I still maintain that yes, I firmly ascribe to the "pre-existing relationship" ship. I can't help it. Everything I write these two in has the implied suggestion of "Oh, whoa. They totally did."

I probably shouldn't be having this much freaking fun writing this. That being said, I am having a ball!

080

Sousuke calmed down exactly enough to stop shouting.

That didn't keep him from a well-deserved "If you touch me again, I will cut your arm off - !"

Because that touch had been horrible.

One minute he had been swimming in the last vestiges of a dream - Gauron had been in it, so it was immediately filed away as a nightmare - but then he was touching him and the edges of his vision lit on fire -

Kurz fled the room obediently, in search of someone who was obviously relevant who Sousuke did not give two shits about, and he was left alone with the fire and the burning and -

"Get your hands off of me," he hissed, his treacherous body refusing to make it happen on its own.

And the worst part of it, the deepest, harshest twist of the knife, was that he saw the exact same panic on Gauron's face for the briefest second.

It was gone in the next.

The oppresive silence of the room almost swallowed them both, but they were not precisely equipped to sit in soft, glowy quiet. Every silence that had threatened them before had been thoroughly destroyed, more often in gunfire, less often in things he wanted to think little and less on.

A long time ago, that was a long time ago, another mission another life another person Kashim not Sousuke

"So long you don't even enjoy it anymore?" Gauron said wryly.

Oh my God, he thought. "I hate you," out loud.

"I heard both of those. I only appreciate one."

He gritted his teeth and said nothing.

"Stop posing a a high school student," was the next thing he heard.

"Stop taking them hostage," he shot back.

"It's creepy." He let the word drawl lecherously.

"You make it so. Perhaps if you started stalking post-grads, you would feel better about yourself." It came out exactly as dickish as he intended.

Now that his brain was clear, though, he swallowed and went to the heart of the matter. "What did you do to me?"

"I saved your idiot life," was the pissy reply. The problem of that reply was what came with it: what was I supposed to do, thought you died, I told all of them they were wrong, fuck off - found you - what was I supposed to do -

He balled the pillow up around his head, to no avail. "Please," his voice came muffled through the stuffing, "stop thinking. I already have one headache that is most likely your fault."

"If you only have one problem that you can blame on me," he snapped back, "then I'm clearly failing."

It would have been too galling for Sousuke's delicate sensibilities to admit how many issues he was having at the moment, and how few people he could blame for it. So he buried it.

His teeth clenched so hard that he thought they might shatter in his skull. "Then get out of my head."

"Get out of mine," he replied, fury looming from a deadly coil.

"What in God's name did you -" his palm pressed angrily to his forehead, like that would help him any. What did you do to me, went unspoken, a broken mantra in his head.

A hand clamped down on his own, and then it was fire

Want you

Died, thought you were gone

Would have burned the world

Everyone

I would have killed them all

For you, all for your stupid

Followed you, I would have followed you the next second

It was reeling, spinning, like he'd been pitched off of a building. Air didn't feel like it filled his lungs anymore, the room tilted badly - wrong, this was wrong, he wasn't young and stupid anymore, he should have been letting go, pulling away, pulling a gun, for God's sake -

"Stop," he gasped, and did everything he should have done immediately, minus the gun, because his had been lost who knew how long ago but it seemed like a very good idea to get another one, now.

He sucked in a lungful of air and pulled a shaking hand down his face. "Don't do that again," he said after a long minute.

His companion's face was grim, but his shrug was flip. "Just checking the water. "

"I don't suppose you know how you managed to pull off such an impressive train wreck," Sousuke gritted, trying to suppress everything that had been deposited on the doorstep of his brain.

"I could guess," he admitted, his grin nothing shy of wicked. "But I'm no expert. i have a buddy here who could probably help."

Sousuke couldn't let go of the massive obvious behind the "no expert" statement, but he kept silent. It still earned him an eye-roll. "And how could he possibly be of assistance?" Also, anyone Gauron considered himself on friendly terms with was probably one step shy of being hell on earth, or at least incredibly good at killing people.

"I might have borrowed one of his toys to get us out of there," was the vague reply. "I didn't get all the way through the instruction manual."

"I noticed that," was the posh retort from the doorway, Kurz's search for the good doctor clearly triumphant. "You could have asked me how to use it, for starters."

"Marcus," he greeted dryly. "Kashim, Marcus. And... blondie. All acquainted now?"

Marcus (Wesley was the last name on his key card) was deceptively young, a white lab coat tucked nicely over the most boring cardigan known to mankind, his hair parted smartly, if a little on the long side. It had a boyish flip at the ends that made him look even more obsessively like the strangest, youngest, most nondescript doctor on the planet. He could have passed for a pediatrician.

This time, the eye-roll he received couldn't have been mistaken for anything but annoyed. "Get over it, Kashim, he thought the Hippocratic oath was hilarious."

"I didn't miss the irony," the doctor corrected him. "I wouldn't say I found it amusing. But enough about me. You seem to be recovering nicely, Sergeant. And by nicely," he added, "I mean at an alarming pace completely outside the realm of what modern medicine can do."

Sousuke blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"No," Marcus smiled, "you're not yet. I expect this is a favorable side-effect of your little bonding experience - the less favorable ones, I'm sure you've noticed already."

"It's hard to miss," Gauron muttered, slouching like a sulking child. "Now get rid of it."

"All in good time. Let me guess what you did: you used my little project to get both of you from one fixed location in space to another, probably because you have a penchant for being shot at," Wesley smiled, taking a seat at the foot of the bed - perching, more like. "Would you like me to explain why that was an incredibly stupid idea, or would you like to guess?"

"Just explain it," Sousuke snapped before Gauron could be further encouraged into creativity.

The good doctor settled in his perch. "I suppose I'll be talking to you both like children, then. That device was intended for single-person use, in instances of breaking and entering... perhaps on a larger scale," he allowed. "And it was only in the first stages of testing. And - I must emphasize - designed for one person. Ideally for a person uniquely able to operate a Lamda driver, even, based on their proclivity to merging the conscious mind with certain kinds of technology."

Sousuke's stomach began to sink. He dared a glance at the man beside him, but his face revealed nothing.

You can look, if you want, was the dark ripple in his mind. It wasn't happy, or conciliatory, or even remotely welcoming. It simply was.

If you absolutely goddamn must know everything at all times, came immediately behind it, with a twist of familiar venom.

His fists clenched reflexively before he forced himself to exhale and relax, or at least fake it. "I would rather refrain from that," he muttered. "I have no desire to be comfortable in your head."

Kurz twitched. "Was he- I mean, are you guys -"

"I expect their non-verbal communication is getting quite good now," Marcus assured him.

"Stop," Gauron snapped, "trying to sell your goddamn product. I already stole it. I know what it's supposed to do. Get to the fucking point." Although no one could see it, Sousuke knew his hand was contemplating a boot knife and where exactly he was going to cut the other man's throat.

He swallowed, because he could even feel the muscles that would be involved with moving before anyone could even process what happened.

No one would even see him move - Sousuke didn't need any extra-sensory assistance to know that for certain. His own hand twitched like it would go for the same knife.

You're going to have to get used to that, a new addition to his mind informed him. But I might want to kill him less if he'd get off the fucking bed.

Marcus turned those deceptively gentle eyes to Sousuke, like he was sorry or even remotely sympathetic. "You shoved yourselves into an undefined point in space. Alone, your minds would simply have fastened to the other end of the device, your exit route. But there was something more natural than technology in that space, that drew you in before you could be drawn out again, and you latched on to that instead." He spread his hands apologetically. "And here you are."