Young was quite accustomed to going without sleep. Life on Destiny was dangerous and unpredictable, and marathon shifts were not as uncommon as he would have liked. But he rarely found it difficult to fall asleep once he had actually climbed into bed. Most soldiers developed the ability to fall asleep whenever and wherever they could as a simple survival tool. Rush, however, was no soldier, and he clearly did not have that particular ability. It had been two days since Young had found himself stuck in Rush's body, and aside from a few short naps, he hadn't slept during that time. Now he was lying in bed again, staring at the ceiling and watching the shifting patterns created by the fluctuating glow of FTL travel. As he watched, his head throbbed in time with the flickering starlight.
He had ceased to think of his headache in terms of simple pain. It was a pulsing, howling presence, riding around on his shoulders and piercing his skull with its long, serrated fangs. He had tried ignoring it, soothing it with self-administered neck and scalp massages, and even bargaining with it as if were a real creature that could be reasoned with. If this went on much longer, he was going to have to give it a name.
But it wasn't just the headache keeping him awake. He had too much experience sleeping through pain for that to be the problem. No, it was his fucking brain. It wouldn't stop - it wouldn't even slow down. Images darted through his mind, a steady stream of ideas solidifying and interweaving, insights and connections lighting up one after another like street lamps at dusk. They were very much his own thoughts - his concerns, his preoccupations, his interests - but this was not the way his mind usually processed them. It was too fast, too bright, too all-consuming, and he was at the mercy of that unending flow of data.
The worst of it was, his thoughts kept sliding back to Rush. No matter how much he wanted to distract himself, his mind was determined to fixate on his biggest looming problems, all of which involved Rush. And Young really, really didn't want to think about Rush right now. There were too many emotions tied to those thoughts, too much anger and hurt and confusion and loss. It was the sense of loss that bothered him the most. He was actually grieving as though he had been betrayed by someone he cared about. Not even Telford's many treacheries had elicited this response from him, and yet Telford was ostensibly a friend, and Rush… well, Rush had been a tentative ally at best.
Young let out a grunt of irritation at his own train of thought and absently ran his fingers through his hair. He had begun to find this motion soothing, relishing the fine, soft texture between his fingers and the light tugging sensation along his scalp. He had abandoned the idea of cutting it all off. Somehow, that seemed like such a waste. He had always liked Rush's hair: the way it framed his face, the way it caught the light, the way it flared and shifted when he moved. He had liked it better on Rush, of course. That went without saying. He had liked everything about Rush better on Rush.
As he stroked his hair, his wrist scraped lightly against Rush's beard. He huffed out a soft breath, reminded again of the last time he had stopped shaving his own face. He had been in the midst of a personal crisis, aching and depressed and barely able to function. He had always had a tendency to give up on personal grooming when he gave up hope. Accordingly, the beard felt like a symbol of weakness. It felt like failure, and he was tired of carrying around that personal reminder. He just wanted to be rid of it.
Fuck it. This was his body, wasn't it? Rush had seen to that. The hair could stay, but the beard had to go.
Decided on this course of action and glad to have something to do besides think, Young pushed himself out of bed. He flicked on the lights, located his electric razor, and made his way to his shaving mirror. As he shaved, Young took his time to accommodate for his new, unfamiliar bone structure. It was a bit of an adjustment, but he knew he'd get used to it eventually… along with everything else he needed to get used to.
A few minutes later, Rush's cleanshaven face stared back at him in the mirror. Young blinked a few times, taken aback by how much sharper Rush's features looked without any scruff. Even on Icarus base, he couldn't remember ever seeing Rush without at least a few day's growth of stubble. But now it was gone, and there was something quite hawkish and predatory about his face that Young had never noticed before. Hmm. That would be an adjustment, too.
Young set aside the razor and turned off the lights. He toppled back into bed, pulled up the covers, and let out a deep sigh. He felt slightly more at ease now that he had done something to claim this body for his own. Unfortunately, his head still pounded as if someone was hammering nails into it, and his brain still didn't show any signs succumbing to sleep. So he lay awake as the hours crept by, watching the play of ghostly lights upon his ceiling and trying to think about anything but Rush.
TJ was pretty sure that her early motives for studying medicine had been noble. Caretaking, saving lives, that sort of thing. All very high-minded and optimistic stuff. She doubted that any of her original reasons had involved having an excuse to secrete herself away in the infirmary and avoid drama unfolding elsewhere. But at this moment, that was the aspect of her calling that she was most grateful for. Here, in her orderly little kingdom, she could be alone. She could do her work in relative peace, comfortable in the knowledge that it was not her job to offer empty reassurances to her anxious shipmates or monitor for signs of dangerous unrest. That was for Scott, James, and Greer to worry about. Instead, she was going to spend her morning continuing her study of Destiny's medical archives. That was a much better use of her time than worrying about problems she had no power to solve.
Not that she was worried, per se. So her commander and erstwhile lover had exchanged bodies with a man of dubious integrity and pronounced Machiavellian tendencies with whom he shared an extremely rocky history. Well, that was slightly disconcerting. But bad blood aside, it was common enough to see people wandering around Destiny in bodies that didn't belong to them, so why should this be any different? And yes, Telford had staged another attempted power grab and McKay, that self-important ass, had apparently broken the communication stones. That was… Okay, it was potentially really bad, but the science team was on the job and she had great faith in their collective ability to work eleventh hour miracles. It was all going to be okay. She wasn't worried. Not really.
TJ gave a sigh of annoyance. She had just read the same paragraph on her laptop three times in a row, and she still didn't know what it said. She hadn't been able to concentrate all morning.
Okay, maybe she was a little worried.
It wasn't so much that the communication stones were broken. That was a potentially dire situation if it couldn't be fixed, but the science team would find a way. They always did. No, it was Rush and Colonel Young's situation that really bothered her, and she couldn't even quite put her finger on why, exactly. She just knew that something was wrong. Something beyond the obvious. The Colonel was exhibiting a certain air of defeat that was a little too familiar, and yet there was also a new intensity about his speech and movements that was somewhat disquieting. She didn't know what to make of it, but the combination didn't seem to bode well for his mental health.
As for Rush, she hadn't seen him since the incident occurred. At first she had assumed that he was devoting all his time to fixing the stones - getting completely absorbed in a project and forgetting little things like food and sleep was not exactly new behavior for Rush - but an overheard comment from Dr. Volker revealed that the rest of the science team hadn't seen much of Rush lately either. So what was he up to? Did the Colonel know? Was that why he seemed so troubled? And did it have anything to do with the fact that she had noticed a bit of bruising beneath the scruff on Young's jaw yesterday?
She sighed again and rubbed at her eyes as if her distraction was just a matter of blurred vision. "None of this is helpful," she muttered to herself.
"What isn't helpful?" came a soft voice from the open doorway.
TJ let her hands drop into her lap and turned to find Colonel Young leaning against the doorframe. He offered her a small smile, but there was something pained about the tightness of the lines around his eyes.
"Nothing," she replied, rising to her feet and returning his smile with as much warmth as she could muster. "I was just talking to myself."
He pushed away from doorframe and walked toward the instrument table that she had repurposed as a desk. She watched him approach, noting his straight posture and deliberate, unhurried steps. That was all Young, and it was reassuring to see. But the impression of energy trapped below the surface - the suggestion of something caged - was new. Or if not new, it wasn't usually detectable unless he was feeling either particularly angry or particularly… amorous.
As he drew closer, she noticed that he had shaved. And yes, that was definitely a fading bruise on his jaw. Something had happened between him and Rush, then. It figured.
The question was, how had Rush weathered the encounter? Was he sporting any interesting bruises? Was he hiding out somewhere, licking his wounds, and was that why no one had seen him? It was possible that Rush had been the victor, of course, given that he was in Young's body. However, TJ rather doubted it. She had seen the Colonel take down larger, stronger opponents before, and he knew his own body's weaknesses better than anyone. No, she suspected that Rush had gotten the worst of it.
"Something wrong?" Young asked, a note of concern creeping into his voice. He studied her through Rush's dark, hooded eyes, giving them a softness that she had never seen before. There were hints of affection in that gaze, awkward and imperfectly masked. It was uncomfortable, but it was also achingly sweet.
"No," she assured him. "Nothing's wrong, exactly. I'm just…" She paused, running her eyes over him again. Now that they were separated only by the width of her desk, the signs of his discomfort and exhaustion were more evident. "How are you?" she asked.
He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck, and she recognized it as one of Rush's habitual motions. "I think there's something wrong with me," he confessed quietly. "I think the stones might have done more than just switch my consciousness with Rush's. My head… it feels like there's an electrical storm going on up there."
"Headache?" TJ asked sympathetically. She had wondered about that.
"Yeah," Young said. "Not the worst I've ever had, but definitely the most relentless. It's been two and a half days, and it's not showing any signs of letting up." He looked almost apologetic, as if he had just admitted to something shameful. "But it's not just that," he continued."It's… my mind feels overstimulated. Or possibly under-stimulated, I don't really know. I can't slow down my thoughts; they just take over and cycle around and around." He made a revolving motion with one raised finger. "I can't shut my brain up or slow it down. I can't sleep. Feels like a never ending caffeine high."
Never ending caffeine high. Hmm. Although Rush's outward presentation was usually calm and collected, that still seemed like a pretty fair description of his baseline mental state. The scientist had an uncanny alertness about him, and his mind always seemed to be actively engaged in solving some problem or developing some scheme. And now Colonel Young had inherited that overactive brain, and he was feeling understandably overwhelmed by it.
"Okay," TJ replied thoughtfully. "I think you're talking about two unrelated problems."
Young lifted his brows. His vaguely hopeful expression looked out of place on Rush's face, but it was rather endearing.
"First," TJ began, "I don't think the headache has anything to do with the stones. I've always suspected that Rush had chronic headaches, and it's really not surprising. He works all the time and rarely sleeps. He has terrible posture and spends hours hunched over consoles, so his spine is probably in bad shape at this point. And he almost never wears his glasses anymore. Any one of those factors could cause headaches. Taken together-"
"Nightmare scenario, got it," Young murmured. "His eyesight is definitely worse than mine."
"You should probably borrow his glasses if you're going to be doing any paperwork," TJ advised. "And for the pain…" She walked over to her little pharmacy and took down a small jar filled with fine gray-green dust. "Mix a pinch of this with some water. You can take it every four hours." She returned to her desk and held out the jar to him.
He accepted it with evident reluctance and turned it over a few times in his hands. Then he lifted his eyes, staring at her reproachfully from under his brows. It was such a classic Young expression that she couldn't suppress her answering grin. "TJ," he said slowly, "Is this what I think it is?"
"If you're thinking it's that new medicinal-" she began.
"The one the science team has been getting high on several times a week-"
"They're calling it 'clinical trials,' I think."
Young snorted and looked down at the jar in his hand. "Tempting as it is, I can't afford to compromise my thought process right now. Or ever, really."
She wondered if he had thought about that back when he was drinking himself to sleep every night, but she wisely didn't bring it up. "It won't get you high at the dose I mentioned," she promised. "It will relax the tense muscles in your neck and shoulders and take the edge off your headache. It might even help you sleep. You can double the dose at bedtime if you need to."
The Colonel unscrewed the lid from the jar and sniffed its contents. He tilted his head, shrugged, and replaced the lid. "Okay, I'll give it a try. What about the, um… other problem?"
"Right," murmured TJ. She shifted uncomfortably. "That… also probably has nothing to do with the stones."
"You mean this… having his brain in overdrive all the time, that's normal for Rush too?" he asked, and he actually looked more amused than upset. "Well, that at least explains a few things about him."
No kidding. "Scott told me that you and Rush aren't connected by the stones anymore. That for all intents and purposes, this is your body now." She gestured toward him.
He sobered immediately, as if her words had brought to mind a particularly unpleasant memory. Oh yes, there was definitely more going on here behind the scenes than anyone had let on. TJ wondered just how concerned she ought to be. Judging by the Colonel's grim expression, very.
"That's correct," was Young's only comment. He glanced down at the cylindrical jar in his hand and began to roll it slowly between his palms. He was fidgeting, albeit in a very controlled manner. Still, it was the most un-Young-like thing she had seen him do so far, and she didn't like it.
"So your consciousness is fully integrated with his brain at the moment. Honestly, Colonel, with totally unfamiliar brain chemistry to contend with, it's amazing that you're doing as well as you are. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just going to be a really rough learning curve, I think."
She tore her eyes away from his hands to take in his face. With his eyes cast down and his head tilted forward, he looked more defeated than ever. Some protective instinct flared inside her, and she reached out to lay a hand on his arm. He froze, then shot a questioning look from behind a few stray locks of hair.
"Just distract yourself. Give your mind something to do," she suggested, injecting an encouraging note into her voice which was only slightly forced. She glanced quickly around the room for inspiration, then spotted the laptop on the desk. "Why don't you try reading something? The Ancient database is full of interesting information. Not just about science and medicine, but all kinds of things. History, literature, politics, military tactics. I'm sure you can find something…" she trailed off, noting the way his eyes had sharpened at her suggestion.
He peered at her intently, then looked down at the laptop. And oh god, it was as if Rush's consciousness had stepped right back into his body in that moment. He had suddenly acquired that hungry, calculating look that she had come to associate with Rush but which she had never expected from Young. "Yes," he murmured, "of course. I'm him. I might as well make the most of it."
TJ slowly withdrew her hand from his arm. "I suppose so," she said cautiously. "What are you planning to do?"
Young laughed softly and lifted his eyes. Just like that, he was himself again. The straight posture, gentle smile, and understated air of anticipation all clearly belonged to Colonel Young in one of his happier moods. "I'm going to do some reading," he said. "Thanks for your help, TJ."
"You're welcome," she said, somewhat relieved. He nodded and turned to go, but she called after him, "How's Rush?"
That took the spring out of his step at once. He turned slowly back toward her, his expression carefully neutral. "I haven't seen him in two days," he said evenly. Neither his tone nor his face gave anything away, but she knew him. She could knew what it meant when his shoulders went rigid, and she could see the way he was gripping that little jar of medicinal powder tightly enough to turn his knuckles white.
"I'm guessing that's when he tagged you on the jaw, then," she said, tapping at her own jaw line.
He blinked a few times, then smiled humorlessly. "It was the only solid hit he got in."
"I figured," she said. "So how is he? Breathing, I assume. How about walking? I haven't seen him around."
"Everything should be in working order," he assured her, and a hint of amusement crept into his voice.
She nodded, marginally reassured. "What did he do this time?"
He rubbed at his eyes, and that blanket of weary disillusionment seemed to envelope him again. "Something really, really stupid," he growled, "and appallingly selfish. But mostly just stupid." He let his hand drop and heaved a sigh. "But I understand why he did it."
"That… sounds like a step in the right direction, at least," TJ said, trying to be optimistic and not to think too hard about what sort of stupid and appallingly selfish thing Rush could have done.
Young shook his head. "Nope, I don't think so. We're never going to get anywhere until he understands a few things about me. And that," he said with a grim little smile, "is never going to happen."
And with that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the infirmary, apparently deciding that their conversation was over.
TJ stared after him for a few moments, then dropped into her chair with a little groan. Her strategy had clearly been flawed; the infirmary was just as likely to attract drama as anywhere else on this ship, if not more so. Now she had a whole new set of problems to worry about, and that grieved look in the Colonel's eyes was going to haunt her for the rest of the day.