling up behind him. Inevitably, dosed on painkiller Rush would drop quickly into unconsciousness and Young would drift off to sleep listening to the other man's soft breathing.
Some mornings Young woke to him still there, some mornings he was gone before Young woke, or the sound of the door was what woke Young.
xxxoooxxx
Young was in the armoury, discussing the ammunition situation with Scott when Destiny dropped out of FTL with a descending hum and the stomach churning "slip sideways". He made his apologies to his Lieutenant and left for the bridge.
Rush was there ahead of him, sitting in the command chair with his injured hand resting in his lap. Despite it being her bridge shift James was hovering by his side evidently ousted from the chair. Brody followed Young through the hatch and it slid shut behind them.
"Where are we?" He walked over to Rush who was scrolling through command menus awkwardly with his left hand.
James moved out of Young's way, backing off to lean on the railing by the hatch.
"We dropped out just outside the system, we've slowed right inbetween a one of the gas giants and a large asteroid belt." Volker said. "There's nine solid planets or planet like bodies in this system and three gas giants. Lots of moons. None are habitable."
"Then why are we here?" Young queried.
"According to this," Rush said looking at a screen, "we are making directly for a large moon with a significant amount of meteorite damage orbiting a gas giant. Destiny is indicating a large crater."
Young frowned. "Why?"
Rush shrugged. "Give me a moment, why don't you. Eli, run a scan of the crater."
"Are there any gates in range?" He asked Volker.
Volker shook his head. "None. Which is really odd."
Young looked back to Rush. "So why are we here?"
"What are the planets like?" Rush asked Volker.
"Three gas giants, two small hot ones close to the sun, seven ice balls. Nothing we could survive on."
"Mining." Eli piped up from the other console. "You remember we needed the palladium hydrochloride for the stasis pod? There's quite a bit here."
"Uh huh." Young agreed.
"I bet Destiny uses a lot of platinum group metals like platinum and palladium in components." Eli said excitedly. "We do on Earth as well."
Young waited patiently for the science team to elaborate.
"Yes!" Volker said, sounding like he had had an epiphany. "They're a lot more common where there are meteorite strikes. And that moon is covered in craters."
"The Apollo mission samples from the moon had them in." Eli piped up.
Volker nodded. Young looked at Rush.
"It would make sense." Rush said, pulling up a further window on the control panel. "Eli's right, sensors are indicating the right sort of rocks in the crater Destiny is highlighting. I've yet to get a full grip on the manufactory, but it's clear Destiny expects us to do repairs, no doubt she's expecting to get the materials necessary."
"Yeah." Brody said from the railing. "There's a lot of applications of the platinum group metals in catalytic processes, electronics, neutron detectors, x rays, many more. It's pretty much a given Destiny is going to be needing them if you think about it." He offered.
"How are we going to mine on a moon with no atmosphere?" Young asked.
"I'm sure we can find a way Colonel," Rush said easily, "there's always the space suits."
Young sighed at the edge of sarcasm and leaned against the railing to wait for the promised way to be found. At least with his hand in a cast Rush would not be participating.
xxxoooxxx
The seedship had detached from Destiny and directed itself towards an asteroid belt just beyond the planet the moon was orbiting. As soon as full scans of the moon had been completed, Destiny herself made for the sun to refuel although she was still half full. The refuelling was straightforward and he rode it out in the mess with Camile, discussing the unusual situation Destiny had initiated this time they had stopped. By the time the discussion was completed Destiny had returned to her previous position in a geosynchronous orbit around the moon and Young was back on the bridge.
The bridge crew had watched on the sensors as the seedship had taken ten shots with it's main weapon at an asteroid the size of a small house, floating at the edge of the asteroid field. The first shots had clipped the edge of the asteroid, spinning it out into free space. After a brief pause, the third to tenth shots had shattered it. The seed ship had then apparently simply scooped the debris up. Young thought even Rush had been impressed, it was hard to tell, though he had been apparently watching the screen as avidly as the others.
"Hey, asteroid pool game!" Eli had enthused. "There must be some sort of robots in there like the maintenance robots to move the rock around." He mused.
"If there are." Brody said. "We didn't find them yet."
The manoeuvre had been repeated four times, on four more asteroids, before the seedship backed off into open space and Rush reported the manufactory diagnostic had indicated it was refining.
With that underway, Young had given instructions for the preparations for work on the dome to commence and left to inform the rest of the crew that despite them dropping out of FTL they were not anywhere near a planet.
"Colonel Young, this is Rush."
Young pulled out his radio. "Rush, this is Young."
"If you could come to the Core Room, Mr Brody and I would like to discuss his Dome repair plan with you."
xxxoooxxx
Rush and Brody's plan was similar to what had been suggested before, but with more crew involved now there would be no planetary exploration happening at the same time. Young was happy to approve it.
"I'll have to go back to Homeworld Command and update them on the situation." He said. "No doubt Telford and Gutierrez will want to bring their team back to see what the seedship is doing."
Rush scowled.
"It'll be a lot quicker if you come back and brief them." Young said to him pointedly.
Rush did not even look up. "I'll be keeping an eye on the seedship's manufactory."
Young and Brody shared a look. In the scheme of Rush excuses that was a particularly poor example, Rush was not even trying for believable. Young gave up and changed the subject.
"Why hasn't Destiny got a manufactory?" He asked. "If all the seed ships have?"
Rush looked up from his laptop. "She has."
Young jerked. "And you didn't think to tell me?" He asked angrily.
Rush shrugged. "It's damaged beyond our current abilities to repair. It's not as complex as the one on the seedship, half of it is missing, apparently from an asteroid strike if I'm reading the data correctly, and the other half is open to space."
Young glared at him. "You should still have told me."
"We can't get there anyway." Rush said pushing his hair off his face. "It's in the engineering zone, past the second storage room we haven't accessed yet."
"And exactly when did you identify it?"
"After we docked with the seedship." Rush said, unapologetic and unrepentant. "I noticed an area of the seedship scan that almost exactly matched an area on the plan of Destiny. It's just larger on the seedship, no doubt to manage making stargates."
Young frowned. "And you didn't think that a simple action like telling me would be more likely to make that happen."
Rush's look was carefully blank.
"Look," Young said, "I'm going to go back to Earth and schedule a briefing, you just keep on with the agreed work."
"Yes Colonel."
Rush's voice was just this side of snide. Behind him Brody shook his head, Young ignored it and walked out.