Thank you again... wow...! I hope this continues to be enjoyed, now I feel the pressure ;-)

Part of the ability to write so much stems from my loathing of housework... heheheh. This is my relaxation, it's what I do to keep happy, healthy and sane. Oh yeah, and I could have passed my test yesterday even if I hadn't read the text, it really is Office Etiquette for Complete and Total Morons... it's a required psychology course.

I was going to write the last bit even without the prompt... but it's for Roo anyway, who wanted to see more of Mr. Smeed ... yes, he is pretty much an adorable old coot (hmmm... not sure 'coot' is a word you guys use in the UK... but you probably get the idea.)

Chapter Three

………………

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

……………….

Kam's luck finally ran out when he got back to his cabin. He barely had the door open when rough hands grabbed him and hauled him in. His dirty clothing and his personals went skittering all over the floor as Fletcher slammed him into the wall opposite the door.

Leese was standing right behind him, looking pissed.

Fletcher pinned his elbow into the younger man's throat and dug in so hard it made his eyes water. "What did you say to the Captain, cyprian?" he growled, only just barely letting up enough so the other could answer.

"Nothing! Flet..…" he choking, as the other man's elbow pushed into his windpipe again. He tried to push Fletcher off him, but he wasn't strong enough. Six years serving in a Red House hadn't exactly lent itself to building up a lot of muscle.

Easing back again, just a little, Fletcher demanded to know why his cabin mate had spent so much time in the showers, then.

"I just… I lost track of time… I didn't know it was just him and me… why would I want to be in the showers with the Captain!"

"Good question," came the cold reply.

"What could I say that he would believe, anyway? He doesn't care about me." Why did those words hurt? There was no reason the Captain would care about him. No reason he should want him to. "He's the Captain. He doesn't care about any of us," Kam told him, more to take the sting out of his own statement than anything else.

Fletcher pushed the younger man roughly to his knees, his expectations clear.

Kam let his mind go towards the Nothing, performing the necessary task automatically. He didn't need to think about what he was doing to please a man like Fletcher… Leese either, although he'd seen the look of disgust on the other man's face when he first started going down Fletcher. At the end of the day what he'd learned when he first went into Service would always be true: It didn't matter what a man said his preferences were, give him a hole and he'll use it.

When Fletcher ordered him to get his pants off, he slipped out of them and presented himself for use, his face turned towards the wall. Men like Fletcher and Leese didn't want to see his face… and doing anything other than complying with the order would only result in more bruises. The ones Fletcher gave him strictly for his own amusement were bad enough, but if he tried to fight back, Kam knew how much worse it would get. There was no protection for someone like him, not outside the Houses…

Kam lay on the cabin floor curled in on himself long after they'd gone.

He told himself that he shouldn't have expected better… he shouldn't have expected to be treated any differently than this.

All he had to do was get through the next six months… but will it ever get better…? He wondered. Or would people always see him as something beneath them. Something to be used and then thrown away.

There were so many disposable classes… unskilled or semi-skilled workers… anyone without Proper Certification. Men like Fletcher and Leese… If they had Certification, they wouldn't be here, either.

Finally, slowly, painfully, Kam picked himself up off the floor and pulled his pants back on.

He gathered up his things and slunk back down to the showers, grateful that this time no one was there.

He let the hot water wash over him for the second time in one day. It carried away the stench. The fluids. But it couldn't carry away the tightness in his gut or the sick taste of bile and semen at the back of his throat. It couldn't even warm him up, but at least on the outside he was clean again.

He put on clean pants. A clean shirt. The one he'd been wearing reeked of Fletcher… or maybe it was all in his head. The whole ship smelled so much of oil and time-worn metal it was hard to smell anything else most of the time.

He ran his fingers though his hair, pulling out the worst of the snarls. He took a deep breath and told himself that at least he would be safe for the rest of the night. Fletcher couldn't get it up more than a couple of times in any given day, and by his reckoning he'd gotten off a good three times. Leese only once.

Kam snorted. Why was it always the ones that went on and on about their sexual prowess who were the least good at it? Not that either of them would have been trying to prove anything to him – he was just a receptacle and he knew it. But even a receptacle could judge whether or not the man using him was any good at it when he wanted to be.

Lesse was clumsy and quick, all grunts and fast, hard thrusts. He could get off that way, but he would never enjoy himself doing it.

Kam gathered up his things and checked the time.

Third Meal would be over by now. Like on most ships, at least the ones without regular crews, meals aboard the Bonny Welshman were served at specific times; if you missed out, you didn't eat. He didn't think he could eat anyway, so it probably didn't matter.

He crept through the dimly lit corridors without any real destination in mind. The ship was just big enough that if he stuck to the passageways that weren't on the main line – the corridors that lay between the mess and the crew cabins or that led to the bridge – he might not run into anybody.

F-class ships were all laid out pretty much the same, so this ship wasn't much different form the memories he had of the one he'd grown up on, the Archimedes.

Cargo storage was on the lowest decks, then the engines and crew cabins. Then the mess, the infirmary and more storage areas (for day to day consumables). Then the bridge and officers' cabins. Sometimes the officers had their own mess but Mr. Smeed ate with the crew, at his own table of course.

Captain Harkness seemed to prefer to dine in his office. Before today, the only time Kam had ever seen the Captain was on the bridge and even that was rare. He seemed to prefer to let Smeed do the day to day running of his ship; Kam didn't know enough to know if that was usual or not. Not that it mattered.

The Captain didn't care about him. Why should he?

Just because he had blue eyes…

…………………………………………………………………

Jack found his first officer sitting at the little corner table in the mess, all his attention focused on the little 'pad' that held all the information they had on the space he was planning on flying into. Smeed's other hand was holding a fork that looked as if it had been hanging there between his plate and his mouth for at least the last ten minutes.

Jack sauntered over, grinning. "Are you actually going to eat that, or do you expect it to crawl up your arm and jump into your mouth all on its own?"

Smeed jumped. "For the love of…! Gave me a fright and a half you did!"

Jack laughed at him (although anyone who actually knew Smeed would have realized that it wasn't ill-received.)

The rest of the crew had stopped eating when the Captain came in. Most of them had only seen him a handful of times since they'd left port. Smeed was the man who ran the ship, the man they reported to and got their orders from. Most of them were just as pleased not to have to deal with their Captain.

Harkness had a certain reputation… several of them, but most notably, he was said to bed anything that moved and the last thing any of them needed was a reputation as 'the Captain's pet'. No one would hire you if they suspected you'd gotten your last contract on your back or on your knees.

James Smeed, on the other hand, was said to be tough as nails, but fair. He didn't care what the crew did as long as they kept it behind closed doors and if he'd ever engaged in any affairs aboard ship, no one ever found out about it.

Smeed was in his fifties and fit the description Jack had always associated with the word 'grizzled'. There were days when he was tempted to call him Ahab, although thankfully Smeed didn't have any whales in his past he was trying to chase down, white or otherwise.

"Finally decide to come out of your office, eh?" he asked when Jack, still smirking, pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"Sounds ominous."

The other shrugged. "Probably not." He glanced around the mess, noticing that Anders wasn't amongst the crewmen having dinner. As near as he could figure everyone else was there… odd. He'd never known a sailor, whether he was on the sea or in the sky, to miss a meal.

"Problem?" Smeed inquired at the other man's seemingly contemplative silence.

Jack turned back to his first officer, keeping his voice low enough not to be over heard; most of the crew had gone back to their conversations anyway. Smeed did a good job of making sure they were afraid of him so they tended to keep their distance. "Tell me about Kamden Anders," said Jack.

"You've got a problem with him?" Smeed sounded surprised.

"I didn't say I had a problem with anybody," he realized he sounded defensive. "I just wanted to know why you've got some twenty year old flying my ship."

"You're not going to hold this morning against him are you, Jackie?"

Jack shrugged again. They'd flown through a magnetic field that had temporarily scrambled the main navigational system. Up was down and down was up… it really wasn't the kid's fault other than he should have seen it coming and avoided it. "You hired him behind my back."

"He seemed like a good kid. If you want to void…"

"We're too far out to start voiding contracts and you know it."

"Got one last stop, Omega Station," he reminded the Captain.

Omega was the last outpost before they left patrolled territory, not that the territory around Omega was particularly well patrolled. Outside the shipping lanes, one was lucky (bearing in mind that bad luck was still luck) to see any kind of military or law enforcement personnel.

The so-called Great and Bountiful Human Empire was expanding faster than the government could keep up with it.

"Let's take a walk," Jack got to his feet.

"I'm in the middle of m'dinner!"

Jack gave him a look, "You weren't eating anyway."

"One of these days, Harkness, my patience is going to run out…"

"And then what?" Jack challenged.

"I'll shove you out an airlock just for shits and giggles."

The older man laughed. They both knew how much good that would do.