Fic: Fragments of a life you shouldn't miss (Stargate: Universe)

Pairing: Nicholas Rush/Everett Young
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 5600
Notes: An AU, of sorts.
Summary: As Young watches, the stranger lights up a cigarette, his free hand tapping impatiently on the car’s smooth paint job. In a hurry, is he?

~*~


light

~*~

Everett Young wakes up with a sour taste in his mouth.

The reason why is immediately apparent. The cup of coffee on the desk in front of him is half-empty. There’s light shining in through the blinds.

Young moves to his feet, stumbles to the bathroom, and washes out the taste in his mouth. No headache, at least. He’s getting old enough that that’s actually a risk, given how much he had to drink the night before.

How much had he had to drink?

He twists open the blinds, blinking in the light, and rests a hand on his hip. The street outside is dusty, hot in the summer sun. Main Street, of Destiny, Kansas.

Across the street there’s someone stopped at the gas station. Out-of-towner, judging by the clothes, the car. Strange. Destiny isn’t on any of the major highways, and the place is such a wreck that he doesn’t know why anyone would want to visit.

The stranger moves spasmodically, restless or irritated or wired.

Or all three.

As Young watches, he lights up a cigarette, his free hand tapping impatiently on the car’s smooth paint job.

In a hurry, is he? In a rush.

Young frowns.

The shadow of the mechanic falls over the stranger, the mechanic himself obscured by the roof of the gas station. And Young lingers, watching the stranger’s expression turn from impatience to shock to irritation, rapidly evolving towards anger.

That’s enough.

Young lets the blinds close.

~*~

He opens the diner half an hour late, and as soon as he flips the dusty sign around to display ‘OPEN’ to the world, the stranger spots it, from across the street.

Sure enough, Young is hardly back around the counter when the old bell on the door handle chimes. There’s no click of the door shutting, though, and when Young glances up, the stranger is paused, one hand holding the door open, the other scanning the hours of operation.

“Weren’t you supposed to be open half an hour ago?” he asks.

Young grits his jaw. “Had a late start today,” he says.

“I see.”

The stranger’s tone implies that he doesn’t see at all.

“What’ll you have?” asks Young, forcing the frustration out of his tone.

“Could I perhaps have a menu?”

Young taps the countertop, where the menu is, underneath the coating of glass. Turns back towards the kitchen. Same as always. The dull, mindlessness of routine, and everything is a little too sharp, like the world is at odds with itself.

Young blames the hangover.

“You live here?” asks the stranger, after ordering coffee, black, no sugar.

“All my life,” says Young, and he wonders, briefly, how he wasted away forty years in this godforsaken town. Wasn’t there a time when he wanted to do something else?

“I can’t imagine,” mutters the stranger, and Young finds, oddly, that he can’t imagine either.

“It’s not much to look at,” says Young, neutrally, as he delivers the ordered coffee.

“That it isn’t,” agrees the stranger.

And Young, perhaps, should be a little more resentful of that. But, instead, his eyes scan out through the dusty windows, through the dusty storefront, onto the dusty street, and all he can do is – well, appreciate the stranger’s point of view.

“Everett Young,” says Young, extending a hand.

“Nicholas Rush,” says the stranger, taking it.

There’s silence, for a moment, then:

“My car broke down, and, evidently, the replacement part has to be ordered,” Rush explains. “Evidently it’ll take a week.”

Young shrugs, in a way that implies ‘tough luck’.

Rush makes a soft, irritated noise, and orders the breakfast.

~*~

He’s still there a few hours later, at the far end of the counter, notebook open, pen dancing in indecipherable hieroglyphs across the page. Some kind of math genius, Young guesses.

There are a few other customers, some regulars, but most of the time Young watches the television at the far side of the restaurant, muted. It’s all shows he’s seen before. A crowd sighing in predestined disappointment on a rerun of a game show, news full of stories that he swears he saw yesterday or the day before.

“You planning on staying here all day?” he asks Rush, finally.

“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Rush returns. “Do you want me to buy something else? I can see you’re pressed for space.”

The sarcasm doesn’t faze Young. “Stay as long as you want,” he says.

~*~

By Young’s count, Rush fills up twelve pages with equations. He gets lunch at 3:25, and then dinner at 8 PM. The diner closes around 8:30, usually, but Young lingers, today. Spends extra long setting the chairs on top of the tables, sweeping up the floor.

Rush tenses, like he expects Young to kick him out at any time, but Young doesn’t make any move to, and as he wipes the counter, it occurs to Young that the silence is comfortable, now. Comfortable simply being the state in which neither participant in the silence is thinking about how silent it is.

Young switches off the TV. “Where are you headed?” he asks Rush.

“Given that my options are sleeping in my car or sleeping on the street,” says Rush, not looking up from his notebook, “I think I’ll take the car.”

Young hesitates.

This isn’t something he usually does.

“I have a room upstairs,” he offers.

Jittery, energetic fingers clench around the pen that’s been scribbling across the page all day. “And how do I know you’re not a small town full of axe murderers?”

“We would’ve stared at you more,” Young tells him, deadpan.

“They were staring,” Rush mutters.

Young is, somehow, surprised at this. He feels as though he didn’t notice. And he’s not sure why he wouldn’t have.

“Follow your instincts,” he advises. “If you think I’m an axe murderer, it’s probably true.”

“You were the only one who didn’t stare.”

Young is a little surprised at that too.

“Where’s your accent from?” asks Young, changing the subject.

“Scotland,” says Rush.

“Doesn’t sound Scottish.”

“Why, are you an expert?”

Young turns the sign on the diner from ‘OPEN’ to ‘CLOSED’. He pauses, with his hand on the lock. “You going or not?” he asks.

One of Rush’s hands skims over the collar of a white t-shirt, peeking out from under the grey.

“I’ll stay,” he decides.

~*~

“You want something to drink?”

Rush tilts his head, eyes scanning the water-stained ceiling, the lazily spinning fan. “How many times do you ask that, in a given day?” he asks.

Young shrugs.

“Whiskey?” he asks, pulling a bottle out of the cupboard.

“What kind?”

Young tells him.

Rush nods, in approval. “A bit,” he says. “Surprised you’d be drinking, given how hung over you were this morning.”

Young winces. “That obvious?”

“If you know what you’re looking for.”

Ice clinks as he passes the glass to Rush. Their fingers don’t touch. And that, Young notices.

Young settles into the couch, old enough and beaten enough that it’s the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house. Rush’s eyes close as he takes a sip of the whiskey.

Young doesn’t drink his, just yet.

“Where you headed to?” he asks.

Rush twitches a shoulder in something approximating a shrug. The kind of shrug that means he doesn’t know, is what Young guesses. Which would explain why he’s not in any hurry to get there.

“All right,” says Young, “where are you coming from?”

Another shrug, but this one is the kind that means Rush doesn’t want to say.

“Forbidden topics,” says Young. “Got it.”

“I don’t know you,” says Rush. “I’m under no obligation to say.”

“I know.”

The curve of Rush’s neck is a little too eye-catching, under the low light, especially as Rush brushes the back of his hand up days-old stubble. And the way he takes a swallow, now, of the whiskey, speaks to pain. Grief, not the other possibilities of humiliation or anger or the despair of someone beaten down once too many times by their life. Rush still has some fight, some snap in him, but he’s in mourning.

…so Young guesses, anyway.

“Why are you here?” asks Rush. “In this place. This town.”

“Never really meant to be,” Young tells him. “It’s just how things turned out.”

~*~

Rush doesn’t sleep until the early hours of the morning. Young surfaces from sleep, once or twice, to hear pacing, murmuring from the main room of the apartment.

~*~

he dreams of light

~*~

And when he wakes up for real, the beaten-wood coffee table is covered with bits of paper from the notebook, and Rush is asleep, still clothed, on top of the blanket, in the guest room.

Young leaves the notes untouched, and takes a blanket from the hall closet. Settles it over Rush, soft, without disturbing him, like his mother taught him how to do with his little sister.

He closes the door behind him and heads downstairs to open the diner.

~*~

Eli is already there, outside the door, vibrating with impatience. No particular reason for it, Young guesses, just – how Eli is.

“How’s your mother?” asks Young, when he lets Eli in.

“She’s – you know, she’s doing fine,” says Eli. “Things are rough, but fine.”

Young doesn’t press the issue.

“Man, I thought you were never going to get down here,” says Eli, switching topics. “Seriously? This place does actually have hours of operation.”

“I had a guest,” says Young. Not too much of a secret, and Eli will be even more curious if Young doesn’t tell him upfront. One of the problems with having someone so inquisitive as an employee.

“Seriously?” repeats Eli. “Was it a girl? Did you actually get laid?”

“No,” says Young, “it’s someone stuck here. Car troubles.”

“Is she interesting?”

“He.”

“…okay, is he interesting?”

Young shrugs.

“Okay, was that a yes-shrug, a maybe-shrug, or an I-don’t-want-to-tell-you,-Eli shrug?”

Young’s eyes narrow, a hint. “Get the deserts started, Eli.”

“Aye, cap’n.” Eli mock-salutes, and heads towards the freezer.

~*~

Rush gets downstairs by 1 PM. Young half-expects him to be bleary and disoriented from a night of sleep, but he looks just as edgy as he did before.

“Hey,” says Young.

Rush gives him a cursory nod, and brushes past him, outside, where he lights up a cigarette.

“That him?” asks Eli.

“Yeah,” says Young.

“Huh.”

Young watches, out of the corner of his eye. Rush even smokes edgily. Shoulders hunched, cigarette between his fingers, eyes black and unreadable.

Is Young staring? He’s probably staring.

A few minutes later, Rush enters, and Young already has a breakfast ready for him.

~*~

“It’s kinda weird that he’s here the whole day, isn’t it?” hisses Eli, to Young, in the stockroom.

“Where else is he gonna go?” asks Young.

Eli shifts, uncomfortable. “Places?” he suggests.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Young, ending the discussion.

~*~

“I don’t think I recall having a blanket,” says Rush. “When I went to sleep.”

Young pauses, halfway to setting Rush’s finished plate in the crook of his arm. The flicker of emotions that he feels is complicated, so he doesn’t imagine that the look on his face tells Rush much of anything.

Nonetheless, Rush leans back in his chair, arms crossed halfway between defensiveness and satisfaction.

“So you only stare when I’m not there to see?” asks Rush.

“I had a spare blanket,” says Young.

“I don’t like people watching me when I sleep.”

“I didn’t watch you.”

Rush examines him. Those same unreadable black eyes, and it’s a physical effort for Young to meet them.

“Hey, is that – can I see that?”

Never has Young been more glad for Eli’s interruption. He steps aside, for Eli to get closer to Rush’s notebook, his eyes already scanning across the equations.

Young lingers, in the stockroom, for a few minutes longer than he should. Strictly speaking. And when he emerges, Eli is seated across from Rush, the pen in his hand, Rush shifty and tense across from him.

“See, if you carry this here,” says Eli, “and reform the equation like that-”

“Where did you learn this?” interrupts Rush.

“Well,” says Eli, “I was at MIT.”

A pause. Young tentatively identifies the narrowing of Rush’s eyes as ‘disbelief’.

“For a while.” Eli shifts, uncomfortable. “Until things happened. Like things tend to do.”

“Eli,” says Young, “we have customers.”

“Right.” Eli moves to his feet. “I, uh, I’ll talk to you late—”

“No,” says Rush. “He stays here.”

Eli looks to Young. To Rush. Back to Young again.

“Uh, listen,” says Eli, “I really need this job? There are reasons.”

“Reasons like money?” asks Rush. And he digs into his wallet, pulling out four – no, five twenties, and sliding them across the table to Eli. Eyes shift to Young – “And I can pay you too, if you need something to make up for his time.”

Young drops his towel on the counter. Notes the curious gazes of the others in the diner.

“It’s fine, Eli,” concedes Young.

~*~

They stay late, in the corner of the diner, until Eli’s rubbing his eyes, yawning; until Eli excuses himself, looking a little shell-shocked from the amount of intellectual stimulation.

“What’s he trying to do?” asks Young.

“I don’t know,” says Eli. “Crack some kind of code, I guess.”

~*~

Rush is silent, as Young cleans up. There’s a new tension, between them. A new tension, but the way it tugs at Young feels familiar. Familiar and unwelcome.

“Are we even?” asks Young, finally.

Rush lifts his chin. “Even?” Like he doesn’t even know what Young is talking about. And maybe he doesn’t. Young can’t tell. Young doesn’t know him.

“I didn’t mean,” and Young finds that he doesn’t know how he would finish that. He can’t explain what made him want to help Rush. He can’t because he doesn’t know.

“Didn’t mean what?”

Young doesn’t answer. He fixes his eyes on the dim orange-pink glow of streetlights outside. And, finally: “You staying tonight again?”

Actions speak louder than words. That’s what they tell you in elementary school these days.

An equally long pause. Maybe longer. And then: “Sure.”

~*~

It’s the noise of shattering glass that breaks Young’s sleep.

He’s out of bed instantly, to the main room just as fast.

Rush is a silhouette half-bent over the armchair, leaning hard on his left hand. Young can hear the rough sound of his breathing, a little harsh, a little fast. The low glint of the broken glass on the hardwood floor.

“Rush?” calls Young.

Rush looks up at him with wild, startled eyes. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“You broke a glass.”

Rush blinks. Like he’s never seen the glass before. Like he’s riding a tide of disorientation, confusion.

“Are you all right?” No response, so Young persists. “Rush?”

A shake of Rush’s head, quick and spasmodic. “No,” says Rush. “Not at all.”

“Is this one of those things you don’t want to share?”

Rush steps back, a kind of shiver running through his frame. Turns towards Young like he expects Young to have the answers.

“No,” says Rush, finally. “I’ll buy you a new glass.”

“No need,” says Young.

“There is a need,” counters Rush. “I shouldn’t have – it was a nightmare. An illusion.”

The light emphasis on the last word makes Young wonder. In fact, everything about this makes him wonder. He’s treading into unexplored land, here.

“Rush,” says Young, reaching out. The instant his hand touches Rush’s shoulder, Rush twitches away, full-body.

Wrong move. Fine.

Young retreats.

He has absolutely no idea what to do, or what to say. And neither does Rush.

~*~

and when he breathes in, the light follows his breath

~*~

“How long have you been here?” asks Rush, the following morning.

“You’ve already asked me that,” Young points out, pulling his right shoe on.

“I know,” says Rush. But he sounds to Young like he was actually expecting a different answer.

~*~

Rush seems much calmer, the next day. He takes a walk, for most of the day; gone from a little after ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. He comes back in sweaty, tired, and frustrated.

“What happens if you hike out past the city limits?” he asks Young, accepting a glass of water.

Young doesn’t know. “I never have.”

“I’ll say you haven’t,” snaps Rush.

Young bristles.

~*~

Close to closing time, again, and Rush is lingering, again. It’s turning into a kind of rhythm, Young supposes, only now he doesn’t know what to expect from Rush. This man is vulnerable and caustic, with a restrained mysterious calm in his eyes and a jumpy, restless energy in all of the rest of his body.

“You going or staying?” asks Young, as always.

Rush strokes the underside of his chin, with the back of his fingers. “Have you heard of Plato’s cave?”

Young allows that he has.

“Ever thought you could do that?” asks Rush. “Just – turn around, and see the real world?” He tilts his head. “Like everything you’ve ever lived was an illusion.”

“No,” says Young, honestly. He can’t remember ever having that thought.

“Why not?” asks Rush. “You live in a pathetic town, own a pathetic diner, and lead a pathetic life.”

“Get out,” says Young. And the tone of his voice doesn’t change – it’s still as quiet and even as it ever was. But, still, it allows no argument.

Rush is shaking his head. “This isn’t you,” he says. “Haven’t you ever felt like you were destined for something better?”

“Out.”

“Something great,” Rush persists. “Something that could change the world as we know it.”

“So you’re saying I’m a failure?”

A rough thumb, the clink of salt and pepper shakers as Rush slams his fist down on the table. “Why won’t you listen to me?” It’s nearly a shout, and it nearly shocks the fight right out of Young.

But not quite.

“Because you’re ranting like you’re crazy,” says Young, matter-of-factly.

Rush stands, breathing like he’s just run a marathon, and then he turns away. Shakes his head again, and when he turns back, he’s calmer. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“For that,” says Young, “you tell me where it is you’re coming from, or you’re sleeping out in the car tonight.”

Rush appears to consider this.

“You still have that whiskey?” he asks.

~*~

Rush doesn’t explain very much. He uses simple statements. Minimal information. Just:

That her name was Gloria.

That she got sick.

That he was so wrapped up in himself that he never even noticed, not until it was way past too late.

That she was dead, now.

And at that, he looks up at Young, like there’s something he’s hoping to see. Young expects it isn’t alcohol, but pours him another glass of whiskey anyway.

They finish the entire bottle (though it was barely at halfway in the first place, so that doesn’t mean too much), and go until everything seems pleasantly softened.

Rush pauses, occasionally, like he’s wondering if Young’s going to fill the air with a confession of his own, but Young draws a blank. He doesn’t know what makes him this melancholy; there’s no specific event he can point to, in a life worn down to a pale restless tan like endless stretches of sand.

He finds that he’s too heavy to get up.

So he sleeps there.

~*~

he can feel it nestling inside, like hot chocolate

~*~

And he wakes up to another fucking hangover.

Rush, surprisingly, seems unaffected.

He presses a glass of water and a painkiller into Young’s hands. “You’re a wreck,” he says, charitably.

“Thanks,” mutters Young.

“You’re welcome.”

And this time, it’s Rush that touches Young’s shoulder.

Young has the feeling that some invisible barrier between them has disappeared. But not like it was spontaneous, or borne of the bond between them. Like Rush purposefully, with intent, lowered his defenses.

Young has no basis for this belief. But it makes Young edgy, regardless.

~*~

Rush spends more time behind the counter than in front of it, today. Rings up a few of the orders himself, without asking. The regulars, the people that are in every day, like Volker or Camille, or Park, seem to have gotten used to his presence.

Chloe, the bright young fiancé of a farmer just outside the town limits, comes in for a cup of coffee that morning.

For some reason, Rush looks as though he finds this disappointing.

~*~

“Come with me,” Rush proposes, that evening. “Leave this town, get out of here, and come with me.”

At first Young thinks he’s misheard him, over the water spiraling down the sink’s drain. Then he realizes he heard correctly, and he takes a moment, skimming a sponge down a metal tray, to consider it.

“I can’t,” he says.

“Why not?”

It’s a good question. “The diner.”

“Give it to Eli.”

“Eli couldn’t run it.”

“Eli couldn’t do any worse at it than a drunken, washed-up officer who dreams of better days.”

Young pauses. “Officer?”

“Are you asking how I know?” asks Rush. “I just know.”

Young’s mind struggles to catch up.

“Come with me,” says Rush, again. “Please. Young,” and he catches Young’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“No,” says Young.

“Why not?”

“Because I said no.”

Because Rush is too much. He’s outside Young’s understanding, and Young’s cozy, careful little world is stretching thin around Rush’s words. He feels like he’s in an illusion, like he’s staring at shadows on the wall of a cave.

So, no. The answer is no.

~*~

This evening, the alcohol hits him like a sack of bricks.

He keels over, not really able to stand, and Rush moves up next to him, supporting him easily.

The lights feel dim. The world feels so far away that Young can’t even touch –

“You drugged it,” he slurs.

“I’m sorry,” says Rush, and that’s the last thing Young remembers.

~*~

rising up through his throat to his mind

“No, Colonel Young—”

~*~

He wakes up, this time, with a pounding headache, in the passenger seat of Rush’s car. The highway stretches out straight as an arrow in front of and behind them, and Destiny, Kansas is out of sight.

“What the hell are you doing,” manages Young, in kind of a mumble, and he sits up, grasping for the doorhandle.

Rush hits the lock button, and Young’s hands stop short.

He’s tied up.

He’s tied up.

“You kidnapped me?”

“Desperate times,” explains Rush. “What’s past the border of Destiny?”

“I don’t know,” says Young –

“Well,” says Rush, “figure it out, because we’re there.”

‘There’, in this case, means featureless highway, featureless empty fields, featureless sky.

“What did you use?”

Rush hisses out a breath of air, the heel of his hand pressed hard against the top of the steering wheel. “Here we go,” he says, tightly, and –

- into the bright headlights of an oncoming truck and “Rush!” yells Young and the road twists to the right and down and then they’re okay, skimming along the border of a mountain.

“What the hell…?” says Young.

“We’re in Colorado,” says Rush. “I think. Impressive. Is that the first place you think to go?”

Colorado.

Cheyenne Mountain.

Young has never been to Cheyenne Mountain.

Except that he has.

~*~

“It’s not letting him go.”

“We can only let this go on for so much—”

~*~

“Why didn’t you just say?”

Rush stops the car, by the side of the road, unreadable black eyes flickering over towards Young –

And Young is out of the car, around the hood, and hauling Rush out of the driver’s seat. “What was this, a game?” he says, tightly, and Rush isn’t even fighting. Isn’t resisting Young’s hold, even when it’s clearly too rough. Just has his hands up, in surrender.

“What could I have said?” counters Rush.

A wave of nausea sweeps over Young, and he steps back. Stumbles, more like.

“What is it?” he gasps out. “What the hell is going on?”

“Some kind of parasite,” says Rush. “An energy being. Everyone was trapped, not just you, but, unlike you, I don’t stop thinking just because it looks like there’s nothing to think about. I knew something was wrong.”

Young had known there was something wrong too, he just – he hadn’t –

“You need to wake up,” says Rush.

“Or what?”

“Or you’re dead.”

There’s a hushed tone, in Rush’s voice, a reluctant quality that tells Young all he needs to know about the truth of that statement.

And so Young tries. He tries, but this isn’t as simple as opening his eyes, apparently. The world around him just sharpens, gets more and more real. He doesn’t see a way to break out of it.

“I knew it,” Rush bites out. “You don’t want to wake up, do you?”

He strides to Young, his hand sliding over Young’s eyes, and when he pulls away, they’re back in Kansas. Huge, empty, dusty fields.

“This is what you want, is it?” asks Rush. “Something huge and empty, where you never have to think again, is that it?”

“Where are the others?” asks Young. “Can they hear this?”

“How could they?” snaps Rush. “We’re inside your head.”

“Then how do I even know that you’re real?”

“Stop asking stupid questions!”

Rush runs his hand down the back of his neck, gripping his own shoulder.

And Young observes.

“Is it that bad?” he asks, softly.

“What?” asks Rush, uncomprehending.

“You don’t do that with your shoulder unless it’s bad,” says Young. “Really bad.”

Rush’s hand jerks away from his shoulder. Stung. “You dead isn’t bad enough?”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“No,” agreed Rush. “You haven’t realized. And I’m starting to wonder why that is, Colonel, because every time I turn around, you create another reason not to trust me.” He steps close to Young, and Young is still. Always still, letting Rush come to him, not the other way around.

“What do you expect me to do, Rush?” he asks. “My first concern is the safety of this ship, and this crew.”

“Of course.” Rush turns away. But only for a second; he rounds on Young, fiery, and Young would have to be blind not to see the pain there. “And that purpose is served by your death?”

“I am not suicidal.”

Rush shakes his head. “You don’t think I understand, Colonel? It may shock you that I’m the stronger, of the two of us—”

“—Rush—”

“I have spent two days trying to save your life,” continues Rush. “And I won’t fail now.”

And the sunset is blinding-bright, the light a dull red as Rush steps close to him. Young can’t recall if it was like that, even just a few minutes ago – long shadows, cast over the field beside them.

“Let’s try a more traditional method, shall we?” asks Rush.

They’ve never been this close before.

No, that’s not right.

They have, but it was never like this.

Rush’s hand rests on Young’s chest, and Young is surprised, somehow, at the warmth of it. Like he never realized how alive Rush is, until that.

“Rush,” he says, again –

“Do us both a favor,” murmurs Rush, “and never say my name like that where anyone else can hear you.”

Those words do something visceral, low, twisting in Young’s stomach. He blinks, turning away from the light of the sunset, and Rush’s hand tightens.

And then Rush’s lips are against his, dry, gentle.

It’s over as fast as it started. Young’s chest is tight, throat tight. He can’t breathe.

Fingers fist in the fabric of Rush’s shirt, and Young pulls him in, clashing the two of them together. And this time it doesn’t even feel like air is necessary. Like he’ll get everything he ever needed from Rush, from the slick feel of Rush’s tongue against his.

~*~

And he opens his eyes.

There’s no cry of pain, even though it feels like his body is ripping apart, from the inside out, each cell, bones breaking and muscles tearing under the pressure.

Young jerks as the light leaches out of him, the energy being – whatever it is – drawing free.

It fades away, in midair.

“Colonel!” says TJ. “Colonel, are you all right?”

“Fine,” says Young, tightly. The pain is so fresh, but he can’t show any of it in front of these people.

One bed over, Rush runs a hand through his hair, and meets Young’s eyes. He looks shaken.

Join the club, thinks Young.

“I’m fine,” he repeats.

~*~

Rush is alone.

That’s unusual, in and of itself, Young knows. Lately, there’s usually one or two scientists near him. Trying to make themselves useful, even if they never really succeed.

Young steps into the room. No verbal greeting.

Rush glances up, sees him, and keeps on working. No pause.

“I apologized for not trusting you,” says Young, finally, breaking the silence. “When you warned us not to dial the gate.”

“Is this going to take very long?” asks Rush. “I’d rather not interrupt my work to listen to you repeatedly miss the point.”

Young flinches. “Well, Rush,” he says, a hint more irritated, “why don’t you tell me what the point is?”

Rush shoots him a hard look. And returns to his work.

“We can’t play this game,” snaps Young. “This ship needs you.”

“I know it does.”

“And it needs both of us on the same page.”

Rush stops, now. Tilts his head. “Funny,” he says, “when you say that, it sounds like ‘on the same page’ usually means ‘on your page’. Which isn’t going to happen, Colonel.”

“Rush,” says Young, “what the hell did you expect? That you’d save my life and suddenly I’d be on your page?”

“I had no expectations.”

Young is silent, then.

“Thank you,” he says, finally, “for getting me out of there.” And he turns. Hears the sound of the doors spinning shut, behind him, as he leaves the room.

Rush doesn’t come after him.

~*~

Later that day, Rush presents him a plan to test the possible flow of power, through the ship.

It sounds like Rush is working on the plan to get home. Young can’t be sure, though.

“We’ll need to shut down most of the systems, for just a few minutes,” says Rush. “The test will be automated, for the most part.”

“It’s safe?” asks Young.

“Very,” confirms Rush.

There’s not a hint, between them, of what transpired.

Young knows because he can see that TJ doesn’t notice a thing.

~*~

The observation deck is empty, during the experiment. Young thinks it’s because, even subconsciously, no one on the ship wants to be any more vulnerable than they have to be. And seeing space around them, like this – it’s beautiful, but it’s terrifying.

Young would rather be here, though. Even if the ship is dark, for as long as Rush wants it to be.

The door opens, behind him, and he turns –

“Shouldn’t you be monitoring the power flow?” he asks Rush.

In the darkness, Rush’s eyes aren’t readable.

“I have a moment,” says Rush. “It’s shut down.”

Rush doesn’t look like he’s inclined towards leaving. And Young is tired of fighting him. He doesn’t want to fight Rush, but it always happens, because neither of them can concede.

Rush isn’t like anyone else Young has ever commanded before.

Not that Rush follows orders anyway.

“You’re welcome,” says Rush.

Young half-smiles.

Rush moves up next to him, not quite close enough to brush.

“Is that what you want, Colonel?” asks Rush. “An empty, dusty town? A life that isn’t a life at all?”

He sounds – disgusted. Like he could never understand that.

“No,” says Young. “It’s not.”

Rush’s eyes are fixed straight forward, on the empty stars ahead.

“Then why?” he asks.

Young can’t answer that. He can’t. There’s no reason that that alien drew a wasteland out of him – it just happened.

But his mouth opens, and an answer emerges, all the same.

“If you can’t have what you want,” says Young, “why make a world where you want at all?”

Rush’s glance is startled.

“I don’t know whether I under or over-estimated you, Colonel,” he says, “but I don’t believe I got you exactly right.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

“Take it as you will.”

Rush pulls away from the railing, his hand resting there maybe a second too long.

Young reaches out, lets Rush’s hand slide into his grasp. Instead of letting Rush go.

He hears the inhale, sharp. Can’t see Rush’s expression, but he can feel the jerky tension in Rush’s hand.

“I can’t afford this,” says Rush. “I don’t have the time.”

“To deal with emotion?”

“Is that what this is?” asks Rush. “Because I would guess ‘lust’. And anger. And misplaced mistrust.”

Young strokes fingers down Rush’s palm, and Rush shivers, shivers so that Young can feel it too.

“Stop it.” Rush’s voice is soft, helpless. In pain.

“No.”

Rush tries to snatch his hand away, but Young won’t let go.

And Rush lets out a hoarse laugh. “What are we going to do,” he says, “go to Kansas? Open a diner?”

“We’ll stay right here,” says Young. “And we’ll change the human race as we know it.”

“Wonderful,” says Rush, dryly. “You’re a romantic.”

The door slides open, to admit some other member of the Destiny’s crew and Rush’s hand slips away. But the feeling of him remains.

~*~

Neither of them get more than four hours of sleep a night.

With Rush, curled still and quiet next to him, Young finds it difficult to mind.