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The instant Felix fell out of sight, Hyunjin knew it would be bad.They’d been out of each other’s sight before. Hyunjin’s body had needs the same way Felix’s did; he ate and slept and showered and the rest of it, inconveniently human in all the ways which mattered less but were so much more present in their daily lives. How often had Felix reminded him solemnly to brush his teeth as a child, even though if Hyunjin’s were knocked out there would be no need for an enamel graft or a laboratory regrowth, they just pushed themselves painfully back through his gums in a matter of days. How often had Felix absently brushed a piece of his hair back over his ear and commented that it was getting long?Well, it was long now in earnest, brushing past the top of his shoulders, and it got stuck to his forehead and the side of his neck when he sweated.When he went to sleep Felix was nearby, and when he woke up he was still there.The projectile he’d taken through the chest had knocked him back into the hatch and left Felix just outside it, wide-eyed behind his faceplate on the docking bank and that was the last Hyunjin had seen of him, sucked into the blackness of falling unconscious, as though bleeding worked differently in space.It did. A lack of gravity slowed his body down just enough.He woke up moments later with Chan’s panicked voice calling orders almost apologetically over him, but by then it was too late and Felix was gone."They just came out of nowhere, it's a miracle we didn't decompress completely!" Changbin yelled, when Chan asked him if he'd gotten any details off the ship. "I was busy!"“They’re retrieval specialists,” Hyunjin rasped, when he had most of his right lung back. “They’re paid by the corporation.”“We thought you were fucking dead,” Changbin said, when nobody else spoke. “There’s a hole in you!”“Not anymore,” Chan pointed out, still holding Hyunjin in his lap as though anything about him was fragile enough to warrant that. The gravity was only set high enough to hold him there, and for the blood to have pooled. “Wow.”Hyunjin sat up, angered and sticky. “Who were the others?”“What?”“The ones who were shooting at us.”Changbin frowned. “You mean the guys who weren't–”Chan sighed. “He means Hongjoong.”“Were they shooting at us?” Seungmin chipped in, checking the emergency hatch seals instead of watching Hyunjin heal.“They were shooting at the bounty hunters who were coming down on us,” Chan said, helping Hyunjin to his feet even though he didn't need it. He left his hand on Hyunjin’s newly bare back, feeling the skin there. “He and I usually don't have a problem.”“Then they missed,” Hyunjin pointed out, beginning to feel something crawling up his throat, the last of the oedemic fluid his lungs produced when they were injured, which he didn't want to cough up here. It was too late, and the awful blob of bloodied foam hit the deck like Changbin’s cards when he slapped them down, victorious again.“Gross,” Changbin said, not without some admiration. “Now what do we do?”“I can't believe they shot you,” Chan said quietly. “Are you sure it wasn't the corporates?”“Corporate squads would know better than to try,” Hyunjin retched, hating it. “They'd never bother with a projectile.” It would be a specially formulated neurotoxin, longer lasting and easier to calibrate for a repeated dosage. For the full reward they’d have to bring Hyunjin back too. “Where did it go?”“Oh, shit,” Seungmin hissed and scampered away, following the ricochet of the bullet.“Go help him,” Chan ordered Changbin, his hand still warm on Hyunjin’s nearly-intact shoulder blade. “Make sure nothing else is damaged.”Changbin frowned but did as he'd been asked, leaving Hyunjin staring out the damaged airlock, his own faceplate retracted with no memory of having done it, Chan’s gloves off, the life support intact, the space beyond it empty except for where the docking anchors had been ripped out of the hull when they'd had to disengage from the orbital platform.Luckily they'd all been in envirnmental suits, doing routine checks.They'd have to repair them. It would be expensive.Felix was gone.“Hyunjin. Hyunjin?”Chan had been saying his name for a while, even though he was right there. “Yes?”“We’ll get him back. I know those guys. They're not– well, they are bad. But they're not… they won't want to hurt Felix if there's a bounty. They won't give him to the retrieval guys either, they'll want to claim it themselves. That's something. At the very least they’ll fence him, and I know all the ones who’d handle that kind of heat.” Hyunjin didn't think there was anything he could say to that which Chan would be able to hear. “Hyunjin. I'll… I don't know. I'll send him a message. We’ll get him back.”Space was enormous, even the relatively navigable part of it. And Felix was valuable, probably more valuable than Chan and his crew of easygoing smugglers had ever truly dreamed of. “Do you know where they've gone?”“No.”And sending a message could take months if they didn't stop at any regular ports.The feeling of his lungs being overfilled took hold of him again, like he was about to gasp for air even though he'd already coughed up what had been in them. “If they jumped they could be anywhere.”“We can try,” Chan said, more determined. His thumb stroked across Hyunjin’s skin as though he couldn't help himself before he pulled away.
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Hyunjin had always slept more after he’d been injured. It was as though something in his physiology demanded it, a weakness to go with all the things about him which had been altered, tailored to purpose, a price paid in how much energy he used on a daily basis.Hyunjin began to fade shortly after he’d been shot, sitting in the back of the cockpit while Chan chatted at him, nervous. Chan kept glancing over his shoulder at Hyunjin while he explained his mapping software with Minho on the actual controls, Jisung roped into tweaking it while Changbin and Seungmin gave the engines a test run on the secondary power cells.“This was the last place we ran into each other. We’ll start there, ask around. Leave him a message.”“The retrieval squad will be tracking us.” Hyunjin said it without any particular feeling, but they all froze. “Felix is just one body, well all got back inside, they won’t know for sure the other ship took him.”“We thought you were asleep,” Jisung said, when Hyunjin didn’t keep talking.Hyunjin tried to run back the last few minutes and found he didn’t have a good memory of it. He might have been. It was an awful, crawling feeling, like they had all seen something they shouldn’t have, even though it was no secret that he slept. “They know this ship now,” Hyunjin said quietly. “They’ll split up. We should be asking at every station we know if any corporates from our sector have passed through.”“How sure are we that Felix is definitely with Hongjoong?” Minho asked, keying the newest change of bearing into the autopilot.“We have to assume he is,” Chan said.“Why?”“Because nobody’s contacted us to show him to Hyunjin and tell him to give himself up too,” Chan elaborated, having the decency to meet Hyunjin’s eyes while he did it. The silence around Hyunjin hadn’t been awkward like this for a long time. It was Jisung who finally had the nerve to ask.“Would you?”“Doesn’t matter,” Chan muttered. “We wouldn’t give you up either.”“We’re getting a ping,” Minho said.“What kind?”“Proximity,” Hyunjin and Minho said at the same time.Chan sighed. “Jump us. We’ll find another place to do repairs. If we have to ditch the ship–”Minho set off the jump alarm with a flick of his fingers. “Hold on.”The weightlessness of a sub-light jump had stopped taking Hyunjin by surprise, but it had yet to become less uncomfortable. It was like everything inside the ship expanded, warping as it traveled through some unseen layer of reality before being spat out the other side, the rapid force of deceleration happening at the end, everyone pinned into their seats like a huge hand was pressing down on them. It only ever lasted moments, but it always felt eternal, like time had ceased to have meaning until it all slammed back into them, a weight with no gravity.Like they were years further away from where they had been only moments before.When they popped back out it was as though all the color of the room washed out all at once, and the last thing he heard was Jisung’s quiet shit, there he goes as his grip on consciousness slipped away. Do you think he’d give himself up?Chan probably knew that the only thing Hyunjin giving himself to any corporate entity would achieve would be him being vivisected for proof that the development subsidiary which had supplied him to Lee Yongbok hadn’t provided a defective product. He knew what Hyunjin was, and had since Felix had first approached him for help getting off the planet.Hyunjin slipped into an uneasy and unwilling sleep thinking of it, Felix’s face on a screen somewhere being made to call him over, having to listen to him and watch him and know that whatever anyone promised him, if Hyunjin didn’t get him back they’d never see each other again.It hurt like nothing else ever had, like a piece of him bigger than a lung was missing, just as integral and just as deep in his chest, refusing to grow back into the space it had left behind.
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There was one bunk in their cabin, and Felix wasn’t in it.Since Felix and Chan had started sharing a bed he often wasn’t, but it was different now knowing Felix was nowhere on the ship, nowhere in reach, nowhere under someone else’s protection.Hyunjin had locked the hatch behind him, still feeling the press of Jisung’s hand on his thigh to wake him up after the jump, and still seeing the shock in his eyes when Hyunjin had snarled at him and jerked awake all at once. Get some rest, Hyunjin, Chan had said, kindly. It was an order he could have easily disobeyed, but it was also exactly what Felix would have told him to do.Their cabin hadn’t always smelled like this, like both of them, a space nobody else entered. Not even Chan, who always paused at the doorway and went no further, as though he sensed what neither of them would have explained; that this was the only thing they had brought with them, the space they had made for each other since they had been children.When Chan had first made them the offer, that they could stay, it had been a storage unit with climate control, and when he’d said they could convert it there was space for two. Well, Felix and Hyunjin had slept curled into each other for nineteen years, and it had taken them months to do anything else. Ship time worked differently from time on a planet or a station, but it had only gradually turned into a space which felt like it belonged to them.Felix’s clothes were all still in neatly-stored rows in the storage spaces and Hyunjin’s were still tumbled in the bottom, something in him glorying in the fact that absolutely nobody could reprimand him for looking rumpled, just like only Felix could or would comment that he never made the bed anymore with a smile when he thought Hyunjin couldn’t see it.It was exactly as he’d left it: Changbin’s borrowed tablet latched to the bulkhead next to the side Hyunjin usually slept on, the sheets only disturbed by the movement of the ship, anything loose dropped down in a different place but the sight of it familiar, awful, empty.He lay down anyway, expecting his body to take over, to fall back into the habit of sleep. Stubbornly, it didn’t. Hyunjin had been trained to wait for as long as he could remember, through boredom and discomfort and anger. There was nobody here who could have made him stay where he was, not even Felix, who never had unless he was being made to wait himself.Hyunjin got up again and closed the hatch behind him, pressing his palm to the access pad to lock it behind him.He paused by Chan’s door, the green light by its seal indicating he was inside and it wasn’t locked. He never locked it, and Hyunjin longed to ask him to, to put his hand over the keypad and hold it there by the wrist and say it’s not just you in there now when Felix disappeared into it for a few hours and came back smelling of him.Hyunjin had found himself enjoying the scent and the softness it raised in Felix, who had been forced away from it too often.He kept walking, his hands firmly in his pockets.The ship’s night always had a higher gravity setting so that nobody would roll out of their beds, and it felt good, familiar, like his body needed the weight. The galley was empty too, but it was an emptiness which had nothing terrible in it. It was just deserted for now, a time in which very few of them needed or wanted food.Hyunjin had learned – not quickly enough – that they all had a habit of scarcity he and Felix didn’t share, and it had come as a deep and guilty surprise that they had made allowances for them in a way he and Felix simply hadn’t noticed for a long time. He asked now when he was planning on eating something which couldn’t be easily replaced and wasn’t carried in the stores as a staple. Things that were, though, belonged to everyone, even him.Chan turned up when Hyunjin had heated a protein pack. The eternal hunger he had lived with, unnoticed, was always the most present when he couldn’t distract himself with something else.“I wondered when you’d get hungry,” Chan explained, as though he needed a reason to be anywhere on his own ship. “Couldn’t sleep?” Hyunjin kept eating, determined not to let his reflexive urge to stop win out. Chan sat with him silently until he was finished and had put the packaging in the recycler. “I’m going back to bed,” Chan told him.“Okay,” Hyunjin said, when Chan kept looking at him guiltily, as though it were somehow his fault Felix was gone and Hyunjin was stubbornly awake.“Okay,” Chan repeated, something like defeat in his eyes.Hyunjin only realized when he’d gone that the entire ship felt empty to him now, but less so when Chan was nearby, as though the missing shape of Felix between them was a tangible thing to them both.Hyunjin stopped by the green light and knocked.Chan let him in, looking more rumpled than he had five minutes ago.Hyunjin let the door slide closed behind him and sat down in front of it. If Chan wouldn’t lock it, the least Hyunjin could do was guard it for him. “You need to sleep too,” Hyunjin pointed out, when Chan just stared at him.Slowly, Chan climbed back into bed.The lights dimmed to a low glow, the way Chan preferred. He didn’t like darkness. Hyunjin had never asked him why, but there was something of the ship’s presence in this cabin, a faint echo of Chan’s love for it in how he let it watch him. He left the camera on in here unless Felix was with him, a strange thing he humbled himself with by choice. Anyone in the cockpit could find the channel and watch him. “Turn the camera off,” Hyunjin said, refusing to make it a request.Chan silently reached up to his control panel and did it, though he didn’t turn off the light. “Are you just going to sit there?”Hyunjin nodded, more settled than he had been since the moment the bullet had ripped its way through him.Chan frowned, but he didn’t tell Hyunjin to leave. Instead he rolled over so the blankets were wrapped around him, and after a long, strange moment in which he held Hyunjin’s eyes, he closed them. He wasn’t asleep, but the lights were dim and nobody was watching, and even though Felix was missing, at least he was missing for them both.Chan had helped them escape their planet for nearly nothing in return, and had offered them a place to stay, even if it was Felix he had made the offer to. Felix had made it clear that if it was an offer to him it was also an offer to Hyunjin, something Chan had accepted despite his discomfort. If Chan was going to help him get Felix back, Hyunjin would do what he could in return. Even if it was this.Even if it was for himself, as much as it was for Chan.Chan knew what he was in a way the others hadn’t, at first, and had never once suggested Felix leave him behind. He had never assumed Felix might want to. He had never assumed Hyunjin had anywhere else to go, and had saved him from trying to explain that he didn’t.He’d never wanted to be anywhere except where Felix was, and had never learned how until he’d been welcomed somewhere else.
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Hongjoong had been smart enough not to answer the corporate hail, and the ship had likely only been spared total destruction because Felix might be on it. It meant Chan's ship hadn't been destroyed either, but Felix couldn't bring himself to feel relieved. After they’d exited jumpspace – everyone in sight looking shellshocked, an archaic word for a very real phenomenon – Felix sat back in the seat he’d been pointed into in the cockpit where he couldn’t reach any controls.“Well, I’ll say it if nobody else will,” Wooyoung said, lifting the gunner’s headset off and shaking out his hair. “Fuck.”Against his better judgment, Felix laughed.Their captain, Hongjoong, sighed and put a hand over his right eye. He was only slightly bigger than Felix was, making him the smallest of his crew, who were all nearly half a head or more taller except Wooyoung, like most or all of them had grown up in lower gravities. It was deceptive in space, where sometimes people were just tall without the frailty it could come with. Mingi, for one, Hongjoong’s deputy, was not frail at all, and had yet to say more to Felix than one word at a time.Wooyoung did a great deal of the talking, and Felix surmised from his stint in the gunner’s seat that he also had good aim. Chan’s ship didn’t have one, much less the arsenal of personal weaponry Hongjoong’s crew seemed to carry. Even tall, slender Yunho, much more concerned with any exposure to vacuum radiation Felix might have received in their abrupt departure, had what appeared to be several guns, though he’d seen Felix looking and explained that they only used the ship's projectiles as a last resort.One of you shot at my friends, Felix had thought, while Yunho had reassured him that his radiation levels were completely normal. I saw it. Screw my radiation levels.“Do we need to talk?” Hongjoong asked, looking at Felix with his uncovered left eye, the darker one, which was bloodshot from the abrupt jump pressure.“Sure,” Felix said, determined not to show that he was shaking. “Nice weather we’re having.”Wooyoung laughed. “I like him,” he explained, when Hongjoong made sure to glare daggers at him. “Bye.”Wooyoung walked away as it suited him, and showed Hongjoong no deference at all.“Will you go speak to Yeosang about a tracker sweep?” Hongjoong said to Jongho, relieved of the burden of navigating their sudden jump with a nosebleed and an expression which conveyed exactly what he thought of Wooyoung’s adherence to chain of command. Felix knew corporate military when he saw them, and why Jongho had any time for this crew at all was a mystery. Maybe they didn’t know. Felix wouldn’t be talking anyway, but he was less ill at ease when he’d gone.Only Mingi and Hongjoong were left in the cockpit with him, and Felix had absolutely no intention of persuading them of anything but that they should give him back to Chan with no questions asked, and never cross their paths again.If Hyunjin had been here... Hyunjin wasn’t here, and every time Felix remembered his absence he saw the blood bursting out of his chest as the hatch closed and Felix got yanked away into the gravity well of Hongjoong’s ship, and how the sheer physical strain of it had made a rag doll of him, like every bit of training he’d ever had in how not to get kidnapped had only been at best a way to keep him busy.It made him feel like a child, and reminded him of how often he had resented being one.“You’re Lee Yongbok,” Hongjoong said, as though Felix wasn’t aware of this already, and Hongjoong hadn't just antagonized the people who'd been paid to find him, however well he'd concealed Felix's presence on his ship.“I’m Felix. Only my family calls me Yongbok.”“Mr. Lee,” Hongjoong continued, squinting at him with his one uncovered eye until Mingi noticed and dimmed the lights, offering him an eyepatch from his pocket like he’d done it hundreds of times. “I’d appreciate it if you’d have a word with your hit squad so they understand that trying to blow us up would blow you up too, if we had told them we definitely had you. Is that too complex a concept for them?” He slipped the patch on gratefully, and Felix had a chance to notice the faint scarring it pressed into, hiding what must have been an imperfectly-calibrated replica from view.“They’re not mine,” Felix explained, surprised despite himself. “Wait, what did you think they were chasing us for?”“Oh, shit,” Mingi said, finally saying two words at once. “Shit.”Hongjoong closed his real eye and pinched the bridge of his delicate nose. “Right. Okay. Mingi, find us a station outside this sector we have enough fuel to get to.” He threw his boots up on the console. “Competing corporate control will be fine, unless we’re wanted there.”Mingi smirked at him.“Actively on a kill list,” Hongjoong amended, turning his attention back to Felix as Mingi started running the search. “You’re saying these reckless–” he calmed himself down with visible effort, his short hair flopping off his forehead as he leaned back over his chair with a deep breath. “We didn’t mean to grab you from Chan,” Hongjoong said, mostly to the deckhead ceiling. “Mingi just didn’t think it would be polite to leave one of his crew to asphyxiate while a hit squad was chasing him. You’re Lee’s heir. They’re branded with your logo, and you’ve been declared missing for over a year, as far as your homeworld measures time. You're hanging around with Chan, of all people. What else would you like to tell me?”“I’m not missing,” Felix murmured, a terrible clench starting in his chest at the thought that this was a misunderstanding, nothing but a mistake, and the only person who wouldn’t be paying for it was him. “I left.”Hongjoong’s boots hit the deck plating with a thump.His wrist buzzed, and he read the message in the data screen he was wearing on the underside of it with a grimace. “Faster, Mingi.”“Tracker?”“Several,” Hongjoong said, with a tight little smile. “Anyone feel like going for a walk?”Mingi sighed. “I’ll get San.” He sent an alert through the commset at the navigation seat and set up a hull shield.“How long do you think we can travel at this speed?”Mingi glanced at the screen, then at Felix, and finally back at Hongjoong. “We’re in range of three stations which will dock us if San can crack them off before we get to 40% of our auxiliary fuel. We can’t go faster if we don’t want to lose him. Jongho can help, he won’t pass out.”“Don’t let Wooyoung watch. Send him to the engines, Yeosang can distract him.” Hongjoong turned his attention back to Felix. “This is a problem,” he said, like Felix couldn’t tell. “So any help you can kindly offer us will be appreciated.”“If he’ll go,” Mingi muttered. “San’s on it.”“You’re really not trying to ransom me?” Felix asked, hating how his voice wavered.“I wasn’t,” Hongjoong said. “But I’m seriously considering it.”“You shot at Chan!”“Sorry,” Hongjoong said, with absolutely no display of contrition. “I was aiming at the corporate hit squad that looked like it was chasing him.”“Have your eye checked.”Mingi went very still very quickly, and the next time Felix saw him properly his face was very close, and Felix was on the floor with Mingi’s elbow in his throat. Felix kicked him as hard as he could, which had no effect at all. Mingi only relented when Hongjoong nudged him out of the way with his foot.“Sorry,” Felix said, making himself sit up instead of laying on the floor, gasping. He realized too late what he’d said, and how awful it was. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that.”“No problem, Felix,” Hongjoong said, looking at him past Mingi’s shoulders. “We’ll call it even.” He glanced at Mingi, who didn't look as though he thought this was a fair trade at all, and Felix knew he was right. “How much is that bounty again?”
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Felix was politely shown to a cabin after a very heated moment in which Mingi flatly refused to put him in the brig, which was such a surprise that Felix let himself be manhandled for long enough that Mingi got suspicious. “I’m still going to ask you not to leave,” he said, slowing down slightly for Felix’s much shorter legs.“Ask?”“Yeah, ask.” Mingi said it without looking at him, opening the door one handed and standing there making it very clear that Felix ought to go inside. There were clothes and personal items in it, though the bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in in quite some time. There were even a few things on display which Felix couldn’t guess the significance of: an enormous bit of twisted plate which was heat-bonded to the bulkhead so it wouldn’t fly around when the gravity changed, a few pieces of jewelry in a case, a postcard of all things, written in a script Felix didn’t read. He hadn’t been kidnapped while wearing his translation aid, and was just lucky they all spoke familiar dialects. “Are you going inside or not?”“Whose cabin is this?”“Mine,” Mingi said.Felix went in and closed the hatch, which didn’t lock behind him, even though Mingi would have been able to shut him in.There were no weapons lying around. Mingi was probably wearing them all.In the privacy of the closed room, Felix’s throat began to throb. He rubbed at it, trying to think of anything but how it felt to be in a space like this entirely by himself, with only the distant thrum of the engines for company. He was angrily swiping at his cheeks and looking through Mingi’s clothes out of spite when someone knocked. Feeling ridiculous, Felix told whoever it was that they should come in. His voice, already hoarse, sounded wet and awful, and he tried his hardest to make himself look anything other than scared.“Wow, none of those are going to fit you,” Wooyoung said, tossing him a black shirt with long sleeves and a loose pair of pants, as well as some underwear and a pair of socks. “What size shoes do you need?”Felix was still in the remains of his environmental suit, its underlayer clinging unpleasantly to his dried sweat even after he’d peeled the outer shell off. “Thanks,” he muttered, and handed over his boots.“Be right back.”When he returned with a pair of scuffed work-boots in faded orange Felix was less sticky but felt far more exposed, and realized how little he had to say when faced with a stranger’s expectant silence.He'd been taught how to resist interrogation, and what to do if his bodyguard was killed. Hyunjin wasn't here, and even if Felix didn't think he was dead the panic of it clawed at him, digging its fingers in under his ribs until he ached with it, and couldn't do anything but breathe.He hadn't been taught how to be without him.Wooyoung was only looking at him, one eyebrow raised like Felix was doing something bizarre he'd never seen before. “It's better that you're scared,” he said, in the same tone he'd cheerfully entered with. “Most corporate nobility aren't, and they think that means they're immune to things they shouldn't.” He smiled again, sharp and hard, and left.
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Some time later there was an awful groan of tortured metal from somewhere, and shortly after the engine sound changed.Felix hadn't realized he'd been assuming all the distant clanging and rumbling had just been what this ship sounded like.When the sound changed Felix was creeping out of Mingi’s cabin, and froze with one hand on the bulkhead when the low drone of an alarm started to whine. Acceleration his brain supplied, the familiarity of it taking him by surprise just like the increased gravity did a moment later as the ship’s internal momentum caught up to its thrust.He staggered, weighed down, and felt all the blood rush out of his head.He regained himself only moments later, but someone else was there, looking perfectly at home with his arms crossed and his head tilted to get a better look at Felix. “You must be our stray,” he said, when Felix stood up again. “I'm Seonghwa. Are you going this way?”He had a deep, soothing voice and very soft, strong hands, which Felix discovered when Seonghwa offered him one briefly, steadying him away from the wall. “I was just looking for the galley,” Felix lied, unable to admit he'd been asked to stay put and hadn't.“Come on, then,” Seonghwa said, without questioning him. He started walking in the opposite direction. He wasn't dressed for space any more than Felix was, now. He was dressed for the cold of long travel, a warm sweater and soft pants only making him seem taller and more elegant the longer Felix watched him.When they got to the kitchen it was empty, and Seonghwa gestured him into a seat while he began to make something on the hot surface, the smell of it cutting through Felix’s lingering haze. “Have you eaten?” Seonghwa asked, only glancing at him over his shoulder.“No.”Slowly, it began to dawn on him that Seonghwa had no particular interest in making him go back to the cabin, and Felix relaxed into the sounds and scents of someone moving around near him. Seonghwa set a cup of hot chocolate in front of him which smelled real, and expensive. He stared at it, then at his unexpected benefactor. “What's this for?”“Drinking, usually,” Seonghwa said, and sat down to do just that. “There's something warming up in the drawer.” He took a sip from his own mug and made an appreciative, throaty noise.Felix abruptly felt small and awkward and alone again, wishing Hyunjin were there to lock eyes with him, sure they were seeing the same thing. Something about the silence afterwards made Felix want to fill it, even though he knew he shouldn't be talking. “Aren't you going to ask me any questions?”Seonghwa raised both perfect eyebrows, gently amused. “I usually sleep through the shooting,” he explained, insanely. “I was told you'd been stranded and we picked you up. Is there much more to know?”“I think I made Hongjoong angry,” Felix muttered, still simmering with guilt at what he'd said to him. “I said something terrible.”“Easily done,” Seonghwa said, as the smell of food began to permeate the air. “I wouldn't worry about it.”Felix pressed at the bruise on his throat and tasted the drink. It was the first chocolate he'd had since the last time they'd stopped on a station which grew it, and he remembered the delirious happiness of it, the sensation of spending on an indulgence which actually felt consequential, the earthy, familiar, longed-for taste. “So you won’t be sharing the bounty, then.”“Oh, I will,” Seonghwa assured him, getting up to retrieve the food, which he presented to Felix with real cutlery, as though it didn’t matter to him at all that Felix was technically a hostage. “Do you want me to be cruel to you? You’re not the type for it, I don’t think.”It should have put his back up to be spoken to like a fractious teenager being calmed down by an older sibling, but Felix hadn’t known either of his and was still too out of sorts from the change in gravity to do much more than eat. The food was the kind he’d gotten used to but still couldn’t enjoy, something rehydrated and nutritionally complete but not anything he could bring himself to call a meal. The freedom of having left home against everything trying to prevent him from doing it far outweighed the small lack, but it was still present.He pushed it around his bowl, set in its little depression to stop it jumping away if they decelerated, and drank the chocolate instead.Seonghwa let him sit in the silence until Felix couldn’t stand it anymore. “You don’t seem like the rest of them.”“Oh?” Seonghwa smiled at him, displaying a set of worryingly beautiful teeth. “Have you met them all?”Felix shook his head, still cravenly relieved that he wasn’t alone, no matter how angry he’d tried to stay. He sighed and tried to eat something, thinking of Hyunjin. He’d never noticed how much he needed to eat until they’d been somewhere where food was a resource which was carefully rationed, and realized how much of a strain it was putting on Chan and his crew. One in a long string of small revelations about how much had been done for them, out of sight, by mysterious and unseen hands. Felix had never thought of Hyunjin’s constant supply of food as anything but a consequence of boredom, and the unchangeable fact that his body would stay the same no matter what he did to it. He hit his developmental targets, trained his skills, sharpened into an adult. The unspoken eeriness was in how he’d never started growing a beard despite how his voice deepened, of the way Felix’s peers started to look at him, but Hyunjin never seemed to feel the same squirming teenaged restlessness that Felix did. He hadn’t known until they’d left that Hyunjin’s body — which hadn’t ever been his body at all — had needs Hyunjin had never articulated to him.Felix ate what he’d been offered, trying to be grateful for it.Seonghwa watched him, no judgment on his face for Felix’s reluctance.“Mingi wouldn’t put me in the brig,” Felix admitted, feeling as though he had another apology to make.“Mm. Former tenants tend not to rate it highly,” Seonghwa said, not without humor.Felix was glad of anything which distracted him from the taste, even if it threw another stone at his assumptions. “Is he—”“I can see why you’d think that,” Seonghwa said, “but no.”Felix wished he was less relieved. “What did he do?”“It’s a long story. What about you? Bounties don’t appear out of nowhere. Nor do corporate heirs.”“I didn’t do anything. We just… ran.”Seonghwa kept looking at him expectantly, and Felix, against his better judgment, kept talking. “I mean we left. I didn’t want to keep— being what I was. I didn’t want my only friend to be trapped there, protecting me. The person I was supposed to be. I don't know how they tracked me down, either, but I'm sure it was my fault. A bioscan, maybe.” He’d never articulated it before, and heard himself as though from a distance, spilling his guts to a stranger. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”“It’s not a crime,” Seonghwa said, gently.“It is when you were meant to take over a corporation on the day after you left,” Felix found himself muttering.“Ah,” Seonghwa said, drawing it out. “Wouldn’t it be a relief to be ransomed, then? They won’t stop chasing you.”“No,” Felix hissed, furious. “Not if it means never seeing Hyunjin—” He cut himself off with an effort, closing his teeth on his anger. “I’m done talking.”Seonghwa shrugged. “If you say so. Are you done eating, too?”Felix only nodded, forcing himself not to fall for the gentleness again.Seonghwa took back the bowl and finished what Felix hadn’t eaten, letting him drink the rest of the cooling chocolate in resolute silence until someone else arrived to break it.It was Yunho again, smelling like antiseptic.“Is San alright?” Seonghwa asked, in the same deep, peaceful tone he’d interrogated Felix with.“A few dings and a missing fingernail, but he’ll live,” Yunho said, stroking his hair in passing. “No idea how he managed that from inside a suit. Ooh, did you make hot chocolate?”Felix felt abruptly invisible, misery creeping up his throat again, and thought about how hard it was to stay so quiet when everything in him wanted to scream.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Chan had left a message for Hongjoong at the last three stations he thought they might both have been in range of, using every node he thought he might risk using.The problem was that to reach him Chan would likely have to keep moving, as sending a message on any mainstream wide-band frequency wasn’t an option for either of them.He’d meant what he said to Hyunjin, that Hongjoong and his crew were unlikely to treat Felix badly, but what he hadn’t said was the more pressing issue; that Hongjoong had a perilously low tolerance for dealing with corporate entitlement, and while Felix wasn’t exactly the poster child for arrogance, he did have an air of… something… about him.Chan was willing to admit that Felix could have been a much worse person than he was and Chan would have still helped him, but he was compelling in his own right, a kind of unreality to his presence that made Chan feel insane whenever he thought too hard about him, and how easily Felix had agreed to stay.Felix and Hyunjin.Hyunjin, who had slept less and eaten more in the days Felix had been missing, pacing past Chan’s door towards the galley on the night shift as though he was checking he was still in there, even if he didn’t always come in.Hyunjin, who had gathered everyone who was awake into the larger climate-controlled cargo hold and informed them they’d have to learn to fight, stone-faced, to be met with a chorus of honest confusion from the rest of the crew.“We can fight,” Minho stated, before Hyunjin punched him in the face.Not hard, as far as these things went, but Minho hit him right back, and the crack of Hyunjin’s nose breaking was not nearly as unsettling as him shoving it back into place with the heel of his palm.“Oh,” Minho whispered, when he realized Hyunjin had provoked him on purpose.It had made a horrific crunch, and Chan stood there frozen, watching him bleed.“What the fuck,” Jisung hissed, as though he hadn’t seen Hyunjin get shot nearly-dead only days ago, checking Minho’s knuckles weren’t damaged while Minho just let him. “What’s wrong with you?”“The people who are chasing us would do worse,” Hyunjin said. “If you can’t learn to fight you should at least learn to shoot.”“You could ask,” Changbin pointed out, looking green but determined. “We know you’re upset. Don’t be an asshole.”Hyunjin just stood there, blood drying on his lips, and didn’t.“He’s right,” Chan said, even though he agreed that maybe Hyunjin’s arguments could have been gentler. The problem was that Hyunjin’s eyes had widened over his already-healed nose, an expression of honest anguish flashing across his face before it was gone, shuttered away as quickly as it had broken out, and it occurred to Chan that maybe this was Hyunjin asking.Absent Felix, who often spoke for him even though Chan suspected he tried not to, Hyunjin had ironically gone quieter. When it came to what he thought about their pursuers he was as forthright as Chan expected. After all, this was a thing Hyunjin had been trained for better than any of them, and they were being chased by people whose skills and motivations he understood. Chan had been chased before, had hidden from authorities and smuggled people into places they shouldn’t have been, but he had never been the direct target of a focused pursuit, and it made him feel like an animal being slowly hunted down, like in old documentaries he’d been shown as a child.Chan had gotten too used to Hyunjin chipping in when Felix was around, or Felix finishing what Hyunjin had brought up. Chan had gotten too used to the sound of his voice to notice when and why he spoke in the first place.The initial frenzy of losing Felix was over, and Hyunjin had already said what he’d needed to say when he’d needed to say it.In the time since he had lingered, quiet and restless, in the galley, in the cockpit, in the room they used to relax, which had slowly accumulated storage for games, screens, a profusion of weird textiles Seungmin and Jeongin had started competing to come back with if they went ashore.It had occurred to Chan that Hyunjin didn’t want to be alone, but not, in the starkly obvious way it seemed now, that he wasn’t just upset.“I’ll learn to shoot,” Chan offered.“You can already shoot,” Hyunjin said, more easily.“We can all shoot,” Changbin pointed out.“Okay,” Chan said, “let’s prove it, then.”He sent Jisung for the guns, loaded with the tracer rounds he kept for marking short distances which were designed to break and splatter instead of penetrating, and had Changbin and Seungmin clear out a long corridor in the hold while he let Minho cool off with Jeongin, whose turn it was to manage the cockpit. It felt strange and asymmetrical now that there were only seven of them on the ship, even though there had been seven of them once before. Chan didn't like losing crew, any more than he liked losing friends.While the others were setting up, he took Hyunjin back up a level to the living areas, and tried to get him into the little crevice of a space they used as a medical store. The one on the passenger deck was more luxurious, but this one was better equipped.Hyunjin stopped at the door and wouldn't come any closer, wrinkling his nose at the smell despite all the blood on his face.“I’m not going to stick you with anything,” Chan said, when Hyunjin just watched him with narrow-eyed suspicion. Chan found what he was looking for and approached him with it, feeling increasingly ridiculous when Hyunjin made no move to take it. Chan set the very corner of the wipe against Hyunjin’s chin where the blood had crusted and swiped at it before something in Hyunjin unstuck itself and he took over, turning away as though any of it required modesty. As far as Chan could tell Hyunjin didn’t have much. It wasn’t as though he went around shirtless the way Chan did when they landed somewhere hot and the ship contained it into a kind of tropical microclimate which did more to relax him than almost anything else. It was more in how Hyunjin accepted the indignity of living in close quarters with near-strangers without questioning it.There was an inevitable amount of contact which Chan had worried he might rail at. Felix’s physical integrity had always been his job, and there were times when people would bump in the halls, and times when the lack of gravity would get them all turned around and out of sorts. There was very little privacy on a ship as small as theirs, designed for speed and with more nooks and crannies than actual rooms, which Chan usually reserved away from the crew deck for paying passengers, his most lucrative revenue stream. Instead Hyunjin had quietly accepted that Felix would be spending time with Chan out of his sight, and Chan had rapidly understood that Hyunjin wanting to know exactly what they were doing wasn’t something he perceived as invasive. It was just Chan who had squirmed at the stone-faced way Hyunjin stayed at the door until Felix said something along the lines of we’ll be two hours or so, he won’t hurt me without flinching and Hyunjin nodded and walked only a few paces away, where he'd stayed for two hours or so until Felix was done.Chan had just started to get used to knowing he was waiting for them when Hyunjin slowly began to occupy himself in that time. He had begun to understand that from Hyunjin this was a profound expression of trust, and it made him feel hot all the way through, like knowing it was a secret he wasn’t supposed to be let in on.“You’ve missed a spot,” Chan said, when Hyunjin handed back the wipe to be put in the biohazard disposal, still silently refusing to come in. Chan took it and finished cleaning him, swiping down his long neck where the lighter gravity had splattered the blood onto it.“You don’t have to do that,” Hyunjin said, his light voice vibrating his throat under Chan’s fingers.“It scares the others,” Chan explained. Hyunjin’s jaw tightened, and Chan realized too late what Hyunjin must have thought he meant. “No, I mean– nobody wants you to get hurt. Even if you’ll heal. I know it doesn’t bother you. Thank you for letting me.”Hyunjin stared at him like he’d never seen him before, and Chan stepped back to throw away the wipe. “Do you think they’re ready yet?”“Do you think they can shoot?” Hyunjin asked, a hint of sarcasm in it, even if it was nowhere on his face.“You can teach them if they can’t,” Chan promised, feeling like if he owed him nothing else, he owed him that.
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It wasn’t a disaster.Minho came back calmer and volunteered to go first, making a respectable show of himself. He and Hyunjin nodded at each other, a truce achieved, and Hyunjin turned his attention to the ones who weren’t so consistent.Jisung, whose skills were not exactly martial, let Hyunjin lurk behind him, holding his arms together the right way to stop the recoil of the projectile throwing his aim off to the side; he did better when Chan turned the gravity off, putting him back in the environment he knew well and Hyunjin didn’t, only the acceleration of the ship keeping them in place.It passed the hours while they were creeping stealthily towards a station Chan knew would have a self-service repair facility in orbit and another storage node Hongjoong might use, too cautious to rush and too wary of their diminishing fuel reserves to risk a jump unless they needed to.Chan had gone out to pry the trackers off the hull himself, while Hyunjin had been sleeping off being shot nearly-dead.He hadn’t told them more than that the damage would have to be repaired, except for Changbin, who was already tallying what they’d need for materials. They’d need to stay put for longer than Hyunjin would like, and Chan wasn’t sure how to speak to him about it.The idea of telling him sat like a stone in the bottom of Chan’s stomach.When the ship cycled into night they all split off. Chan was scheduled to sleep this time, and Jisung had drawn the night shift in the cockpit, which Chan didn’t want unattended while they were being pursued. Minho had volunteered to keep him company, which was a development Chan wasn’t interested in interrogating.Hyunjin was unassigned, along with Jeongin, who had taken the previous cockpit stint. Changbin had a watch on the engines with Seungmin, but only a short one.In theory, they should all have been able to sleep if they wanted to, or to rotate in to relieve Jisung and Changbin if they got tired or if anything unexpected happened.It had been a while since anyone had tried to teach Felix, and by extension Hyunjin, things about the ship which they’d absolutely need to know in an emergency, or had to remind them of how shifts worked. They had slipped into the routine of the crew more easily than Chan had expected, but it was only now, with Hyunjin alone, that Chan had begun to understand how much they relied on each other.On the surface, of course, it wasn’t like that. Chan – from the same core-world planet long since colonized by the Lee monopoly, who had made himself a niche moving things off and to it which weren’t meant to clear customs in either direction, whose parents and siblings had finally been convinced to leave against their principles and against the tenets they’d raised him with, that it was possible to make things better at home through communal effort and been relentlessly crushed for it – had grown up knowing exactly who Lee Yongbok was, how far-reaching his influence claimed to be, and where the holes in it were. Chan had lived beneath the reaching arms of the company which controlled every major resource for whole systems around its central point for years.And then its heir had asked him to help him leave, and he’d said yes.Chan hadn’t realized he’d missed the sound of Hyunjin laughing when they had a cleaning rotation together and neither of them knew what to do, his head so close to Felix’s that his black hair flopped over the top of Felix’s startling white fringe. It was the kind of expensive gene edit only the truly rich could afford, a casual alteration which would stay unless it was changed, would never have to be subscribed to or updated or managed for deterioration. He’d had his hair turned white for whatever mysterious whim had driven it, and unless he found another editor of similar quality somewhere who would take the informal currency Chan and everyone else he knew used in place of company credit, it would be that way forever.A part of Chan had wondered if Felix had done it to differentiate them at a distance, even though Hyunjin was taller and lankier, because they had such a similar way about them, spoke with a similar cadence, lived in a private orbit in which Hyunjin often only had to look at him for Felix to say something like Hyunjin wants to know what that’s for without a word passing between them.The thing was, Chan had known what Hyunjin was long before he’d known who Hyunjin was, and it was an awful realization to know he hadn’t let himself see past it, because he’d learned too early to fear the idea of him. What someone like Hyunjin could do if someone like Chan got too close to his ward, what he was expected to do. What kind of protection Hyunjin was built to provide to someone whose power might outstrip the boundaries of navigable space for almost everyone else.Hyunjin’s job, no matter what he was willing to do on the ship, was Felix’s safety.He took his turns like everyone else, but Chan had always scheduled them together, because he’d assumed that Felix wouldn’t want Hyunjin to have to refuse other tasks.Hyunjin’s love for Felix and the loyalty he had to him wasn't something anyone could still force him into. Hyunjin wasn't just upset because he'd lost his ward, he was upset because he'd lost his friend, the person he'd been learning how to live in space with just as much as Felix had.Chan, guiltily, hadn’t even tried to offer him anything else.“Hey,” he said, when they were all splitting off. “Let’s clean up a bit.”Hyunjin looked at him like he knew exactly what Chan was doing, but he didn’t protest when Chan started pulling out the panels in the shower units once everyone who wanted to use one had, and started wiping and refitting them, making sure all the moisture collectors behind them were clean and ready to cycle.They worked in silence for a long time, before Chan found the nerve to say what he wanted to. “When we get to the next station we’ll have to stay a while.”“The ship needs to be repaired properly, not just patched. The projectiles damaged it.” Hyunjin guessed, leaning over him to press a panel gently back into place with a satisfying click. “You’re worried.”“Yeah,” Chan admitted, startled by the heat and nearness of him. He radiated warmth, always burning a little hotter than anyone else. “We can't do all of it in orbit. We don't have the materials.”“Do the others want to land?”Chan handed him the last panel to fit. “Changbin will need to.”Hyunjin only nodded.“You can argue with me,” Chan said, dry-mouthed.“You’re the captain,” Hyunjin said, not looking at him as he clicked the last corner back down.Chan felt like a fool all over again, flushed from being near him. “Look, will you– I’m going to bed and I know you’re not sleeping. Come with me. You can read. Do whatever you want.”Hyunjin put one of his warm, delicate-fingered hands on Chan’s cheek and pressed his thumb down on the corner of his mouth. “Is that an order?”“No,” Chan croaked.Hyunjin’s eyes flicked across his face, scanning him. He frowned, his thick eyebrows making it elegant. “Am I on your crew?”“Yes.”“Then make it one,” Hyunjin said.“Hyunjin, you need to sleep. Come to bed. Is that better?”“Yes,” Hyunjin said, and let him go.
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Hyunjin turned over in his sleep and buried his face in Chan’s chest, breathing very deeply.Chan, only dozing and trying desperately not to snore, kept very still.“I already know you’re noisy,” Hyunjin mumbled.Chan gave up and wrapped his arms around him, the missing shape of Felix present and vivid and not quite the most important thing between them right then.If he and Felix were becoming something he wanted to keep hold of, he'd have to be worthy of Hyunjin’s trust as well.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mingi’s bunk was large (it made sense, so was he) and comfortable, but Felix couldn't relax in it.There was no night shift on Hongjoong’s ship. When he got up to wander the lights were all the same, and there was never any routine to who was and wasn't awake except that someone always was, and they were always working.It had been weeks according to what he was using to mark time.He’d started marking the hours when Mingi was awake, as he was the only one who seemed to have any kind of schedule. Felix kept running into him when he woke up, and Mingi often looked equally as half-asleep as Felix felt; not infrequently he had a faint bruise in the shape of teeth on his neck, and an air of quiet satisfaction that Felix longed to dig at, and could hardly stand to see.No wonder his room was free.There were no showers, only the sonic booths nobody used on Chan’s ship unless they were coming close to being short on water or the recyclers were down for maintenance. Felix wasn't being specifically fed at any regular intervals, and he'd assumed that meant he was expected to take care of himself rather than being starved, so he'd started using his insomnia as an opportunity to roam the ship on the way. It wasn't very similar to Chan’s, which was larger and sleeker and comprised of more living space for paying passengers and clever storage than any bulk. Hongjoong’s was blockier, more designed for long periods between landings, and the places it would let him into were only limited to the living quarters, which were the smallest fraction of its size.But he knew it had a brig. Chan’s didn't.He knew it had guns, which Chan avoided.It had a crew of eight.One of them was in the galley when Felix went to look for food, and he was lying on the floor, humming to himself.“Are you okay?” Felix asked, startled.“Hello. I'm fine.” San sat up, sketching an absurd little bow from the waist. “I'm just waiting.”Felix couldn't smell anything heating, so he must have been waiting for something other than food. San was probably the member of Hongjoong’s crew Felix provoked the least hostility in, but only because it seemed like San was constitutionally immune to being anything other than peacefully cheerful. Felix, cravenly, was relieved to see him. He lay down next to him, just because it seemed rude not to. San opened an arm and draped it behind Felix’s head, and went back to laying perfectly still with his eyes closed while Felix parsed the incredible relief of it, a body nearby, anyone’s.He hid his face in his elbow, willing himself not to tear up again.“He cries a lot,” Wooyoung observed, suddenly there, and lay down on Felix’s other side, sandwiching him in before he could get up. He reached across Felix’s body and took San’s hand, lacing their fingers together on Felix’s stomach.His heart leapt into his throat and stayed there.“What are we waiting for?” Wooyoung asked, stroking his thumb across San’s hand, huge in Felix’s field of vision now that he had looked.“I was waiting for you,” San said, still letting Felix use him as a pillow. “Hi.”Felix tried to make himself get up and couldn’t seem to manage it, too physically relieved to be touched.“I thought a corporate heir would be meaner,” Wooyoung said, after he’d pulled San’s hand over to kiss it, and then put it back down on Felix’s chest. He rolled over, propping himself up on an elbow to get a better look at him. It seemed to have passed without comment that they were all still on the floor. “What have you got to cry about?”“Aside from the fact that you’re going to sell me back to my grandfather and I’ll never see Hyun— any of my friends again?” Felix said, feeling like there was no reason not to.“There’s hardly anyone here that hasn’t happened to,” Wooyoung said, peering down at him. “Usually because there’s profit in it. That’s how this all works, isn’t it? Don’t you know where your money comes from?”“Stop teasing him, he doesn’t know that’s what you’re doing.” Seonghwa said from the doorway, padding in to fold down near them. “Hello, Felix.”“Is that true?”“In a way,” Seonghwa said, which wasn’t an answer at all, and then Felix had to sit up, because Hongjoong had arrived.He wasn’t wearing the eyepatch and the mismatch of his eyes wasn’t obvious from any kind of distance, but Felix still felt like he was being finely scanned. Then Hongjoong sighed, raised both eyebrows and walked back the way he’d come. “You don’t have to let them do that,” he said over his shoulder, catching Felix’s attention so he knew it was him he was talking to. “Come with me.”
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Felix had been so lonely that even the slightly screen-distorted sight of Chan's face lit him up from inside, a relief he hadn't known he was capable of flooding though him so powerfully he nearly had to sit down.Hongjoong played him the message again when Felix asked, and he tried to pay attention this time, to really hear what he was saying.Chan was asking for him back. It was polite, and very formal, in the way Felix understood it. Every stranger he'd ever met when he'd still been at home had addressed him the same way, with profound deference he hadn't earned and had learned to sit with, accepting it.He'd fallen out of the habit, and hearing Chan offer it to Hongjoong felt telling, somehow.“He and I don't often come into conflict,” Hongjoong said, when Felix had heard it twice. “I'm interested to know why he wants you back so badly if he's not planning to ransom you himself. It's dangerous for him to keep you, especially now.”Felix could only blink at him. “You heard him. I’m on his crew.”“In exchange for what?”They weren’t alone in the cockpit. Their engineer, Yeosang, had already been there when Hongjoong had arrived, and had said something about their shielding capacity being back to normal now, weeks after the first damage, from which Felix had inferred that whatever Hongjoong and Mingi had asked San to do on the hull had been not just dangerous but terrifyingly so.“Nothing,” Felix said, very quietly.Hongjoong raised one eyebrow. “I’m going to assume you’re sleeping together then,” he said acidly, and Felix could feel himself blush all the way down his neck.Hongjoong just stared at him.“I’m going to bed,” Yeosang announced. “Don’t bother me for several hours.”“You’re on comms duty until the next sector,” Hongjoong said, still looking at Felix.“Jongho said he’d cover it. He also said San’s awake, if you want to go back to sleep.”“I’ve seen him. It’s fine, I’m up now, let Wooyoung have his fun,” Hongjoong countered, finally looking away from Felix like he wasn’t supposed to be hearing any of this. “Felix and Mingi seem to have a similar clock.”Felix didn’t contradict him, even though the only reason he was awake was because everything in his body was screaming that something vital was missing, and it ached.Yeosang didn’t argue any harder, leaving his station with a light blinking on it which marked, after a while, a number corresponding to a cabin, indicating which terminal it was slaved to. Chan’s ship didn’t do that; everything went through the cockpit or handhelds. Felix hadn’t even tried to access the system in Mingi’s room, assuming he’d be locked out of it. He hadn’t thought it was anything but a convenience. Hongjoong must have only just received Chan’s message. They’d have passed a station with a node which wasn’t one they’d have to dock at to access. It was highly illegal, but Felix had gotten used to how much of what Chan’s crew of creative travelers did was.Hongjoong played it again, and stopped where Chan paused, frowning, before he offered a trade.“Does he have anything I want?” Hongjoong asked, going straight back to the business at hand.The real answer was that Felix didn’t know; what corporate secrets Felix had left with would be valuable to anyone in competition to his grandfather, but Chan had already asked for those in exchange for their passage, and Felix assumed they were long-used. He’d let them stay because they’d wanted to. Felix had wanted to. Hyunjin hadn’t expressed a preference either way.The only thing Felix could think of was that Chan had Hyunjin, and the thought of Hongjoong knowing how valuable he was made him want to scream.“What do you want?” Felix asked him, desperate to thread the needle. “I can’t answer that unless I know what you actually care about.”“Money, usually,” Hongjoong said, very slowly. “Why am I even considering this?”He said it quietly, like he wasn’t speaking to Felix at all.Then Felix, all of sudden and much to his surprise, flew out of his seat and had to tuck his legs into his chest to break his trajectory towards Hongjoong, who had been pinned back into his usual chair by the force of the deceleration. Felix heard all the wind go out of him when Felix landed on him feet-first and felt one of his ribs give way with an awful, resistant snap.Felix only tumbled off when the ship lurched to what must have been a stop.It wasn’t strictly speaking a tilt; that was a meaningless metric in space, but the autopilot triggered the stabilizers, and the gravitational array would stop them from all getting splattered internally, hopefully.Hongjoong was still gasping horribly when Felix hit the deck, shocked at the violence of it.The comms system was live and it superseded Chan’s recording, erasing his face when the ship started flashing a written deceleration warning along with the sound signal.“Shield up,” Hongjoong wheezed, and it took Felix a split second too long to realize Hongjoong was talking to him.Felix scrambled for where Yeosang had been sitting, hoping anything there would give him a clue about how to do that, and was saved by a helpful little alert which was cheerfully informing him of possible debris contact and would he like to engage the hull protection. Felix keyed in yes with shaking fingers, and the hum of the generators clicked on as soon as he entered it.“There’s a contact trace,” Jongho’s voice said, through the ship’s intercom. “I’m on my way.”Felix was saved from having to do anything else by Wooyoung skidding in with San on his heels, both of them unharmed.Wooyoung put San in the gunner’s seat and kissed the top of his head before he took command of the intercom and summoned Yunho to the bridge. “What happened?” He asked, crouching next to Hongjoong, who had locked an arm across his middle and gone bloodless under the warm tone of his skin.Hongjoong took hold of Wooyoung’s shirt and yanked him down. “Trap,” he said, very simply, like speaking at all was an effort. “Tell Mingi.”Wooyoung nodded and ran out, waving Yunho, half-dressed, in Hongjoong’s direction. “He’s fucked,” Wooyoung said, and then he was gone.“Let me see,” Yunho muttered, gently prying Hongjoong’s hand away from his ribs. There was a bright red mark on Yunho’s face like he’d been slammed into something by the abrupt impact, layered over with a shiny film of anti-inflammatory gel. “How’d you manage to break a rib?”“I fell on him,” Felix said. “It’s not a trap. Chan would never do that.”“Not Chan,” Hongjoong hissed, furious. “The node’s been cracked.” He started coughing on the last word and when he finally managed to stop he grinned up at Yunho and croaked “how’s that for revenge?”Yunho shook his head and loaded up a syringe from the kit he was carrying. “Mine’s worse. You’re about to be high as shit. Don’t move.”Felix had almost managed to convince himself to get out of the way when Mingi arrived.Felix hadn’t shaken the first impression he’d been given of him, which was that Mingi would have just as soon killed him as ransomed him, but Mingi didn’t even look at him, going stone-faced and still at the sight of Hongjoong, who was wilting quietly as whatever painkiller Yunho had just given him started to take effect.Unlike Yunho, Mingi didn’t move to touch him at all. He just looked around at all of them, watching the chaos. Eventually, his eyes landed on Felix. “If they manage to take you, we’ll all die,” he said, going to stand behind Hongjoong, who looked up at him with shocking focus. “Have they made any demands?”“How do you know?” Felix whispered. “It could be anyone. Other pirates. Surely you fight each other sometimes.”Mingi looked at him and didn’t answer, braced for something else.The shot buzzed across the hull shields. Whatever they'd run into, it was going to start a fight.Jongho arrived with Yeosang in tow and took up a position each. Jongho threw an analysis of the node on the screen that Yeosang grimaced at, though Felix wasn’t entirely sure what he was seeing. “How long ago did Chan leave the message?” Felix asked, a sinking feeling in his gut which had nothing to do with the shifting gravity.“They’ll have followed both of us,” Mingi said. “It’s not his fault.”Maybe not, but he’d left something for Hongjoong to find, and the contractors had found it first. It had already been decrypted. They’d only been waiting for Hongjoong to pick one up.Mingi folded his arms and came to drop one hip on the armrest where Hongjoong’s fingers had gone slack. “They can’t blow us up if they want you,” Mingi said. “They’ll try to board, won’t they?”Felix swallowed, the reality of it setting in. “Yeah.”“Okay. So that’s when they’ll be vulnerable.”He glanced down at Hongjoong, something awful on his face. Hongjoong just looked up at him again and nodded, silent in his agreement but still given the final say.“What are you going to do?” Felix heard himself ask, hoarse.“Kill them,” Mingi said, like it was obvious. “If you were going to give yourself up you’ve missed your chance.” His eyes dropped back down to Hongjoong like gravity had led them there. “Where’s Wooyoung?”
-
“We’ve got a hit on one of your messages,” Jisung said, skidding into Chan’s room headfirst. “Why isn’t your camera on?” He stopped inside the doorway, staring at Hyunjin, wrapped around Chan and, until a split second ago, fast asleep. “Oh.”“Jisung,” Chan prompted, as Hyunjin stiffened. “The trace?”“Yeah, uh. It’s not Hongjoong.”“How long ago?”“We’re a few jumps away from that node, so in relative—”“Jisung!”“I don’t know, I just know it got decrypted and we’re just about in range to know it wasn’t by its designated recipient, are you coming or not?”Hyunjin got up and pulled on the nearest shirt. It was Chan’s, but Chan didn’t have time to worry about it. “How quickly can we get there?”“With the hull damage and our fuel reserves—”“What does Changbin say?”“We can do it in one jump if we’re lucky.”“We’re lucky,” Chan said, following Hyunjin out the door, where he’d already started heading for the bridge.“Where’s he going?” Jisung asked, jogging to keep up.Chan just elbowed him and started running.
-
Changbin was in the pilot’s seat, and he was staring at Hyunjin when Chan arrived hot on his heels. “Is that your shirt?” Changbin asked, looking between them.“It definitely is,” Minho said from the primary comm array. “It was my turn to do laundry last time.”“Never mind,” Chan said, flushing. “Where are we heading?”“We picked up the trace off that sketchy node,” Changbin said, even though Hyunjin was leaning urgently over the back of his chair to see his display. Changbin held up his hand and Hyunjin took it, giving Chan more of an insight into just how urgent this was to him.“Can we get there?”“Just about,” Changbin said. “But–”“Do it.”“Chan. If we do, we’ll have to land on the station and hope for the best. The repairs we’ve done in vacuum aren’t enough, we need to resupply. We vented like crazy when we got knocked off the dock.”Chan thought about it for just long enough that Hyunjin spoke. “The retrieval squad who decrypted this will be attacking them.”“We don’t have any weapons,” Minho pointed out. “We barely have personal ones. You’ve seen us shoot.”“We can pick up survivors,” Chan decided. “We have to go. Agreed?”Minho, Jisung and Changbin all looked at him, an eerie display of solidarity which felt like being handed a ball of solid fuel, so dense it almost had its own well of gravity. “I’m in,” Changbin said. “I always liked that part of town.”“It’s a dump,” Minho muttered, plotting their most efficient jump pattern anyway.“Jisung?”“Are we going to die?”“It’s not us they’ll be focused on if they’ve figured out which ship Felix is on,” Hyunjin said, too quietly.Chan didn’t ask the other question, the one he’d been sitting on for days, as they measured it: what about you?“Then let’s go,” Jisung said, gamely.Chan nodded to Changbin and the low drone of the jump alarm began to sound while he was still feeling it, the incredible responsibility of being trusted like this by people who didn’t have to.
-
By the time they jumped Hyunjin had gone utterly silent, sitting in the spare engineering seat next to Jeongin, summoned from sleep, and staring straight ahead like he might be able to see through the ship if he tried hard enough.Seungmin was monitoring the hull from the engine room, occasionally calling through on the comm to complain vociferously about the amount of fuel they were burning.Chan knew. He had it on the screen in front of him, and the hull status. But he also had Hyunjin in the corner of his eye, and he could see him curling his hands around his jump harness until his pale, bony knuckles went even whiter, and Chan knew that even if what they found when they got there was nothing, or worse than nothing, he was still doing the right thing.“Hey,” Changbin said, when they were assessing their final jump, “what are we actually expecting to find when we get there?”Chan looked at Hyunjin again, who was listening. “Hopefully not just a debris field.”Hyunjin shook his head. “Can they really fight? The others?”“Oh, yeah,” Chan said, while Changbin and Jisung nodded. “Definitely.”
-
Felix knew he'd never been in a real fight before. He'd had a scuffle or two with other children at school, who always seemed shocked he could hold his own, but nothing like this.He suspected that if Hongjoong had been less injured he would have ordered Felix stored somewhere secure so that nobody would be distracted by him, but as it was, Mingi was in charge as his proxy, and he didn't seem concerned with where Felix was at all.Felix had the strange experience of being invisible for the short, breathless time before the people his grandfather had sent after him caught them up.It was inevitable, given the hard stop they’d run into, something Felix still didn’t fully understand the mechanism of and which nobody had explained. It didn’t ultimately matter; he was too afraid to care. A few weeks ago, if anyone had said to him that he would care about a clutch of pirates who clearly had very little personal stake in him he might have laughed, but they were real to him now.Whether he liked them or not, he didn't want them to die for him just because they'd picked him up.The docking station where they'd been attacked in the first place felt like a distant memory, even though for a brief moment it had been the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to him. Blown back from the ship as the bounty hunters tried to board, untethered for just enough that Felix knew if he stayed there he’d die, regardless of the suit which Chan had promised him was good enough to last for days on recirculation if it had to.He had never imagined he’d have to use it, but had never anticipated their ship getting blasted off a docking platform either, not while Changbin had just finished showing him and Hyunjin how to check lock seals in the stable air pocket maintenance stations provided as a courtesy; however the retrieval squad had spotted him, or whether they had just identified the ship and knew it would be easier to board if it was damaged and everyone was disoriented, Felix had been nothing but flotsam for a long, terrifying moment. Hyunjin had only just gone back inside, and Felix had been torn clear off the platform, only to be scooped up by a completely different set of dangerous people.It was Jongho who remembered he was there, suddenly beside him, quiet and solid. “Can you shoot?” he asked, without any particular inflection.Felix nodded. It hadn’t been drilled into him, not the way it had Hyunjin, but it was something Hyunjin had taught him when they’d had a few precious days away at Felix’s school before term started, and in the quieter hours around classes and Hyunjin’s own program of relentless training. Felix was a good shot, but had never had to use it. That was Hyunjin’s job, and Felix had always assumed, despite everything he’d ever been taught about getting kidnapped, that if he ever had to shoot it would be Hyunjin guiding him through it.He had made so many assumptions about always having him around, and then he had been shot away right at the fading edge of Felix’s sight, and Felix was on another ship, getting ready to face it alone.“Here you go, then,” Jongho said, handing him a weapon. “You know the settings?”Felix looked at it and realized he did. “Yeah.”“I’d set it to kill if I were you,” Jongho counseled. “No projectiles inside the hull, so make sure you’re accurate with the beam if they get up here.”“Where are you going?”Jongho looked at Mingi. “Felix should stay here with Hongjoong,” Jongho said, in the same quiet way, and then endured it when everyone stared at him. “We’ll need to be ready for perforation. Get them in suits.” He shrugged, still not moved by Mingi’s transparent disbelief at his priorities. “Hongjoong is sitting this one out, and Felix says he can shoot.”“And you believe him?” Mingi asked. “What if he shoots Hongjoong?”“We’ll space him,” Jongho said. “You’re not going to get a ransom off him anyway. We’re about to murder corporate contractors, the second you hand him over we’ll be dead, and I wouldn’t trust a fence with a bounty like that.”“I won’t–”Wooyoung burst in, out of breath. “Stop hailing me. The charges are ready. Give me San.”San was already moving, dropping clothes as he went, and then Wooyoung looked back over his shoulder. “You want us to put him somewhere?”“No,” Hongjoong whispered, just before another shudder buzzed through the ship.“Shield integrity is dropping,” Yeosang said. “I’ll be in the engines.”“I’m not going to shoot him,” Felix said, more forcefully. “I know you’d kill me if I did.” It was more complex than that, something in him desperate to prove himself different somehow, but they didn’t know that, and didn’t have to. There were only so many people in the universe who really deserved that knowledge, and these particular pirates weren’t among them. “Leave someone else if you have to.”Mingi paused for one long, telling moment, and looked at Hongjoong. “You’re sure?”Hongjoong nodded.“Let’s go,” Wooyoung muttered, bouncing on his toes.“Let’s go,” Mingi confirmed, and they went.As the hatch slid shut, Hongjoong quietly laid his own gun across his knees and didn’t say anything at all.“I wouldn’t,” Felix said, not sure why he wanted to say it to him specifically. “I know what you think I am, but I wouldn’t.”Hongjoong, slightly glassy in the eyes, just laughed quietly. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you are, then.”Felix was suddenly at a loss for words, trapped in the echoing silence of the bridge for a long moment until there was a terrible sort of roar like deforming metal and the scream of a thruster, and Hongjoong’s entire body tightened like the damage to the ship was damage to him personally, intimately. “We do have suits up here, right?”Hongjoong pointed at a locker.Felix ran for it, so aware now that the way gravity was held on ships like these was precarious and only for comfort, and it could unstick itself at any moment. He managed to find the catch to open it, manual in case of a total system failure, and then didn’t know which ones to choose.“Blue is your size,” Hongjoong rasped, and then lapsed back into his enforced silence, pain creasing his mouth.“What about yours?”They were nearly the same height, but Felix was slighter, and wasn’t sure if Hongjoong had his own.Hongjoong raised both his eyebrows as Felix awkwardly started slipping the suit over his borrowed clothes, underlayer and all. “I’m not getting in one.”“What if—”“You expect me to just let you manhandle—” Another horrendous noise rolled up through the plates, and the gravity wavered. Felix, unseated and standing on one leg, wobbled over and found himself half in the suit when he crashed back down to the decking, and Hongjoong gave an unwilling groan of genuine pain, creeping out past whatever Yunho had dosed him with.Felix gathered the rest of it from where it had scattered and sealed everything but the faceplate. “Hongjoong,” he said, getting another blue one down in its bag. “Mingi will kill me if anything happens to you. You heard him say it.”“Self-preservation at last?” Hongjoong managed, glaring at him. He aimed the gun at Felix’s face. “Don’t touch me.”“What made you like this?” Felix muttered, exasperated and desperately afraid. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?”“It’s not me,” Hongjoong hissed. “You’re playing here, Lee Yongbok. Whatever happens, you won’t last in space, and whatever you think you’re running from will seem less and less important the less comfortable you become. And then you’ll go back to your family, your empire, and they’ll take you in without a thought for anyone you—”Felix threw a suit at his face, and then the gravity went off for good, along with every light on the bridge, and the next sound Felix heard was a low and ominous thudding, close.“Put the suit on,” Felix tried for the last time.Hongjoong wasn’t strapped into his seat anymore.He was crouched with one knee wedged into a corner between a console and a bulkhead, at a ninety-degree angle to where Felix still perceived as up, his gun aimed steadily at the door. Whatever pain Felix knew he must be feeling and whatever drugs Felix knew he was on, none of it showed. “If you really can shoot, now’s the time,” Hongjoong whispered, quiet and rough, before the hatch deformed from the outside.Felix didn’t hear an atmosphere alarm, but his pulse was suddenly so loud in his ears that he might not have heard a thing, not least after the incredible violence with which the hatch burst inwards and someone hurtled through it.Hongjoong shot before Felix could catch his breath to shout no! with the entire force of his lungs, and threw himself as hard as he could into the intruder’s arms.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hyunjin felt the beam stop his heart right before Felix reached him.He blacked out in a haze of pain from the awful clench of it, his eyes screwed tightly closed, panicked at the repetition of it, the terrible fear that this would be another moment in which Felix was wrenched away from him and he would just keep having to relive it, over and over again. When he woke up Felix was holding both his hands, draped over his chest with his eyes open, his cheek laid against the bare skin where the shot had burned away Hyunjin’s chest plate, staring at nothing until Hyunjin groaned.Felix’s hands tightened on Hyunjin’s stiff fingers and all of a sudden he burst into tears. Hyunjin, so relieved it felt like he was being shot all over again, just disentangled one arm and pulled him closer. The room smelled like antiseptic.“Oh, fuck, that was fast,” someone said from behind him, audible over the sound of Felix trying to muffle his sobs. “That was insanely fast.”Hyunjin gathered Felix as closely as he could hold him and sat up, disoriented and shaking. He’d been disarmed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight past the bright light which was suddenly in his eyes before it dimmed with a quiet curse from whoever was watching them.Hyunjin had nearly tracked the voice when Felix coughed and rasped “no, don’t, he’s trying to help.”Hyunjin hadn’t said a word, but when the light turned away Hyunjin saw a very lanky man with a huge bruise on his face keying something furiously into a medical suite terminal, and a cold wash of panic flooded him before he could swallow it back. “Where are we?”He wouldn’t give whoever this doctor was the satisfaction of seeing him shake.“That’s Yunho, he’s just–” Hyunjin hauled Felix off the examination table with him and went straight for the open door. “Hyunjin, you need to let him look at you. You were dead!”Hyunjin put his hand over Felix’s mouth, feeling transgressive even as he did it, and hauled him out of the room.The hallway was full.Chan was leaning against the bulkhead with a terrible, swollen look to his face, and next to him was Changbin, tiny in the company, squaring up to one of the five strangers who were crowding it, bodies Hyunjin only recognized from the blur of the fight. It all came back in a rush and he wavered, Felix finally in his arms but with nowhere else to go. Felix pulled his hand down, lacing their fingers together again as though it wasn't something he shouldn't have ever dreamed of doing. “Hyunjin,” Felix said, his low voice still rough and wet. “They didn't give me up.”Hyunjin hadn’t realized he was still trembling, a terrible sense of weakness crawling up his legs as his body started to evacuate all the byproducts of healing so quickly.“He’s going to–” one of them said, the strangers pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in some kind of weird little vigil, right before Hyunjin felt himself sliding to his knees to vomit it up, still clinging to Felix like there was a world in which he could have held him up in any kind of gravity. “Yeah, that.”Felix did his best, and whatever had hardened him over the missing weeks they’d been apart, Hyunjin hit the deck plating softly, Felix slowing the fall, and somebody handed him a cloth to clean his mouth with.“Is anyone else going to say what we're all thinking? He was dead an hour ago! I don't know what lab they grew you in, but that’s fucked up.”“Wooyoung, enough. He's Felix’s bodyguard. I'll explain later. He needs to eat,” said a voice from behind them, the tall doctor again. Hyunjin fought not to recoil when he came closer, but out of the medical suite he didn’t smell nearly as bad, and the bruise on his face lent him a sort of humanity Hyunjin wasn’t used to seeing on them. Yunho, Felix had called him. “I’m not going to touch you,” Yunho said. “Here.”He offered him a gel pack, cracked off in the corner already, and Hyunjin took it. It smelled like nothing, and when he tasted it all it contained was a hit of sugars, likely with something to help them absorb quickly. He finished it, and felt better as soon as he had. True to his word, Yunho didn’t try to touch him again when Hyunjin staggered back to his feet. He was still hungry, but that could always wait. He was used to ignoring it now. “What happened?” he whispered, so only Felix could hear.“Hongjoong shot you,” Felix said, loudly.“He thought he was a corporate bounty hunter!”“They were already dead!” Felix shouted, and then everyone was shouting about how Hongjoong, whichever one he was, hadn’t known that, and Hyunjin, shamefully tired, could only close his eyes and hold onto him.“Hey,” Yunho said, too close. “They won’t shut up for a while. Do you need to lie down again?”Hyunjin had never felt so worn, not even the last time he’d been shot. That had only been a projectile, and it hadn’t stopped his heart. It had only torn through half his chest and shoulder, and hadn’t hurt the way this had, an awful searing agony he could still feel somehow, even though he was past the worst of it. “Not in there,” Hyunjin said, forcing himself to his feet and steeling himself to look at him. Up close, Yunho was very tall and surprisingly slender despite big, solid shoulders, and his hands were open and hovering, but he really hadn’t touched him. “Yongbok,” Hyunjin whispered, tightening his grip on Felix’s hand. “Stop yelling.”Felix stopped immediately, the anger Hyunjin could feel pouring out of him shuttered away as he turned back to Hyunjin and hugged him properly, his arms wrapped all the way around his middle and his face buried in Hyunjin’s neck. “You’re alive.”“I’m alive,” Hyunjin said back, thinking the same.“He needs–”“I know what he needs,” Felix said, low and furious, and nobody else tried to speak to them again.
-
Felix took them to someone else’s cabin.It had stuff on the walls Hyunjin couldn’t spare any energy to examine, and a bed long enough for someone much taller than either of them. Hyunjin climbed into it feeling profoundly exhausted, a sensation he’d never had to sit with before, and took Felix back into his arms when he climbed in next to him, like he’d never been gone. But he had been. “Yongbok,” he said, tasting his name when he had closed his eyes again, and it was all just sensation in the darkness. “I’m so sorry.”Felix breathed next to him, something thick in his throat occluding his voice when he spoke. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to leave. I didn’t think they’d chase us so far.”Hyunjin had known they would. He had said it, once, the day they’d left. So carefully planned and so well executed, but Hyunjin had whispered it when Chan couldn’t hear, they’ll never stop chasing you, because Felix had deserved to know it.He hadn’t listened, one of the first times Hyunjin had ever been conscious of how easily Felix could choose to ignore him, if he wanted to. But there had been nothing else for Hyunjin except to go with him, and so he had. He couldn’t imagine not doing it. “What happened?”Hyunjin’s memory of it was hazy, jumbled, lost in the abstraction of his focus. They had cut their way into the ship which was clamped onto Hongjoong’s with an ease Hyunjin had mistrusted, but the corporate skin on their pursuit craft was thin, designed for speed and stealth, not entirely unlike Chan’s, and more cheaply made than it appeared.The retrieval squad hadn't thought to cover their backs, singularly focused on achieving their primary aim, but Hyunjin’s only real thought for them had been surprise, because half of them had been dead already and Hyunjin only vividly remembered forcing his way through a blockade of people occupied with fighting each other, because Felix hadn't been there. No slight, graceful figure with white hair. No familiar movements, disguised behind an environmental suit.Hyunjin had a disconnected memory of having been stabbed, of pulling a long knife out himself and throwing it back at someone like it hadn't even been him that had done it.“I was meant to be protecting him,” Felix whispered, low and guilty. “Hongjoong. Their captain who shot you. He's injured, I– I broke his rib by accident.” He laughed, low and wet. “Fuck, it's a long story. Are you really alright?”Hyunjin felt like his heart was still charred, and every joint in his body ached. He pulled him as close as he could hold him. “Are you?”Felix shook his head.Hyunjin had never recovered from anything this slowly before, not even the first time. But he would recover. He would always recover, and Felix was nearby again, a lack he hadn't realized had been so terrifying until it wasn't.He'd felt unmoored without him, like he was only half real. But he'd lived. He hadn't faded into nothingness just because Felix had been out of his reach. Chan had still been there, his entire face creasing with worry whenever he looked at Hyunjin for too long. It was a strange thought, one which held him in its teeth, worrying him until he couldn't stay awake any longer, despite the rapid infusion of whatever Yunho had given him. It wasn’t enough, and Hyunjin knew it.
-
He woke up groggily without Felix in his arms, but he was right next to him, playing with a hand console he’d detached from the wall. “They want to know if we want dinner,” Felix said, as though everything was normal. “I know,” he said, “they’re deranged. But I know you’re hungry.”Hyunjin was, and couldn’t ignore it indefinitely. The thought of facing whoever would be there was mitigated by the fact that he would be with Felix, and could fade into the bulkheads behind him.When they arrived in the galley, though, it was full.Felix went straight for the plate next to Chan, silencing the chatter which was crossing the space, and handed it back to Hyunjin with some cutlery in silence. “Make room,” Felix said, and several people shuffled around the table which was only big enough for eight and was holding twelve. Space was made. Several of the tall strangers crowded themselves onto the countertops, and Chan cleared his throat and leaned back over the surface, looking very seriously at a delicate, forbidding man across from him, one Hyunjin recognised, vaguely. Hongjoong, he realized, when Hongjoong looked at him, mismatched eyes and a line of pain on either side of his finely-drawn mouth.He’d killed him, temporarily.Hyunjin started eating because he couldn’t hold back the need to any longer, and Hongjoong just nodded at him before he turned his attention back to Chan. “I’ve agreed we’ll tow you to dock and cover your fee in exchange for having injured your crew,” Hongjoong said. “You’ll compensate us by leaving us the ship for salvage.”“Yeah,” Chan said, firmly, but not without a grimace. “We’ll help you break it for parts, but you're taking care of the bodies.”“You fucking owe me one,” Hongjoong said, when he and Chan had shaken on it. He looked at Felix, glancing between him and Hyunjin, who couldn’t shrug off the hunger long enough to care. “He’d be home already if it weren’t for us.”“We’ll call you for the next ones, shall we?” Felix said, quietly furious, but Hongjoong just laughed abruptly, before he gasped and put an arm firmly around his own waist.“Yunho, I'm taking him,” said the biggest of them, broad in the shoulders and thighs like a brawler as he crowded immediately up to Hongjoong’s side. “Hongjoong, enough. It’s fair.”Yunho, who had been in the corner of Hyunjin’s vision since they’d come in, came forward like he’d been waiting to do it. “Painkiller?” he asked.“Bed,” the bigger one said, lifting Hongjoong bodily despite his hiss of protest and carrying him out. “I’ll wrap him up. Just some relief for when he gets up again in twenty minutes because he won't relax.”“Put me down, Mingi,” Hongjoong snapped, furious.“No,” Mingi said. “I like your bones where they’re meant to be.”He glanced back over his shoulder at Felix before they were out of sight, and Hyunjin prickled at it, but he left, and Felix only looked ashamed.The rest of the meal devolved into chatter Hyunjin couldn’t listen to, his portion finished, too delirious with relief that Felix was nearby to do more than stay as close to him as Mingi had to Hongjoong, wishing he could also pick him up and walk him out.“Can I talk to you?” Yunho asked, suddenly closer, though not in touching distance, which was difficult in such a crowded space. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”Felix, pressed against Hyunjin’s side, stiffened away from whatever argument he was listening to, alert to Hyunjin’s sudden wariness the way he always had been. Hyunjin had been so aware of the scrutiny they were under that Yunho’s had almost escaped him. Almost.“About what?” Felix asked.“I’d rather speak to Hyunjin about it,” Yunho said, with surprising force. “If it’s all the same to you.”Hyunjin’s palms were sweating, and he put them down on his thighs, trying to control his breathing. “Felix can come. Or you can ask me here.”Yunho thought about it. “It needs a visual aid,” he said. “I took some scans while you were healing, and I think you have a right to know. It doesn’t have to be in the medical bay.”He said it quietly, but with enough conviction that Hyunjin thought maybe the bruise wasn’t from the recent fight. If he was always this pushy, anyone could have punched him in the face. There was a gradual building silence around them, which ordinarily was not Hyunjin’s to break.He was still hungry, an ache in him which had only just been eased and which he was so used to now that it felt like an old friend, but the shock of being so tired, the continuation of his loss of focus, it was all lingering like a bruise, too. He took Felix’s hand under the table, bolder than he’d ever been about it. “Okay,” he agreed, shocking himself.
-
Yunho took them to a cabin which was clearly his, a bed long enough for someone his height folded neatly into the bulkhead and an array of screens with various pieces of small technology anchored to the counters like a very small laboratory taking up the bulk of it. It didn’t smell like surgical supplies, though. It smelled like him, a warm scent of skin and a living body, soaked into the fabrics.Felix sat down on the floor while Hyunjin stood to see what Yunho had raised on the screens, a rendered scan of a figure which Hyunjin, after a moment, realized was him. The inside, this thing which had been made to purpose but which no doctor who had ever maintained him had bothered to speak to him about.He had only learned to keep still because the neurotoxins made him so sick if he didn’t.The fear was dizzying, and he found himself mute with it, staring.“This is neuromuscular degradation,” Yunho said, highlighting what he was pointing at, turning the render in a different direction. “It's a very early stage of it, but you're young. Are you hungry all the time?”Hyunjin nodded, silent.“Have you always been?”“Yes,” Felix said, when Hyunjin didn’t answer, staring at the nerve strands Yunho had pulled out like a weird old map, thinking that they were beautiful, in a strange way.“I’m asking Hyunjin,” Yunho said, not even looking at him.“When I stopped growing it got worse,” he said.“I didn’t know that,” Felix murmured. “Hyunjin–”“And you got put on a regimen? Nutrition packs, food at regular intervals?”Hyunjin nodded, remembering how the difference hadn’t been very noticeable, save that it had made the hunger less vicious, and he'd learned to ignore it until it faded into the next meal.“Right, so, what’s happening here is you’re not getting the nutrient balance you’re optimized for. You’ll be using minerals at different rates, and need more of them. It’s not fatal, but you need to start eating them again or you’ll be losing your fine muscle control more quickly, and you'll start getting headaches. You should also look out for when you're unusually tired. You should keep track of your eyesight, too.” He glanced at Hyunjin and his bruised face softened. “I can tell you what they are and where you can get them in the quantities you need.”“What kind of doctor are you?” Hyunjin whispered, backing himself up to the bulkhead, suddenly feeling trapped in his skin, a sensation he’d always been terrified of. For whatever it meant, Hyunjin’s body had never betrayed him before; it was the thing which made him what he was, an object with a kind of permanence he'd always taken for granted. He'd had to.“I’m not a doctor.”“Hey,” Felix said, standing up to catch Hyunjin as he retreated, grabbing his hand and allowing it to be crushed in Hyunjin’s grip. “That’s not fair, why did you scan him, then?”“What are you?” Hyunjin asked, his throat thick with it, relief and terror all together.“I just patch people up. Like a technician,” Yunho explained, still with that open expression on his face. “Besides, it's easy to learn if you don't care about the letters after your name.” He stepped back from his scan, and didn’t come any closer. “You heal at an incredible rate, but it’s not costless, that’s all I’m trying to tell you. Your body uses its resources very quickly. What you do with it is your business.”It had never been his business before, and Hyunjin didn’t know what to say except to stand there, as paralyzed as he’d been after the first time he’d ever tried to squirm away from an examination.Yunho flicked the scan over, noting something down with his fingers on the console he had in his lap, painted nails making a colourful flash of his hands. “This is the other thing,” he said, moving implacably on, pointing at a series of nodules set into a bone, one after another. “Are these hormonal regulators doing something you want them to do?”“What?” Felix asked, hoarse.“I don’t know,” Hyunjin managed. “What are they doing now?”“They’re stabilizers,” Yunho explained. “They don't look like they've delayed your maturity, even if you are a little small. Usually they’re for hormonal imbalances or mood control. They're set to last another few years or so, at the rate they're releasing and accounting for your metabolism,” Yunho explained. “So if they’re something you need, don’t worry about it. They’re natural-grafted, so they’re not going anywhere.” Hyunjin had a sickening memory of a needle crunching through the underside of his thigh until it lodged against the bone, a thoroughly routine procedure from the way the doctor had done it, quick punctures without warning, five bursts of agony. Just after his last growth spurt. “If you don’t want them, I can get rid of them.”“How?” he found himself asking, dry-mouthed, overcome with something he realized too late was rage.“They can be neutralized,” Yunho said, looking right at him. “I can synthesize something to be injected into them to bind the compounds. I can numb you, if you want me to do it. It doesn’t have to be–”“Can you do it now?” Hyunjin asked, ignoring the way Felix gasped his name, like Hyunjin had done something forbidden.He didn’t think Felix meant it like that, but he also couldn’t help the thought, remembering the others like him he’d met over the years: smooth-faced, youthful, well-fed. Obedient. It made him want to sink his teeth into something, a shocking, forceful impulse which came upon him all at once, roaring up from where he’d buried it without even noticing.“Sure,” Yunho said, taking him perfectly seriously. “Do you want to wait here, or do you mind coming to the medical bay?”
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Yunho left them in his cabin while he went away to prepare, a stunning display of trust which Hyunjin couldn't reconcile but also couldn’t spare any energy to interrogate.“I swear I didn't know,” Felix said, when Hyunjin sat down in the corner on the floor, kneeling earnestly in front of him. “Hyunjin, I didn't know.”Hyunjin put a hand on his cheek. Felix, Yongbok, warm and familiar and so much kinder than he'd ever had to be. Hyunjin drew him closer again, wishing there was a way they could sink into each other and it wouldn’t have to be this messy; that Felix had been made to protect himself, and that whatever form Hyunjin existed in wasn’t so suddenly fragile, a thing which had been made to suit an environment it didn’t live in anymore. Hyunjin had never feared him, only feared for him. Felix was someone their world had wounded, or he wouldn‘t have left, the profound injury of it too much to bear, and Hyunjin had never been able to explain to himself why it mattered so much, only that it did. He had been made to protect his body, not to love him, but he’d done both despite it. He didn’t know how to tell Felix how scared he was now that it was ending, and he didn’t want it to. Despite himself, Hyunjin, a mind and consciousness and body separate from Felix which hadn’t disintegrated entirely without him, he wished it could be simpler.“Why would they do that?” Felix asked, small and muffled, clinging to Hyunjin like he might disappear at any moment.Felix wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t nearly so naive as he sometimes appeared. The question wasn’t a real one, just an expression of anguish Hyunjin knew he didn’t have to answer, because Felix had had Hyunjin next to him all his life, and was just as capable as Hyunjin was of understanding it.Hyunjin had grown up in the corner of his eye, just as scrutinized. Lee Yongbok for the expectations his name carried, for the ruthless acuity which was increasingly forced on him, for the total disregard he would need to build into himself of the violence in how money was made, and what it cost to do it.Hyunjin for the requirements of his service: unwavering devotion, singular interest, a focus which could never be diverted. A total unwillingness to harm or influence his charge, and nothing beyond it.Hyunjin had understood for a long time that if Felix wanted to use him for things outside his mandate there was nothing Hyunjin could do to refuse him, but to show an interest in him or anyone else was forbidden, a hard line drawn between Hyunjin and any of the people who’d looked at him as he’d grown, noticing one of the many things about himself Hyunjin had no say in and couldn’t change: that he was beautiful, and couldn’t show anything for it.That Hyunjin had never wanted to felt like a poisoned blessing, now.Hyunjin buried his hand in Felix’s hair, cupping the back of his head. “You know why,” he said, testing it, the honesty they’d always tried to hold between them.Felix only held him tighter until Yunho came back.
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The biggest shock of it all was that it didn’t hurt. “I’ll heal,” Hyunjin said, when Yunho spent a long time numbing the area first, calibrating a constant delivery so fast even Hyunjin could see it depleting. “It doesn’t matter.”“That doesn’t mean it has to be painful,” Yunho said, carefully forceful, and spent not even half the time he’d devoted to making sure Hyunjin wouldn’t feel it excising the influence of someone else’s work on him.When he was finished he snapped his gloves off, marking down what he’d used in his stores record while Hyunjin stood up off the bed, wondering how much of every interaction he’d ever had with a doctor before this was because none of them had thought it mattered either.He really hadn’t felt a thing except the first gentle subcutaneous needle, and after that nothing but a pleasant numbness, fading even as he stood.“May I see your hands?” Yunho asked, when Hyunjin had gotten all the feeling back in his thigh, ignoring Felix’s silent, worried scrutiny in the corner.Hyunjin wasn’t sure what he wanted to see, but he held one out anyway, feeling odd and exposed as he hovered them over Yunho’s desk.Yunho looked up at him. “Is it okay if I touch you?”“You just had three needles in me.”Yunho just looked at him until Hyunjin nodded, and then he took one of his hands in his long, cool fingers, spreading the digits out and bending them, soft and deliberate. “If they ache you can splint them, here. There are files I can send you to print off some flexible molds.” He gripped gently around the middle knuckle of his middle finger. “It should get better when you’re eating what you need, but you can do other things to help.”Hyunjin wanted to ask him a dozen stupid, childish questions, but only nodded instead.“You’ll also need a UV generator. We all struggle to get it but you'll need more.” He moved away, writing it down. “Do you have your own terminal address?”“Chan will make you one,” Felix said. “I'm sorry I didn't think– you will.”Yunho marked it down, and handed over his pad for Hyunjin to read. “Take your time. I'll send it to you.”Hyunjin knew he should have thanked him but there was too much welling up inside of him to force the words out; the strangeness of it, and the terrible knowledge he'd given him, as though none of it was out of Hyunjin’s hands. The gratitude he didn't want to feel, buried under the anger, and the sheer weight of it, the feeling of being in a room with Felix where Felix was the one nobody was paying attention to, even though Hyunjin still couldn't let him out of his sight so soon after getting him back.It had been different on the ship, when Hyunjin had just been Hyunjin, disconnected.“You can send me a message any time,” Yunho said, once the silence had stretched. “Like I said. I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you what I know.”“What happened to your face?” Hyunjin asked, in case he didn't have another chance.Yunho, surprised, put a hand up to his cheek. “Oh, that,” he said. “Well, we decelerated. I was in the toilet.”Hyunjin couldn't help the weird laugh that bubbled out of him, too late to hold it in.Yunho smiled at him, warm and genuine. “That's life in space for you. Do you want me to take your hormone levels now so you have a comparison for when the regulators stop working, or do you just want to see what happens?”“I want to know,” Hyunjin found himself saying.It felt strange to use the words to anyone other than Felix, a careful stretching of something inside him he hadn’t realized he’d been holding so tightly.“It’ll just be some blood,” Yunho said. “Ready?”Hyunjin held out his arm, feeling a terrible frisson of daring as he did. He watched it flood out of him into the vial Yunho had prepped, bright red, given willingly. “I think that’s proprietary,” Hyunjin said, thinly amused, all at once.“Fuck ‘em. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to leave your system in the next few months. It will take a while for the release to stop entirely. Just give it time.” Yunho spared Felix a level glance, aware he was there, and then looked back at Hyunjin, silent, until Hyunjin realized he’d said his piece, and had nothing else to tell him that he’d say in front of Felix.It was the strangest sensation of his life.
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Felix hadn’t spent any time on hub stations before that wasn’t a carefully-arranged visit to a mining platform or a subsidiary’s headquarters. The crush of people everywhere was shocking after so long in space with only seven others, and Hyunjin seemed to feel it too, sticking close to Felix’s back with his arm over his shoulder, holding him in.It felt better like that, both of them in reaching distance of each other.It felt familiar, and Felix knew it couldn’t last. That it shouldn’t.That even the places Chan had taken them to, transport stations and maintenance docks with good facilities and vibrant markets and running water, close to places Felix knew better, had been in some sense a softened view of life in space.Hyunjin still looked terrible, huge dark circles under his eyes and an air of exhaustion he’d never had before, but he was less prone to quietly drooping in the corner when he thought nobody was looking now after a few days of recovery. Whatever stuff Yunho had given him to add to his drinks was helping.The sun lamps on the station were helping, set in a few courtyards filled with oxygenating plants for people to sit in, though even Felix could tell it was a scrubby, unprosperous sort of place, vendors selling or trading all sorts of things down every dark corridor and Chan and everyone else traveling in pairs or groups as well.That the others had landed with them had come as a surprise even though Felix knew they’d agreed to tow Chan’s ship down.He hadn’t caught a glimpse of Hongjoong or Mingi, and Yunho had elected to stay aboard with Yeosang, but Wooyoung, San and Seonghwa (woken up after the fighting), were all traveling together with Jongho in their wake, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but had come anyway.On their own ship – and when had he started thinking of it that way, as something which in some sense he belonged to – Jeongin and Seungmin had shooed all of them out the hatch to have some time to themselves without the nuisance of the rest of them, except for Minho, who had something complex and unfathomable to Felix which he said needed doing urgently.That left Chan, Jisung, Changbin and the two of them to run the errands which needed running before they really dug into the repairs, but in reality gave Felix and Hyunjin a few hours to be with each other, without the sensation of supervision Felix had been fighting off with both hands since the moment Hyunjin had woken up beneath his cheek.He had felt his heart start beating again, the holding pattern his body had been in while it repaired itself keeping him too hot, too still, his eyes and mouth slightly open like a corpse.Felix got them some food and found a space in the corner of a courtyard, curling up on a bench in reach of the lamps with a hat covering most of his hair and shielding his eyes from the unexpected force of the UV, something he hadn’t been prepared to be startled by. He’d grown up on a planet where the sun shone most days, and hadn’t noticed himself taking it for granted, like so many things, until it had been gone. Hyunjin ate as methodically as he usually did, pressed against Felix’s side with his face turned towards the lamps, eyes half-closed. He’d never been talkative, but Felix had never found it difficult to talk to him before. “What do we do now?” Felix blurted out, when he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, thinking of Hyunjin feverishly hot and perfectly still against his wet cheek.Hyunjin pulled him closer, leaving the food on the bench beside him in its reusable wrapper and leaning into him, his face in the side of Felix’s neck. Breathing. “I don’t know.”Felix didn’t know how much of it to let out, the desperate fear of it; that Hyunjin could leave and Felix wouldn’t stop him. That Felix could never bring himself to stop him. That Felix had never asked him to come to space with him, but had only said he had to go, and that he wouldn’t leave Hyunjin behind.He’d always told himself that Hyunjin deserved his honesty, that the price Felix owed him for all that Hyunjin had been made to be to him was the unvarnished truth, no matter what. When he had first decided to let himself touch Chan, because he wanted to, Hyunjin had been the one he’d told. He likes me. I want to. And Hyunjin had held him close under the shower spray which was the only place he’d felt like they wouldn’t be listened to, at first, and said if you’re sure like he’d have any recourse to contradict him.Felix swallowed back all the terror which wanted to bubble out of him. “I missed you.”Hyunjin held him tighter. “Me too.”The flood of relief made him dizzy. “Are you feeling any better?”“Yongbok,” Hyunjin said, very quietly. They were still in a place where if they were recognized the cycle would begin anew; running, and running again. “Stop.”Felix hoped that he did, and had to accept that Hyunjin might not tell him if he didn’t. Hyunjin had already had to accept all that had been done to him out of Felix’s sight, unquestioning, because nobody would have answered anyway.
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Hyunjin had always run hot. He’d known this about himself from a young age, from the first winter he had shared Felix’s bed, when Felix had clung to him all night with a child’s appreciation for warmth.He had never woken up in a sweat before, his body rumbling with something urgent and very, very new.Felix rolled over next to him, the comforting hum of the ship in the background. “Hyunjin?” he mumbled. “What’s the matter?”Hyunjin didn’t know, a sensation like a strange ripple under his skin taking hold of him. Felix pulled him closer, and then went very still. “Oh,” he said, softly, when Hyunjin rolled into him, their legs tangled together like always.The contact made it suddenly very obvious what was happening, and Hyunjin could feel a furious blush rolling up his neck into his cheeks, as though anything between them had ever been a secret. Hyunjin had shared his bed all through Felix’s first teenaged brushes with arousal, had learned to give him the space he needed to take care of it, had never brought himself to wonder why it hadn’t happened to him, only that it wasn’t meant to.And now it had.“Do you need–”“I’m thirsty,” Hyunjin blurted out, and got up.By the time he’d dressed the urgency of it had faded a bit, but he was still too hot, and the cold of the hallways and the galley was a welcome respite from the panic of it. He was gulping his third pouch of water from the reclaimer, wishing it was colder, when Changbin arrived, apparently on the same mission but – after a quick, guilty glance from Hyunjin – without the same sense of urgency.“Fuck, you scared me,” Changbin gasped, flicking the lights on before Hyunjin could ask him not to. “I know you love to lurk but does it have to be in the dark?”Hyunjin could feel the blush as it came back, and then the exact moment Changbin realized Hyunjin was not his usual self.“Impressive,” Changbin said, after a low whistle, and then leaned past him to get his own water without a second word about it.Hyunjin felt the brush of Changbin’s elbow across his upper arm like a slice from a knife, and wanted to evaporate into steam. He was so hot all over it felt like he might.“Good night,” Changbin said, when he’d gotten what he came for. “Try not to hide in the shadows, some of us have normal hearts.”And then he was gone.
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Hyunjin sat down in front of the terminal in the comms hub before he went back to bed.He logged in with his own address, something he’d only used to save the information Yunho had sent him, a detailed biochemical explanation of what he’d changed and what he suggested which Hyunjin had worked to understand.He read it again, just in case there was anything in it about the new unpredictability of his body, but there wasn’t. It wasn’t dry; Yunho had added a running commentary to some of the things they’d briefly spoken about in person. Don’t worry, for you it’s probably not possible to eat too much of anything, but you’ll probably be prone to being too thin if you don’t get enough complex fats. Here’s a few protein bars you can find which are basically just bricks, but if you can chew them I think they’ll help. Or: You know, I’ve never seen this in anyone with this kind of detail, so if you need a second opinion or if I’m wrong about something, get in touch. Here are some nodes we pass pretty regularly. I won’t tell Hongjoong if you won’t.Yunho hadn’t been wrong about anything specific that Hyunjin could tell, but he had started and abandoned half a dozen notes so far, his fingers hovering over the characters until he eventually deleted the whole abortive thing.He’d never sent anyone a message before, unless it was brief movement notifications to or from Felix when they’d been at school.He’d made plenty of reports, though. His own progress when he had been in training, his monthly check-in with the company, the supervisory structure of Felix’s corporation, trying not to give any personal details about Felix himself. Hyunjin hadn’t been made to be as much of a confidante as he had been. They hadn’t been meant to love each other at all.In a flash of tired frustration he turned on the voice recorder.He sat there with it blinking at him for too long before he started talking.“The changes have been as projected,” he said, finding himself speaking it quietly, like he might be overheard. “The splints are no longer necessary. The ship is better stocked for the stated nutritional requirements.” He paused, trying to identify what was happening under his skin, to put words to the feeling. “The hormonal dysregulation has taken effect.”It felt dry and inadequate even as he’d said it.He played it back, taking out the long pauses. He ran it through one more time. It was less than a minute in length. “Felix is well,” he added, for the sense of completion it offered.He sent it before he could talk himself out of it, and discovered that the discomfort of it had erased the new hunger he’d woken up with, and the fear that had come with it, that what was changing in him was going to overwhelm him with it. It had faded in the cold of the ship and the focus on something else.He didn’t fully expect to receive a response, and didn’t sit to wait for one.“Are you okay?” Felix mumbled, when Hyunjin slipped back into bed.Hyunjin gave in to the comfort of his familiarity and put his face in the back of his shoulder, breathing him in. “Yes,” he said, finding it wasn’t a lie. He wouldn’t have wanted to tell him one, anyway.
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Hyunjin first saw Jisung’s tattoo after they’d repaired the ship, when he ran out of the shower in just a towel, rushing down the hallway yelling about Jeongin having turned off the heating again and that he was going to fucking kill him, and skidded around the corner straight into Hyunjin with a wet slap of skin on skin.It was fresh, a splash of shiny black ink, and Jisung had shrieked and grabbed it, obviously still sore.“Ow!” Jisung exclaimed, getting up from where he’d bounced off Hyunjin’s bare and still-bony shoulder. “Sorry. I’m gonna kill him.”“What’s that?” Hyunjin asked, not particularly interested in who had turned off the hot water or why. Felix was with Chan and Hyunjin was trying to find something to take his mind off it, and the terrible hunger which still hadn’t quite released him, though he was feeling better by the hour.“Oh.” Jisung looked sheepish and took his hand off his chest, revealing an abstract little picture, buried under his skin forever unless he got tired of it one day and decided to have it burned off. “I dunno. I wanted something from this station, you know? We lived. I was fucking terrified the whole time.”“I thought you were afraid of needles.”“They don’t go in very far,” Jisung said. “Have you never seen a tattoo before?”Hyunjin had, on the arms and hands and necks and faces of the incredible spread of people they’d moved through on the stations and transit hubs Chan and his crew worked around, and in the days they’d spent taking their leave of the other crew. The inside of an arm. The top of a thigh. The back of a neck. Identifying markings he could remember for later. He’d never had any reason to think of them as what Jisung was describing, a kind of keepsake for a specific experience. “You were going to murder Jeongin.”“Fucking right I was,” Jisung said and jogged away, towel clutched around his waist.Hyunjin had lingered in the galley with an unspecified sort of longing wrapped around him, a desire for something he didn’t quite have a name for.They’d gone back to space. Felix was with Chan. Hyunjin didn’t feel changed, except that something had. He knew more than he’d ever expected to about himself, and didn’t feel it in the slightest. He still had a restless need to be near him, to know Felix was safe, but he was. The fact that he couldn’t quite convince himself that it was true was a new and awful realization, and something in him was pushing out past it, and there was nothing he could do but let it happen.Like so many other things.There were pens in the medical supplies, designed for marking out areas for the directed scans, for minor surgeries, for documenting healing. There were needles, too. Things he wouldn’t be in trouble for using, if he could bring himself to step inside to get them. He lingered in front of the hatch for too long, the antiseptic smell of it making him want to turn away.The anger shocked him with the force of it, and the memory of Yunho’s voice, saying that just because he’d heal didn’t mean it had to hurt.He pushed the hatch open once it unlocked for his handprint and took a pen, a needle and a swab before he could talk himself out of it. He entered his items into the log and closed it behind him, the sterile bundle pushed into his pocket.He went back to their cabin, thinking of nothing else but the terrible discoveries he’d been wrestling with ever since they’d come back, that pain wasn’t an inevitability of his existence but something which could be moderated. Which sometimes even ordinary people chose on purpose, for no other reason than that they got something from it they wanted.He made the first mark long after he’d cracked open the pen for its pigment, experimenting with how the ink spread and how far in the needle had to go before it stuck.It was only a circle, a little splotch of black trapped under his skin.It only hurt in the faintest of ways, a kind of familiarity which he hadn’t expected to find some satisfaction in. It wasn’t the pain, which was as small as Jisung had said it was, but the release of having chosen it himself and finding he didn’t want the pain itself but the outcome of it, the little black mark which only lingered for a few hours before his body dissolved it away, healing the way it always had.From something he had done, this time. Just to see what would happen.It was an unexpected, secret pleasure, and Hyunjin put the needle and half-used pen away in a little drawer which had a few pieces of Felix’s jewelry in it, wondering what he’d say about it if Felix asked.
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Hyunjin had long since stopped waiting down the hall when Chan and Felix were fucking, but it was late in the night cycle and he’d assumed Felix wouldn’t be back to their room, so when he’d finished his most recent pattern – drawn onto a little corner of a notepad he’d found in the medical supplies, knowing at some point he’d have to contribute to replacing them – he went to the galley intending to chew his way through one of the awful bricks Yunho had recommended, thinking most of the others would be asleep.He knew the sound of Chan’s footsteps, and the way he caught sight of Hyunjin and then lingered in the doorway was as familiar now as it had been before they’d lost Felix, like the time between that, when Hyunjin had been terrified down to his bones that they might never get him back, had faded out of reality.Like Hyunjin had never rested curled up against him, or asked him to make it so that he could, because he hadn’t slept in days.“Oh,” Chan said, looking at Hyunjin’s left hand, patterned down the back of his fingers, a kind of absent asymmetry Hyunjin had inked there to see what it looked like, one hand not matching the other. “Is that where all the medical pens and lancets have been going?”“Yeah,” Hyunjin said, around a mouthful. “I’ll get more next time we land.”Chan rubbed a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair, sheepish for no reason Hyunjin could see. “It looks nice.”“It won’t stay.”Chan shrugged. “Yeah, I figured. It still looks nice. I guess it’s kind of like makeup.”Hyunjin hadn’t thought of it that way before: Jisung’s eyeliner, Changbin’s glitter pen he used when he intended to go out, the way Minho drew in his eyebrows sometimes. The paint Felix had used to cover his freckles, temporary, because everyone who knew him knew they were under there. Chan’s occasional costume when they were meeting clients, of which they now had a ship-ful, wandering undisturbed on the transport deck where Hyunjin and Felix never went when it was occupied. Hyunjin quite liked helping to clean it when it wasn’t, finding the debris people left behind to be fascinating, in its own quiet way.“You could get some other things to draw with when we offload,” Chan said, when Hyunjin didn’t say anything. “If you wanted to. You don’t have to stop doing that,” he corrected quickly. “That’s not what I meant. We can get more medical stuff.”Hyunjin had been thinking about it, what he might do with his share of the next payment. Now that he had a terminal address Chan had started allocating him credit. He’d named him with the same family name Felix had chosen as an alias, and Hyunjin didn’t quite know how to feel about it, or if he should feel a particular way.He wouldn’t have to file an expense report if he wanted to use it.If Chan came any closer Hyunjin would smell him, and smell Felix on him, and Hyunjin’s newly-treacherous body would give him away: reacting to the nearness of someone else and the way the knowledge sat inside him, an unwilling swell of curiosity about what they did with each other.It had always been enough before to know that Felix wasn’t being hurt. “Did you want something?”“Oh, no, I’ve never wanted a tattoo,” Chan said, hurriedly.Hyunjin couldn’t hold in the smile. He was sometimes ridiculous, and Hyunjin had never known anyone who let it out so much, with such honesty in his own awkwardness. “I meant from the galley.”Chan flushed all the way up to his hairline, instantly. “Oh. Yeah, um. Water.”Hyunjin turned on the reclaimer and left him to it, still amused, and managed to avoid coming close enough to betray himself.
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They stopped at a transport orbital which had a long-range comms node, and when Hyunjin logged on he had a notification.He didn’t have to download it, but he recognized the request.Yunho, coded with his unique identifier.He was looking at it when Changbin buzzed the door and leaned in, filling the room with the scent of his soap, still faintly wet from the shower. “Hey, Spooky, are you coming down? This place has a restaurant that will turn you inside out, and we’re going dancing after.” He looked over at the display Hyunjin had quickly blanked. “Unless you’re busy?”“We?”“Me, Jisung, Minho. Chan says he’ll come for dinner, Seungmin will meet us if he feels like getting laid later. Jeongin might show up, too. You should join.”Hyunjin didn’t have time to reply before Changbin was gone, his invitation delivered and his enthusiasm carrying him away.Hyunjin closed the terminal and went back to their room, where Felix was only just waking up.His sleep had been disturbed for weeks, ever since he’d come back to the ship. Hyunjin climbed in beside him and waited, and Felix rolled over and put his cheek on Hyunjin’s chest. “Hi,” he mumbled. “What time is it?”“Afternoon,” Hyunjin said, checking it against the station’s cycle. “I think.”Felix laughed quietly, low in his throat. “I’m still not used to it. How it’s so different everywhere. The other ship didn’t even have cycles, they just slept when they were tired.”Hyunjin stroked his hair, dragging his fingers lightly across his scalp. “Changbin invited me to go with them for dinner.”“Do you want to go?”It was dark in their cabin, and he knew Felix couldn’t see him nearly as well as Hyunjin could see Felix. He could see him looking anyway, tilting his head so he had a glimpse of his eyes. “Are you coming? Chan is.”Felix closed his eyes and sighed, his breath ghosting out. “Tell me to get up.”“Yongbok,” Hyunjin whispered, still stroking through his hair. “It’s time to get up.”Felix nodded, the motion of it huge against Hyunjin’s body.
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The station was a prosperous one, as far as Felix could tell. He was starting to understand the subtleties of it; the way Chan’s legal dealings supplemented the extralegal ones. The passengers paying for licensed transit and the ones who weren’t, because Felix had been one, once.This was a legitimate run, as far as they went, Chan trying to cover his tracks with a new identity for the ship and a standard transport licence, and they had to do a few real runs first before taking on any of the work he actually liked to do.Legitimate stations had a different feeling about them; more facilities, a cleaner aspect. Felix liked them much, much less than the other ones, and it was a strange thing to note about himself. That he liked the anonymity of being just another body somewhere. Another pair of bodies.What was more difficult to parse was whether Hyunjin was having a good time.It was startling to realize that was the feeling he was grappling with, that he had agreed to come down to the platforms because someone had invited Hyunjin to come along and Felix knew in his bones he wouldn’t go alone, but that he wanted to.If Felix didn’t go, Hyunjin wouldn’t complain. There was always a risk to put themselves in public, wherever there were facial recognition systems. The people who were chasing them would be scraping for any ping. Felix had thought about dyeing his hair, or– any number of things he hadn’t done.Hyunjin looked different enough now that it sometimes startled him, but his face was the same too in all the ways Felix thought might matter, leaner and bonier in the cheeks, but still someone who got noticed. Felix had always seen it when people noticed him, a hot, protective curl of anger in his stomach.Felix had often avoided similar situations at home, not because he didn’t think it would be fun but because whatever space he put himself in would be one Hyunjin would have to protect him from as well; a crush of people all together was always a risk, and so Felix had held himself apart from them. Sitting in the VIP lounges of the clubs his friends went to, getting a box at the theater, going to private events with a vetted guest list. Learning when Hyunjin could relax and when he couldn’t. Gallery shows, where he spared some of his attention for the art, or outdoor events where he didn’t, glued hard to Felix’s back.Places where Hyunjin could stick to his side in the background, even when everyone was drunk, had been the ones Felix felt less guilty for attending.A hot, crowded restaurant in the middle of a busy transit station had never been one of them, not even one he might have considered.The crowd was heaving from the moment they arrived, and Felix could feel it, the moment Hyunjin realized how loud and busy it was going to be. He dropped back to a slightly better vantage point, no expression on his face. Felix didn’t know what to do about it, a horrible sense of familiarity descending on him.Minho and Jisung didn’t notice, but Changbin did.Chan had gone ahead to get a table, and Felix wished he’d asked him to get a booth, even if it was more expensive.Changbin dropped back and bumped Hyunjin with his elbow. “Hey, chill out,” he said. “None of us are going to let Sunshine over here get kidnapped again, we’ve learned our lesson.”“Sunshine?” Hyunjin murmured, his face creasing from the corner of Felix’s eye.“What, I’m not allowed to give him a nickname?” Changbin grinned. “Next you’ll tell me you don’t like yours.”Felix hadn’t even known Changbin had tried to give him one, and it sat in his chest like water swallowed badly, sloshing around. He kept walking, determined not to interrupt.“Hey, Felix!” Changbin called, dragging Hyunjin forward by the wrist. “Slow down.”Felix did, so painfully aware that he’d started to outpace them. Minho and Jisung had paused their fight over what was the best menu item and which of them could eat the spiciest food to wait, and Hyunjin still hadn’t pulled his wrist out of Changbin’s loose grip.Hyunjin caught his eye and Felix realized he was blushing again, a spread of pink blazing across his bare cheeks. Next to Changbin’s glitter-painted eyes he still didn’t look plain. Felix didn’t think he ever could. “What nickname?” Felix asked.“Sunshine,” Changbin explained, like that was what Felix had been asking. “It’s the freckles, sorry.”“No, I like it,” he said, watching Changbin lace his fingers with Hyunjin’s, pulling him ahead as Minho and Jisung’s impatience to sweat themselves unconscious with whatever they planned to eat overtook them, and they all went in together.
-
Felix was still numb in the mouth and sweating from the chili when Changbin threw his utensils down, deeply satisfied, and pointed both forefingers at Chan, who had gotten them a table against a bulkhead, mercifully convecting a bit of cold towards them all. “Chan. We are going dancing.”Chan groaned. “No.”“Not negotiable!” Changbin shook Jisung, who was sitting next to him. “Back me up.”Jisung looked up from whatever Minho was whispering to him, only half paying attention. “What?”“Dancing. Chan is being boring.”“Chan can be boring if he wants,” Jisung said. “Maybe he knows he’d get upstaged.”“Hey!” Chan was looking shiftier by the minute. “No I’m not. I just– the ship–”“Seungmin and Jeongin are probably painting it neon green and moving all your stuff around,” Jisung said, stealing the last bite of the food Felix had bravely managed to mostly finish. “The ship is fine.”“What do you think?” Changbin asked Hyunjin, who was sitting next to him, all of them crammed in thigh-to-thigh. Felix hadn’t been lamenting Hyunjin’s heat beside him, but his skin was damp under his clothes where they were pressed together, and Hyunjin had been quietly focused on the food for most of the meal, smiling occasionally when Changbin included him in one of the stories he’d been telling. “Felix is biased.”“I didn’t say anything,” Felix pointed out.“I thought the food had killed you,” Minho said, matter of factly.In fact, Felix had been keeping quiet mostly from a sense of terrible happiness which had been threatening to overwhelm him for an hour.“Chan isn’t boring,” Hyunjin said, looking at him sidelong, on Felix’s other side. “Can he dance?”“I’m a great dancer,” Chan said, letting a little bit of the sharp, competitive edge which lurked under his affable face come out. “You watch.”Changbin grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
-
Changbin’s club of choice was another sweaty, crowded crevice down three levels in what had once been a storage bay, and the woman on the door had counted heads with an expression of supreme disinterest when he'd paid the cover for all of them.He got drinks for everyone and bounced out into the crowd instantly, Jisung and Minho in tow.Chan hesitated, two drinks in his hands somehow, and looked at Felix and Hyunjin, who had ended up shoulder to shoulder against the wall, both of them astounded by the onslaught of bodies and the volume of the music.Felix hadn't been in a club since he'd left home, and they'd been nothing like this, a wild and disinterested energy all around them. People were just dancing with each other in the oscillating darkness, and Felix felt like an island suddenly, rigid with the feeling of exposure it was raising in him.“Go on!” Felix managed, hoarse even to himself.Chan handed him a drink and went, chasing after the rest of his crew with a frown.Felix was rubbing absently at the stamp on the back of his hand, smearing the iridescent pattern across his knuckles, when Hyunjin draped an arm over his shoulder.Felix took hold of him, instantly soothed, and smoothed his thumb over the bony jut of his wrist instead. “I don't know how to do this,” Felix admitted, knowing Hyunjin would hear him under the music.Hyunjin spread his hand against Felix’s chest.Felix caught a glimpse of Changbin dancing with Chan, his compact body unmistakable in a crowd, even juxtaposed with Chan's surprising abandon and the fading sheepish look on his face.Changbin saw them looking and waved.“What now?” Hyunjin asked, low and close, his lips brushing Felix’s ear so he could hear him.Felix knew what he wanted to do: he wanted to jump into the fray and drag Hyunjin in by the hand. “Hey,” he said, leaning back against him. “We’re okay, you know.” Hyunjin went very still, and Felix pushed himself on, forcing himself to keep talking. Nobody else could hear him. “I’m so… I’ll never be able to thank you enough. For coming with me. I know you– still. Thank you.”“I wouldn’t have asked you to stay.”“I won’t either,” Felix said, disentangling himself from Hyunjin’s arm so he could look at him. “So I think you should go dance.”Hyunjin looked down at him, at the grip Felix still had on his hand between both of his, and then, very slowly, he kissed him on the forehead. His cheek rested against Felix’s hair before he went, and Felix had the new pleasure of following him into the crowd and watching him grin when Changbin grabbed him gently around the waist, already moving with the music.Felix was so glad to be an afterthought that he almost didn’t notice Chan waiting for him until he hooked his chin over Felix’s shoulder and handed him one of the drinks he’d miraculously managed not to spill. “You good?” Chan asked.Felix took it, enjoying its mediocre sourness, the hot humidity of the place making his hair frizz right in front of his eyes, and the question Chan was really asking; Chan who had helped him leave a place he’d been slowly suffocating in, who had never once questioned that Felix wouldn’t abandon Hyunjin to do it, or what he was to him.Who had chased Felix down again, his face huge on the screen, saying Felix was part of his crew and he’d like him back, please.“Yeah,” Felix told him, low in his throat, and turned around to kiss him.
-
Hyunjin still didn’t like not having Felix nearby, but it was easier than it had been before to watch him and Chan disappear back to the ship with a promise that they would message when they got there, and then for it to be confirmed when Jisung’s handset pinged that they’d arrived.Still, being so far away so soon after he’d gotten him back was a sensation Hyunjin had to force himself to endure.“I think I’m gonna get back as well,” Changbin yelled to Jisung and Minho, who were distracted by each other anyway. He shimmied suggestively. “Saving my best moves for next time.”“Save them forever,” Minho suggested loudly, going back to his mission of getting Jisung’s hips perfectly aligned with his.“Fuck you,” Changbin yelled, pretending to be offended.“No.”Changbin made a joyfully rude gesture and started to go. “Oh hey, are you staying?”Hyunjin realized he was talking to him. “No, I want to go back.”“Okay, come on then. Leave the lovebirds to their mating dance.”“Go home, Changbin,” Jisung called back, and they did.Out on the concourse it was still hot and crowded, but much less hot and crowded than it had been inside the club. Hyunjin was still feeling the stretch of Felix’s absence, the low hum of it under his skin. He was with Chan. He was on the ship.He had faced Hyunjin and told him he should go and dance, and Hyunjin had realized in the moment how much he’d wanted to, just to try it.Just because Changbin was grinning at him, and it felt specific, like it mattered that Hyunjin had to come.Changbin kept up a stream of comfortable chatter all the way back, not to fill a silence but because he seemed happy, and Hyunjin thought maybe that was just what he did when he was: ambled along with his bare arms waving, touching Hyunjin on the shoulder when he was looking at him, the glitter on his face catching the lights on the walkways as they traversed up the levels.They got back to the ship like that, as though the time had hardly passed.“Well,” Changbin said, when the hatches had all closed behind them, “I don't know about you but I'm gonna crash. Did any of the booze touch the sides or are you sober?”Hyunjin had been drinking just to taste it, but he didn't feel any different. He hadn't really thought he would. He could still see the rapid depletion of the anaesthetic Yunho had pushed into him, metabolized as quickly as it had been delivered. There was nothing he could really do to blunt the edge off his consciousness, even if he'd wanted to.They'd made it to the galley, the space which Hyunjin had come to think of as his, in some nebulous way. It didn't belong to him, but he always seemed to end up here, finding its familiarity to be easy to stand in.“I'm not drunk,” Hyunjin told him, testing it. “Just thirsty.”“Oh, good,” Changbin said, and propped himself up on his toes to kiss him. His lips were very warm and a little bit dry, and before Hyunjin really knew what to do he'd pulled away again, smiling, lopsided. “Better than a punch to the face?”“What was that for?”“Just because.” Changbin put his faintly rough hand on the side of Hyunjin’s neck, lightly, and kept smiling at him. “Let me know if you want to do it again.”Before Hyunjin could ask now? Changbin had gone, and Hyunjin was left still tasting him, salt and whatever he'd been drinking, sweet and faint, and the hint of whatever he'd painted himself with, a trace of glitter on his cheek.
-
Yunho’s note wasn’t nearly as brief as Hyunjin’s had been.His face almost filled the screen, lit from behind his comms station. Hyunjin could see a glimpse of his bed, folded down, and the particular color of the sheets brought back other memories of the space, like the way it had smelled of Yunho instead of anything else.Hyunjin couldn’t honestly claim that it didn’t make him nervous to see him, but he’d opened the message now, and it was waiting to be played.He waved it on and Yunho started speaking.“Hi, I was actually very surprised to hear from you,” he said, smiling just slightly, his delicate mouth pulled to the side. “Pleased, but surprised. Partly because we’ve been in—” He said the name of a sector Hyunjin didn’t know and vowed to look up later. “Wooyoung’s been a nightmare, but I won’t bore you with the details. He’s always a demon when we’re near his home port. I’m glad you’ve had good results.” He smiled properly, displaying his neat teeth. “Maybe I’ll convince our esteemed captain I need to go home next, but we have to time these things carefully. Don’t establish a pattern. I suppose you don’t really have a reason to want to go back to your planet, but I think it’s normal to miss things.”He seemed to realize he was rambling and shrugged, one of his long palms coming into view as he did it, there and gone. “I’m really happy to know you’re not upset with the changes. Let me know how it goes, if you want to.” He waved, and then he was gone.Hyunjin played it again, trying to decipher whatever hidden message was in all the extraneous information, and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t any.Hyunjin wasn’t sure if he should respond, or with what. A text message was too formal now. He didn’t think Yunho would take it that way, that was how it felt.In the end Hyunjin turned the voice recorder on again.“I want to kiss people now,” he said, without hedging it. “I didn’t expect to feel so different.” He let the silence stretch while he was thinking about it, what he should or shouldn’t say. “Why would you go home if you’re happy where you are?” To Hyunjin home had always been Felix, and it was only now that he was beginning to understand how much more it could be. “I don’t like waking up too hot,” he finished with. “Maybe that’s normal.” He shrugged, echoing Yunho, even if he couldn’t see him. “I’m never bored by details.”He sent it without editing it this time, letting the silences rest.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Felix watched Hyunjin carefully prick an inked pattern into his thigh with both hands, his hair covering the concentration Felix knew would be on his face, holding his breath.One hand spread the skin, added more ink as he wanted, and the other, needle long and graceful in his fingers, pushed it in. There was blood with it too, carefully dabbed away so he could see better. The way in which he was hurting himself made something in Felix curl up with worry, all wound in with the curiosity he had about Hyunjin’s new art.The pattern was always gone after the next time he slept, and as Hyunjin had filled out, as he’d begun to carefully slide away from the way he’d controlled himself for so many years, Felix always wondered if he wished it would stay.Felix always longed to put his hand where it had been and feel the skin there, just to make sure it was intact, painless the way it was meant to be. That Hyunjin had been in some sense made to be impervious to these tiny injuries wasn’t the point. It was that Felix could see it happening and had no idea how to bring it up, a subject which the first distance between them he could consciously remember had put glass over.“You’re staring at me again,” Hyunjin said, without looking up.“I am, yeah.”Hyunjin kept carefully pricking at his skin, sitting in the corner of their room with one leg stretched out in front of him and the other folded under, a familiar contortion for someone who stretched so religiously now. “Come have a look,” he said, collecting more blood on the cloth he was using to catch it.Felix crept closer, looking at the abstract lines Hyunjin was sketching into himself, smelling the combination of skin and blood and ink despite the dryness of the air from its endless recirculation through the ship. He breathed it, Hyunjin breathed it. Chan and the rest of them, a little closed loop, scrubbed and reused like Hyunjin’s bare exposed thigh which rejected the ink only hours after he’d put it in.“What is it?” Felix asked.Hyunjin glanced up at him, amused. “I don’t know yet.”Felix was still thinking about the look in his face when he’d nearly died, the grim lack of surprise under his awful pallor. “Will you do one for me?”Hyunjin paused, the needle just above its next target. “It won’t disappear like mine do,” Hyunjin said quietly, still looking at him. “You know that.”“That’s why I want one.”Hyunjin put the needle in his thigh and left it there, one in a series of endless tiny horrors Felix now couldn't stop noticing. “What do you want it to be?”Felix had the sense that Hyunjin had been indulging him and now wasn’t. He was too attuned to him, too specifically aware of the way a space had opened between them where there had been none before. Hyunjin had always been complete to him, a person whose voice was the one he listened to above all others no matter how secretly, but the time they had been apart had clawed them into a slightly different shape. Hyunjin had never been a part of him, but something in Felix wanted to have something of Hyunjin in him forever, just to know it was there. Just to know Hyunjin had agreed to put it there, and that whatever happened, however they grew, Felix could keep it to remember why they had to.“I want it to say Yongbok.”Hyunjin frowned. “Your own name?”“My name the way you say it,” Felix said. “My name the way you write it.” Even his mother had called him Felix when he’d asked her to, the name she’d given him against his grandfather’s wishes. Hyunjin called him Yongbok like it really did belong to him, and wasn’t a name he’d been meant to grow into with all that it entailed to do so. Hyunjin called him by his name not to remind him of the life they’d left behind them but because it was still his name, to keep or lose. “My name like it’s mine.”Hyunjin just kept looking at him, needle forgotten in his leg.Felix had always thought anyone who commented on the propriety of Hyunjin’s public silence was an idiot.“Okay,” Hyunjin said, and took the needle out of his leg at last, so Felix could breathe again.
-
The first time Hyunjin had been shot was on Felix’s fourteenth birthday.His coming of age had been news planet-wide. He’d been prepared for it; Hyunjin had been prepared for it.Felix remembered the blood soaking through his shirt when Hyunjin had grabbed him, folding him into his longer arms. He’d grown recently, a spurt which had happened before Felix’s own hoped-for maturity, which Felix couldn’t help but guiltily notice. His voice deepening, his face beginning to sharpen. All the things which Felix had known would come but wasn’t quite prepared to see.Felix had been bundled away from the announcement in an armoured transport, the same way he went anywhere, deep in the tunnels under the complex, Hyunjin crouched next to him, speaking into his commset with a wet hitch in his breath until the wounds had begun to close.Felix went to his grandfather as soon as they were back inside the core of the compound, the manicured house in its perfect cordon of lawns and hedges, real wood floors creaking artfully under his feet. He’d left Hyunjin at the doors to the study, the only room in the house he was barred from.Felix could only think about the sound it had made, the damp thud like a pile of wet clothes being dropped from a height, before the blood splattered out of Hyunjin’s mouth on his word, move, like he knew already that Felix would be frozen with horror at the sight of it.“Will Hyunjin be alright?” Felix couldn’t help but ask, even though his grandfather grunted unhappily at the question.“From this you have learned he’ll serve his purpose to you. He’ll be examined and returned to you. You and I have more important matters to discuss.”Felix sat there, bloodstained, late into the night, long after the adrenaline had faded and he had begun to shiver, images playing over in his mind like a film in the distance. The split second of surprise on Hyunjin’s newly-lean face, even though he was the one who had stepped into the path of the projectiles. Felix remembered forcing it all away with an effort, focusing on the questions he should have been asking, which he knew by heart now: who would be retaliating, what the company would be putting in place and how much it would cost. What his life was worth now as his grandfather’s only naturally-born descendant young enough to succeed him.When Felix was allowed to go late in the evening Hyunjin was still outside the doors.Someone had wiped his face but he was still in the bloodied clothes he’d been wearing before, standing silently next to his grandfather’s version of him, who had a suspicious rusty stain on the neatly rolled-up sleeves of his own uniform. Felix had always wondered if it was better or worse that they looked nothing alike. Hyunjin, smaller, with big, dark eyes not at all unlike Felix’s own, looked newly childlike next to his tall, pale-haired counterpart.Felix had only ever heard the other one speak when he urgently needed his grandfather’s attention. Twice, maybe. Felix knew his name, and nothing else.Felix had taken him back to his rooms without a word, and set the shower running right away.“You first,” he remembered saying, when Hyunjin had just stood inside the bathroom doors, looking at him. Hyunjin usually gave him enough privacy to bathe alone, but Felix hadn’t wanted it then, or hadn’t had the heart to ask him not to come in, not so close to the first real attempt Felix remembered anyone making on his life. There would be more. That had been the subtext of everything his grandfather had said; destabilizing the company meant taking Felix away, and it would happen again.And Hyunjin, every time, would be expected to step in front of it.When Felix went to bed he lifted the covers for Hyunjin to climb in with him, and he did, just like he had since they’d been children. Felix had been meant to stop turning to him for comfort in the night years ago and hadn’t.“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said, face pressed to Hyunjin’s clean chest, where there was no awful, gaping wound. I’m so glad to have you, instead of I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.There was no absolution to be had for it. It would happen again. It was just the first time Felix had ever caught himself wondering what life might be like if he hadn’t been who he was. He wouldn’t have had Hyunjin, the person all of the violence of Felix’s existence was deferred onto, the breathing body in his arms, so intimately familiar and so perfectly forbidden.He wouldn’t have even been thinking about him.But Felix had seen the thought form, crystalline, what if we could leave, and realized that he had no room in him to imagine life without Hyunjin. We. He and I. The person Felix would die for, and would never be allowed to.“Yongbok. I can hear you thinking,” Hyunjin said. “I’m fine.”“Did it hurt?”“I think so,” Hyunjin answered, never anything less than honest, because Felix could take it when he was. “But I’m built for it.”“You weren’t built.”“Grown, then,” Hyunjin said, mumbling and annoyed with Felix for splitting hairs which didn’t need to be split.Felix had always wished desperately that Hyunjin could be less aware of it, that Felix could just look at him and see a boy, one who’d been in the corner of his eye for as long as Felix could consciously remember.Hyunjin had been given to him on his fifth birthday. Their fifth birthday, as far as either of them knew. It was awful to know that Felix couldn’t even wish he hadn’t been.“How’s that?” Hyunjin asked, when he’d perfected the latest version, a not-quite abstracted series of characters, blending into each other just like Felix had hoped; like the way Hyunjin said his name, quick and informal. Fluid, beautiful. Buried in his thigh, his thumb swiping away the last of the blood as it healed over.“Perfect,” Felix said, hoping it would hurt a little when Hyunjin finally put it on him, instead.
-
Chan had been so focused on getting Felix back that having him nearby again felt seismic, until it didn’t. There was a moment when Felix woke up, stretched, and asked him what shift it was, like he’d never been gone, and Chan felt a sense of such painful familiarity that it clenched in his chest. “What’s the matter?” Felix asked, when Chan didn’t reply except to climb back into bed, leaving the work he was doing for later.“Nothing,” Chan said, not sure how to put words to it. “I’m just wondering what we do now, I guess.”“Keep working?” Felix asked, half-jokingly, folding Chan into his arms. “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”“It might happen again,” Chan said, unguarded. “You can’t help that.”Felix went very quiet, but he was rarely still the way Hyunjin could be. Felix sighed, inching closer. “Eventually they’ll replace me, I think. Pretend I never existed. They’ll have to someday.”“If they can’t find you.”“I thought you said you were a pirate. You should be used to that. Plenty of people might want to chase you now, too.”Chan laughed, wondering how he could have let himself get so content in this, and how it had begun to feel so easy, and so essential. “I never said I was a pirate. Those other guys are pirates. And they’re broke, most of the time.” Chan leaned against him, wondering why it mattered so much to make the distinction, when people like Felix’s corporation wouldn’t have; Chan was a gifted smuggler with a legitimate veneer over his desired business. He did what he wanted under the guise of doing what was profitable. A small scale transport enterprise was a great way to cover less lucrative endeavours. At the core of it, Chan had a code, and what they’d done to keep Felix – re-register the ship, ditch some identities, nullify the previous business registration with a huge tax penalty from their port of nominal origin, a paint job which Hongjoong had raised both his neat little eyebrows over, the bastard – had blasted through nearly all of it.Hongjoong would never have taken on a corporate heir for the simple reason that Hongjoong had made it his life’s mission to steal as much from people like Felix’s family as could be stolen, and the crew he had gathered around him – double the size of what it had been only two years ago, but Chan hadn’t had a chance to ask him for any details – all had more reason to destroy what they touched than Chan ever would.But if Chan had refused to help him leave, it would have been a refutation of everything he really did believe in: that it was possible for people to be good, and that he’d never turn down anyone who’d wanted to get off their shared home planet. How did you even find me? He’d asked, when Felix had approached him after he’d been lured to a corporate event with the possibility of intel he simply couldn’t turn down. Information had a price, even higher than people. He’s good with faces. We don’t have much time. Felix had said, glancing at Hyunjin, who had stared at him once when they’d walked in, buried inside a cordon of other guards and well out of the reach of ordinary citizens, and Chan had shivered.Chan should have left the moment Felix had cornered him in the service tunnels under the building, Hyunjin guarding their exit.He should never have tried to get to the bottom of the rumours about Lee Yongbok’s heir, things he now knew Felix had planted himself: that he was in debt and looking to make a trade for cash, something people like Felix didn’t ever have to touch. That he had a long history of failed engagements for reasons he was willing to sell to the highest media bidder, but couldn’t go through any traceable channels.He should never have believed that the promise of a scandal that valuable wasn't too good to be true, or let himself be seen in person.He’d known for a long time what danger people like Hyunjin posed if anyone got too close to their charges, and Hyunjin, it turned out, was very good with faces, but not as good as Felix himself, who had a nearly-unique grip on small personal details which sometimes made Chan flinch.He should never have gotten to know him, or his bodyguard, but he had. He had, and now both of them were his crew, his friends.His lover, as strange as it sounded. And Felix had been away for long enough that Chan wondered what he'd seen or heard when he had, and whether he himself had gotten too close to see the obvious, that Felix was half-in and half-other, a person who Chan had never fully integrated into his work. He wondered if Felix hadn’t asked him for more details on purpose.“Do you know what we actually do?” Chan asked him, finally. “Not just the transport. The other stuff.”“Smuggling.”Felix seemed happy enough with the concept, but Chan only nodded and then forced himself to elaborate, blunt and awful. “People, mostly,” Chan said. “That’s how I know Hongjoong.”Felix didn’t react right away, still calmly curled against him. “What do you mean, people?”Chan made sure he wasn’t looking at him, in case he lost his nerve. “Do you know what your corporation does?”“It’s not my corporation.” And Felix did have steel in him. Chan had always known it.“Any corporation.”Felix held him closer. “Yeah.”“And if you’d taken over, you’d have dissolved every labor contract? Every subsidiary? Every government supply agreement on hundreds of worlds and twice as many stations? Every single agri–”“You know I couldn’t have done that. I know I couldn’t have done that.” Felix started to move, and Chan wanted to stop him but he was still talking, even as he was climbing on top of Chan, even as he was taking Chan’s face in his surprisingly strong hand so Chan would look at him. “It exists in too many different ways. A corporation is like a cancer. Do you know what cancer is?”“Of course I do.”Only people like Felix had the luxury of thinking cancer was a thing of the past.“Then you know–”“That left unchecked, it kills people.”Felix’s low voice dropped, until it was a deep rumble in his chest. “Chan, if you sell–”“No!” He breathed, watching the relief on Felix’s face. “No. Felix, no, I would never. I help people escape. Hongjoong hit a big shipment of ore once, too big for him, and he pointed me at the origin. Nobody on that ship lived, but he didn’t kill them. The state of the transport did, and the speed they were traveling. Everyone in there was already dead. He– it doesn’t matter, but we went to where it had come from, some tiny little belt and… look, there were still hundreds of people there, mining it. We had to find places to put them. They couldn’t have stayed there. Hongjoong killed a lot of security, and had to run like hell.” Chan swallowed, remembering it. “I still do it. Take people to other smugglers. Find them places to go. Paying passengers are just funding.” He paused, watching Felix’s face. “Good funding. They pay well. But that story went everywhere, and for a while that sector–”“Was called a loss area and written off for the insurance. Those installations were mothballed, and the people on them were taken off the personnel lists of the subsidiaries which administered them and claimed against the deficit.” He still had a grip on Chan’s jaw, not hard, but Chan felt like if he didn’t move he might disintegrate, all at once. “Moveable assets. What happened to them?”“There’s a self-administrated polity which took them in, registered as an environmental non-profit,” Chan explained. “But–”“The insurance investigation was never completed,” Felix murmured. “And the installations were found empty, before the last report came through. The investigators were never recovered. Why are you telling me this?”“You just… should know. I don’t need more of your secrets, but you should have some of mine.”“I thought you were too good to be true,” Felix said, only half joking. He took his hand back and rolled away, curling into the bulkhead with his chin on his knees. “Go on.”“Hongjoong’s crew did that. I moved whoever wanted to go.” He swallowed, trying to find the thread of it, the thing he was pulling at which he didn’t want to unravel, because it was Felix, and he’d started to love him. It was so hard not to. It was agony not to apologize for it. “If Hyunjin wanted to leave one day, what would you do?”Whatever Felix had been expecting to hear, whatever awful secret he’d thought Chan had been about to offer him, it hadn’t been that. Felix jumped forward, his spare, freckled body faster than he knew, strong and planet-raised, just like Chan. His big eyes full of betrayal. He stopped just short of touching him, so close Chan could feel his breath. “Nothing.”Chan took it like a punch to the throat, well-deserved, and then kept talking. “You speak for him. You don't always notice, but you do.”Felix looked at him, stricken. “What?”“When you were gone he hardly said a word.” And Chan hadn't noticed until he had, a sudden realization with the sound of a breaking nose. He'd gotten so used to them, the two of them, like a pair of little binary stars, until one had been gone.“Yeah?” Felix said, low and terrible, “did you talk to him?”Chan couldn't shake the picture Hyunjin had made with Changbin a few nights ago, the tallest of them and the smallest, Changbin’s irrepressible motion drawing out Hyunjin’s bright smile, which always took Chan by surprise.Chan was still thinking about Hyunjin touching him with intent, the only time he ever had, his thumb warm against Chan’s lips, telling him to make it an order.Chan had been thinking about him pressed against his chest, asleep in his arms like he couldn’t have rested any other way, his bony knees splayed out across the bunk so Chan had to curl around him to stay in bed.Hyunjin had asked him for that.Chan couldn't imagine him asking for much else, and that was the crux of it, the thing he had just kicked at which lay jagged and unsolved between him and Felix: that Hyunjin might not always be the thing Felix could fall back to, and that Chan might be the one who ended up standing between them, now that he knew so much more than he’d wanted to about both of them.That Chan wanted him to stay, too, but that he'd take him anywhere he wanted. If he asked.That Felix loved Hyunjin so much that being near them together was a kind of force field in itself, and all the things Chan had failed to see before they’d been separated were still there, gravitational, and both of them were trying so hard to peel themselves out of the other’s orbit just so it wouldn’t go back to how it had been before. So that they could grow.Chan needed to know how far it could go, whether Felix might feel Hyunjin pulling out of his reach again one day and still let it happen.“I tried,” Chan said, feeling flayed.“Try harder,” Felix muttered, and got up to leave.“Felix, wait.”Felix did, silently, nearly to the hatch.“You don't have to stay either. Just because I helped you. You know enough that you could use it however you wanted.”“For someone who’s smart you’re a real idiot sometimes,” Felix said. “If he didn’t trust you, I never would have. Not the other way around.”Chan wanted to shout that he had only needed to hear him say it, but the truth was that he’d known for a long time that Felix was running from more than just his crushing obligations as his grandfather’s heir. Chan didn’t know how to explain that he was someone who knew running, and that he wanted to stop somewhere that mattered. Not a place but something else, the bare thing inside him which had started to grow out of his control, which wanted to be worthy of the trust they’d both shown him, and which demanded that Chan confront the thorns he couldn’t ignore. “You told me before we left that–”“That there was no me without him,” Felix repeated. “That I wouldn’t negotiate it.”“And now?”Felix blinked at him, like he was bringing Chan into full focus, just like he had the first time they’d met. “You won’t understand.”“Try me.”Felix took a breath, his distinctive lips pressed so tightly together the edges were white. “He was given to me when we were children.” Chan could see the force of it, the way it was about to well out of Felix without his say-so, tears which he gave so easily but which were so rarely from anger. “I want him to stay because he’s the only friend I had when I thought I was evil, and that there was nothing I could do to be better. He was made for me, but I never knew half of what was being done to him because he never thought it mattered, or that I could have changed it. How do you think it feels to know that all that time I thought I’d protected him too, and that I was wrong?” he asked, without flinching from it. “He’s the only person who will ever know me better than I do, and he was meant to belong to me until I died. If he wanted to disappear forever I’d let him, no matter how much of me he took with him. Is that what you want to hear?”Chan wanted to ask him more, the awful details which he knew were lurking under that, but he didn’t.“You don’t really want to know if I’d try to make him stay,” Felix said, soft and terrible. “You know I wouldn’t. You’re just too scared to ask Hyunjin for anything because you’re afraid of what you’ll have to live with if you do.”“What?”Felix swiped away the tears, falling now, and Chan knew they would for hours, because that was how all of Felix’s emotions leaked out of him, profound and physical. “You don’t have to be good enough. I’m not.” He paused, looking right at him, huge dark eyes and unflinching honesty. “You’re afraid that if he’s not something I own then you have to understand him, too. You’re afraid that if you really know him, then he’s never going to be just another body you can help escape. If you know him, he’ll know you, because that’s what Hyunjin is like, and he frightens you.”“I’m not scared of him,” Chan whispered, wondering when he’d put himself on the back foot, why Felix had reached into his chest and gripped at something which had lodged itself against Chan’s ribs since the day Hyunjin had climbed out of his bed and pulled on his shirt.“Why not?” Felix asked, displaying the awful gravitas which had been forced on him but which he had kept, laid over him like a robe. “Does he know?”Chan thought of Hyunjin, resolutely swiping blood off his face. How hard Chan always tried to preempt his discomfort, how reluctant he’d become to order him to do anything the way he might with anyone else. Even Felix, who had always argued for a share of the physical work.The way Hyunjin had asked him to, once, and when Chan had failed to do it again he hadn’t pressed him for it.“I thought he did.”“I don’t own him,” Felix said again, wet and adamant. “So stop treating him like I do. Ask him if he wants to stay, and not me if I'd beg him to.” Chan was too quiet for too long, so Felix dealt him a much gentler blow. “I can leave. If that's what’s best.”“That's the last thing I want.”“Then what is?” Felix asked.To know that Felix in his bed was here not because of something he'd stopped himself from wanting, but because of something he'd found that he did. Because it was home. Chan couldn't find the words to say it, so he just offered Felix his hand. “I want you both to stay.”“Tell him that,” Felix said, his small fingers gripped hard around Chan’s own. “I won't tell him for you. Don't ask me to.”
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Felix went back to their room and found it empty.The irony was so deep he could have laughed, if he hadn’t already been so heavy-hearted. Hyunjin had been there recently: Felix smelled the peculiarly-scented soap he’d picked up at a market recently, the latest in a long line of experiments with it. He rarely bought the same one twice, even if it could be found around the myriad stations and hubs they stopped at. There were things out of place, and a hint of the way his clothes smelled when he’d been exerting himself lingered in the recirculated air. One of his socks was on the floor, and Felix put it back after deciding it was clean, enjoying the way Hyunjin had begun to just throw things in the bottom of the storage drawer which was his, a jumble of new colours instead of the neatly-folded black he’d always been provided with. He’d been exercising, and he’d gone for a shower.Felix sat down to wait, forcing himself to feel the space of the room without him in it, an ache which had become a mediation.Hyunjin came back when Felix had convinced himself to throw a serial up on the screen, though he was only half-watching it.“Is that–”“What Jeongin keeps telling me to watch. Some of them really are good singers.”Hyunjin shrugged, his newly-dried hair fluffy where it fell over his shoulders. “How’s Chan?”Felix flicked the screen off. “Hey,” Felix said, feeling himself start to lose his calm. “Will you come here for a second?”Hyunjin lay down next to him instantly, warm and only a tiny bit damp, and Felix rolled into him like he’d been gone for a year. “What happened?” Hyunjin asked, absently stroking some of Felix’s hair behind his ear.On the underside of his wrist and creeping up his arm was a new pattern, not yet faded, a series of little stars in a constellation which resolved into one Felix knew, which had been visible in the sky at home.Weeks ago, Felix had asked him for something and weeks ago Hyunjin had said yes. Felix put his thumb over the nearest mark, stroking it. “You don’t have to do mine, if you really don’t want to.”Hyunjin went still the way only he could, attuned to any kind of danger. “What’s this about?”“Chan and I had a fight.”“About me.”It wasn’t a question.“About me, actually,” Felix half-lied, and then couldn’t bring himself to finish. “So also about you.”Hyunjin absorbed it the way he always seemed to, silently receiving the honesty Felix had always offered him because he couldn’t give him anything else that mattered.“When you were gone I slept with him,” Hyunjin said, without preamble or explanation, shocking Felix to the core. “I asked him to. I don’t like sleeping alone. I couldn’t remember how.” He laughed, very softly, and Felix felt the pull of it, the delight in him it always provoked to hear it. “I didn’t realize how loud snoring was when it’s right in your ear.” He laced his fingers in with Felix’s, a strange physical echo of how Felix had held Chan’s hand only a short while ago, and how stricken Chan had been when Felix had told him he wasn’t different from so many others; that Felix knew how afraid of Hyunjin he was, because in his heart Felix knew what choice he’d make if he had to. If it ever became an ultimatum. Chan was a light in what had been a terrible darkness to him, but if Chan asked him to choose it wouldn’t even take a second. Hyunjin was too much to him, no matter what they couldn’t be to each other. The new image of them in bed together made him feel stretched out, like a crucial membrane inside him was thinning.“He’s a decent captain when he wants to be,” Hyunjin continued, interrupting Felix’s guilty imagination. Felix could always tell when Hyunjn was searching for words, thinking carefully about his choice to speak. “What was the fight about?”Felix put a hand on his face. Hyunjin’s high bones and smooth, warm skin were so familiar it ached. Felix had touched him like this so rarely, and with the memory of Chan’s shocked expression still in his mind it felt wrong, transgressive in a way he couldn’t explain. “Does he talk to you?”Hyunjin frowned, his dark eyebrows pulling together.“Exactly,” Felix said.“He did when you were gone,” Hyunjin told him. “They all did. They still do.”Felix couldn’t help the smile, or the terrible urge to tease him which bubbled up, new. “Changbin does, for sure.”Hyunjin smiled at him, only a hint of teeth between his lips. “That’s none of your business.”Felix pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes, overcome with it.“I’ll do it now if you want,” Hyunjin offered. “It doesn’t take very long.”“Are you sure?”Hyunjin nodded, a shift of the ground beneath them. Or, a lift away from it, dirt receding that they would never tread again. “You don't have to keep punishing yourself for being who you are, though,” he said, softly. “It's not something I do because it hurts. I just want you to know that.”Felix sat up and Hyunjin came with him. “Explain it to me?”Hyunjin laid his left wrist across Felix’s thigh, palm-up. “You remember these?”“From home.”“I used to look at them when we were out at night. I always thought the stories people told themselves about stars were ridiculous, because we knew what was up there.” Felix traced the spread of them, light-fingered, and Hyunjin kept talking. “But you know, now that we’re up here too, I miss them the way they used to be. I liked being in the gardens and seeing them. I didn’t think I’d have anything to miss from being on a planet, but I do. I don’t want to go back,” he said, slowing down as though the sensation of speaking it was strange, “but I like reminding myself of what I loved about it. Real gravity. Constellations that didn’t move, and were things people told each other stories about. Swimming.”“You miss swimming?” Felix hadn’t thought of the hours and hours they’d spent in the pool as anything other than physical maintenance, something there was no reason not to do but which he hadn’t enjoyed nearly as much as Hyunjin had. Felix instead called back the sun-touched childhood memories of going to the beach with his mother and getting Hyunjin, small, serious, really only a child as well, to help bury him in the sand.“Yes,” Hyunjin continued, unperturbed. “I miss sunlight, too. The lamps aren’t the same. Don’t you miss anything?”Felix stroked the little stars under his skin again, thinking about it. “I really, really miss the food.”Hyunjin made a noise like someone had hurt him, pulling his face into an exaggerated parody of longing. “Fuck, me too.” He laughed again, quietly. “We might have to learn to cook.”And there he was, under it all: the first friend Felix had ever had, the only person whose opinion Felix had ever needed until now, the only living, breathing being in the universe that Felix would have changed the world for if he could have. “Do you think I should have tried to take over and… I don’t know. Make it better?”“There was a constellation called the hydra,” Hyunjin said, after a long silence, his wrist still laid open, vulnerable, on Felix’s thigh. “I remember reading it in a book, you had to study it for school and fell asleep with it on your face. Something from the first planet we all came from. A monster with nine heads. ”The cluster of finely-rendered stars on Hyunjin was different, but Felix did remember. “If the person hunting it cut one off, two grew back in its place.”“I don’t think just one person can kill it,” Hyunjin said. “Even if it was you.”Felix could still feel the echo of the panic Chan’s confession had raised in him, like a distant klaxon, before he’d understood what he was really saying. “More people than just me are trying.” He traced his fingers up Hyunjin’s arm and down again, absent and comforting, thinking of the other ship, its sharp-edged crew. “I think even the others. More than we know.”“Good.”It was all he said, and there was a universe in it.“I want my name on me because I don’t want to forget it,” Felix said. “What I was meant to be and what I’m not.”“Your name like it’s yours,” Hyunjin said. “I remember.”
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It hurt.Felix had expected it to, but not the way it did.Hyunjin propped him up on some pillows with his shirt off, and set aside what he’d need on the bed beside them, laid out on a clean towel. He’d come back with some disinfectant which made him wrinkle his nose when he opened it, but he didn’t cap it off, instead sitting across Felix’s hips to get at the space under his collarbone where Felix had said he wanted to be marked.The cold touch of the swab made his skin prickle.“Are you sure?” Hyunjin asked, a pen turning over in his fingers.Felix looked up at him, huge in his field of vision. Hyunjin had even tied his hair back, and it made him look very serious and very young, all at once.“Yeah,” Felix said, dry-mouthed. “I am.”Hyunjin nodded only once, and started to draw on him.Felix remembered the contours of what he’d asked for, the half-abstracted blur of it, lost in the comforting weight of Hyunjin across his body.The first penetration of his skin didn’t hurt nearly as much as the concentration Hyunjin brought to it, and the quiet unfurling of his satisfaction as the tattoo took shape, a light in his eyes Felix had seen so rarely. More and more, now. More by the day.Felix lost himself in the heat of him, the sharp pain of the ink going in, and then finally the bright sting of the disinfectant again, a burn across the finger-length of skin Hyunjin had marked. “You can see now,” he said, pulling away.Felix fished out the hand mirror he’d surreptitiously spent money on they hadn’t had at the time at a market, so he wouldn’t have to keep asking Hyunjin how he looked.It was a tiny, fluidly abstract dragon, made up of the elongated lines which should have spelled his name. From the right angle, it did. From others, it was just a beautiful, fierce little creature, disguising what it was constructed from. “You changed it?” Felix asked, overcome.“If you hate it–”“I don’t,” Felix said. Quietly, thick in his throat. “Of course I don’t hate it.”“Still. Someone could take it off.”Felix moved to touch it, and then remembered at the last moment that it was a wound, too. “They can try,” he said, meaning it to land as a joke. “They’d have to catch me first.”Hyunjin just sharpened instead, a looseness disappearing from his body that Felix hadn’t truly registered until it was gone. “I won’t let that happen,” he said. “Not again. When you–”Felix grabbed his hand. “Hey. Hey, listen to me.” Hyunjin was still on top of him, close enough to Felix’s face that he hardly had to pull him back. “I love it,” he said, making sure he was listening. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”Hyunjin breathed against him, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “Please don’t joke about it.”“I only meant that anyone who’d try was in for a bad surprise,” he said, folding him into his arms, pulling him against his newly-marked collarbone. Hyunjin breathed out a protest, but with it –ah, it’ll get infected– his name, Yongbok, familiar like it only ever was when he said it. “Do you think I should let Chan call me that, too?”Hyunjin snorted inelegantly, breaking the moment with one breath. “He doesn’t?”“Not yet.”“Well,” Hyunjin said. “At least now he can read it if he forgets.”Felix punched him in the arm, drawing out the silly giggle Hyunjin unleashed sometimes when only Felix was around and he was pleased with himself, the winner of a game or victor in a specious argument. Felix laughed with him, carried by it, delighted by the thought that someone else might hear it one day too.
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Changbin had taught him three new card games by the time Hyunjin finally beat him at one. “Ha,” he muttered, throwing down the last card, feeling unexpectedly victorious. “I win.”“Ooh, talk dirty to me,” Changbin said, leaning back from the section of floor they’d claimed in the common room, grinning.Hyunjin’s suspicious nature, as it turned out, wasn’t going to fade away any time soon, no matter the little squirm of enjoyment Changbin’s casual teasing raised in him. “Did you let me win?”“What would be the fun in that?”Hyunjin didn’t have an answer, but luckily Jisung saved him from trying to find one, running in with Seungmin on his heels. “Oh, there you are,” he wheezed, hands on his knees. “Chan’s gonna kill Minho, want to watch?”“Absolutely." Changbin swept the cards up in one hand and crammed them back in the box.“Why?” Hyunjin asked, feeling it was pertinent.Jisung still hadn’t forgiven him for punching Minho, despite his glee at whatever was happening to him. He glanced down at Hyunjin and shrugged. “Chan found the cat.”Hyunjin had smelled the cat the instant Minho had snuck it into his room, but hadn’t thought it was any of his business aside from wondering privately what the point of it was. Chan had started sniffling less than two shifts later, and it had become a running note of cheerful solidarity that nobody would be the first to tell him what he was allergic to. Felix hadn’t complained for a second that Chan’s snoring had gotten markedly worse, even though nobody had told Felix, either. Hyunjin now seemed to be exempt from the assumption that what he knew, Felix knew, and Changbin had let him in on the joke long before it would have ever occurred to Hyunjin to put Chan out of his increasing misery about the random attacks of sneezing he was suddenly prone to.Changbin grabbed his hand to pull him along with the crowd. They found Jeongin, Felix and Minho already in the galley, facing Chan’s most powerfully wounded expression. “How did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Chan was asking, plaintively.Minho was holding the cat, a fluffy orange creature with large, benign yellow eyes. “I didn’t care if you found out,” Minho said, reasonably. “They asked me not to tell you.”Chan made a noise of pure, hurt outrage, and Changbin snorted.“Here to watch my demise?” Minho asked, seeing them all pile in.“Yeah,” Jisung and Seungmin chorused.“There’s not gonna be a demise." Chan pinched his blocked nose. “What’s it called?”“Boring,” Seungmin muttered.“Did you all know about this?” He scanned his audience, including Hyunjin in the disappointment.“Yeah,” Changbin confirmed. “I’m about to win so much money.”“Aw, you had today?”“You were betting?” Hyunjin whispered. “How much did you bet?”“Soonie,” Minho said, stroking its pointed ears until it started to make a noise like a tiny generator, startlingly loud to Hyunjin, who had never heard a cat do that before.“Enough to take you out to dinner,” Changbin crowed. “Cough up, Han.” Jisung handed over a chip and Changbin grinned before he made it disappear.“Traitor,” Minho said, scratching the cat under its chin.“Hey, I might have won!”Changbin had begun to look enormously satisfied. “C’mon, Chan. It’s pretty funny.”“I thought I was going crazy." Chan fished out a cloth, blowing his nose. “You’re buying me all the antihistamines you can find until I can get a shot. The ones that don’t make me sleepy.”“Can I go now?” Minho asked.“No,” Chan said. “Let me meet our newest crew member, so it knows the rules.”Felix caught Hyunjin’s eye, and Hyunjin knew he was done for; Felix was trying so hard not to laugh that his whole face had creased with it, and Hyunjin knew it was only a matter of time until he cracked. Hyunjin tried to stare him down but it didn’t work. It never did. Felix snorted, loud and low, and Hyunjin put a hand over his own mouth just in time for Felix to start laughing for real. Hyunjin let himself feel it, joining in where once he would have had to keep the straightest face he could have managed.“Not you too,” Chan asked, betrayed.“No,” Felix managed, still going. “I promise, I wasn’t in on it.”Chan looked at Hyunjin. “You knew?”“I could smell it,” Hyunjin said, getting a hold of himself.“Weird,” Minho let Chan lean forward to stroke the cat very gently. It purred harder, pushing into his fingers. “You’re really not mad?”“Of course I’m mad, I haven’t slept in days, but I’m not going to make you choose between me or the cat, and you’re still my crew.”“Oh, good,” Minho said, settling back out of his wary posture.As if on cue, Chan sneezed. The cat leapt out of Minho’s arms and streaked away, brushing past Hyunjin’s ankles on its way to the hatch. By reflex, he scooped it up, and it yowled once before it scratched him across the arm, four bright streaks of blood appearing where it had dragged its tiny little claws. When he didn’t drop it the cat just stared at him, as though both of them were as surprised as each other.Everyone had gone quiet as he did it, even though the scratches healed right away. “Hello,” he said to it. “I didn’t bet on you.”“He didn’t tell me either,” Felix said, breaking the silence. “I promise.”Chan sneezed again and Hyunjin put the cat down, deciding it was entirely harmless, and possibly even a little bit pleasant; a living thing with wants of its own, set free to roam their little world. “Where are you taking me to dinner?” Hyunjin asked Changbin, feeling very daring about it.“Baby, anywhere you want,” he said, linking their elbows. “As long as it’s reasonably priced and on the next station we visit.”“Okay,” Hyunjin agreed. “We can find Chan some antihistamines, too.”“Fucking thank you,” Chan muttered. “You’re all the worst.”“Not me, though.”“No, you’re an angel,” Chan said to Felix. “The rest of you are dead to me.”“See?” Seungmin said. “I told you Chan was going to kill him.”Jeongin punched him in the arm with an enormous grin and told him what a terrible joke like that deserved.Hyunjin wondered where the cat had gone, now that it had so much more room to wander in.
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The door chimed an entry request.Felix looked up from the serial he was watching and pulled out one of his earbuds. He glanced at Hyunjin, frowning. “Chan just knocks,” he murmured.Hyunjin folded aside the drawing he’d been quietly working on and went to investigate. Their room didn’t have an exterior viewport, which he’d always found to be an oversight but had never put his foot down about rectifying. He opened it, blocking the hatch with his body.Changbin grinned up at him, his jumpsuit down around his waist and his undershirt clinging to his chest. “Hey, do you want to learn how to rivet?”“Why?”Changbin’s smile dimmed, but only slightly. “Honestly, it’s kind of fun when it’s just maintenance. You can make patterns, I thought you might enjoy it. Also, Seungmin says he’s on strike. Something about running out of fruit? I wasn’t listening.”“Are we landing soon?”“Yeah, we need to,” Changbin said. “So are you in or not?”Hyunjin glanced over his shoulder at Felix, who was listening with a tiny smile. Go, he mouthed, and put his earbud back in. It hurt in a strange, small way that it felt like permission, but he didn’t think Felix had meant it like that, and Hyunjin wouldn’t do him the crime of taking it as though he had. “Yeah, okay.”“Sick.” Changbin stepped back. “You don’t need to bring anything, I can find you some gear.”Changbin ambled off and Hyunjin followed him, enjoying the sound of his voice as he was explaining the concept of it: they would have to be outside the environmental protection field, and Hyunjin assumed that was why he’d been asked until Changbin said “I’ll do the void space, it’s not fair for you to have to, since it’s your first time. I’ll have to turn off the atmospheric regulators on the other side too, but we’re only replacing the rivets which are due for removal anyway, so it’s only to accommodate the pressure differential, don’t worry. The suit will cope. And afterwards we can fuck around with the old ones, like I said.”“I’ll be fine if I’m outside the—”“Yeah, I know,” Changbin said, cutting him off. “It would just be shitty to ask you to before you even know how to do it.”“Oh.”Changbin put his arm around Hyunjin’s waist, warm and muscular and very solid. “Also like I said, the new ones come out a different colour, and I like to try and make patterns with them. I thought you could help.”Hyunjin laid an arm across Changbin’s shoulders, letting his hand hang down his chest, enjoying the way it felt different from holding Felix and the way Changbin smiled at him, delighted not to be pushed away. Hyunjin still did it sometimes when he really didn’t want to be touched by a stranger, and Changbin always got the message, even though he wasn't a stranger anymore.
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“Are you ready?”Changbin’s voice crackled through the intercom in his helmet, distorted by the plating.“Yeah, I think so.”“Okay, first one out, unclamp it like I showed you.”Hyunjin set the end of the gun against the seal and let it clamp. He twisted, and the end of the huge rivet came away, easy in the lack of gravity. What was harder was stabilizing himself, braced against the interior shell of the hull. They were only fixing some inner plates, but the thin membrane behind the outer hull and the void space within it were a dangerous place to be with very few egress points, and when Changbin undid his side and pushed it through, Hyunjin was very relieved to see half his face behind his faceplate.“Hi,” Changbin said, waving through the aperture. “That wasn’t so bad. Must have been loose. Ready?”His voice wasn’t travelling in the minimal atmosphere but conducting through the comm loop, and Hyunjin could feel it vibrating in his jaw. “Yeah.”Changbin gave him a thumbs up and slid the next one into the space the old one had left behind. His voice buzzed against Hyunjin’s bone again. “Now clamp it.”Hyunjin set the tool to do so, and found himself nearly shot across the hold with the inertia when it pistoned against his body. He had to activate the magnetic functions of his boots to stay in place, and he cursed, scrambling not to have to bounce himself back into position like the balls Chan and Jeongin sometimes made a game of throwing around in the storage rooms.He could feel Changbin laughing. “Asshole.”“Happens to everyone. Try again.”Hyunjin managed it the second time, and watching the rivet deform into the plating was shockingly satisfying. “Oh.”“Good, huh?” C’mon, we’ve got eight more to do.”They worked in relative quiet for what felt like a long time, until Hyunjin’s thighs and back were pleasantly sore and he had found a rhythm in it, even enjoying the ones which wouldn’t come out right away.When they were finished they hadn't found any stress fracturing in the interior plating, and the new rivets were offset in sets of three, making a stepped gradient of new and old metals.He was still laid back with the gun on his chest, floating by his magnetised feet to admire it, when Changbin started sending the rest of the used pieces and tools back through the access hatch and asked him to catch them.Hyunjin enjoyed the challenge of the different trajectories, and when he’d gathered all of the pieces and tools into neat rows near where the floor would be when the gravity came back on, Changbin grinned. “Here’s the fun part,” he said, handing Hyunjin one of the guns. “What do you want to make?”“What do you mean?”“It’s all going to scrap anyway, and if you make something big we can just dismantle it. Go nuts. Last time Seungmin made a bunch of bocce balls he still has, so if it’s something small enough to keep nobody will care about the tonnage.”“What’s bocce?”“Fucked if I know,” Changbin said. “I’m trading my share in for some guitar strings so Jisung will stop trying to make his own. That thing sounds like he’s assembled it out of cans at this point. The only rule is no welding. Nobody wants a repeat of the slag incident. Too much oxygen in the pre-mix.”“Okay,” Hyunjin said, trying to understand exactly what he meant. “Do I just—”“Here,” Changbin said, grabbing two ex-rivet ends and bracing them against a slightly deformed body which he’d explained was the reason they replaced these parts before they failed. He grabbed a boring tool from Hyunjin’s neat arrangement and lined it up, checking its settings. “Pass me that mag clamp?”Hyunjin did it, watching him secure it before he bored a hole through both pieces of metal, one after the other, and extracted two discs, shiny and warm around the edges, detected by the heat sensors in Hyunjin’s suit. Changbin held one up in his gloved fingers. “Watch.” He folded it slowly into his palm, and ostensibly made it disappear. Without gravity Hyunjin could see the toss, and the way he flicked it towards one of his pockets before his other hand arrested it and set it to spin slowly in the space between their faces. “I’ll polish them and use them for practice.”Hyunjin could see from the edges that the metal core had a strange, coppery sheen, more malleable than he would have thought. He held his hand out for the boring gun and Changbin handed it to him. “I’m going to test the void space pressure in about an hour,” he said. “But take your time.”“Where are you going?”“To shower,” Changbin said cheerfully, “it’s fucking gross in there.”His suit wasn’t any more streaked with grime than it usually was, but Hyunjin didn’t argue with him, feeling the unusual sensation of sweat pooling in his lower back despite the frigidity of any space on the ship without active life support. He wouldn’t have too long to work before it was too cold anyway. Likely no more than the hour Changbin had promised him. “You’re just going to— let me?”“Sure,” Changbin said. “You know how to use the tools now. Go nuts.”He sailed off towards the airlock without a backwards glance, leaving Hyunjin alone in the hold.For a while, it was like his first tattoos, cut patterns without intention, just to see how the metal would move for everything he did to it.It was the shine which caught his interest, the revealed interior of it.As his fingers got colder he bored four sections out again, clamping them to take a thin core cylinder from the middle layers, and then he split them. By the time he knew Changbin would have to turn on the life support again he’d carved out four rings of varying sizes, square-edged and burred, but he didn’t think any of them would begrudge him the use of a file or some grinding paste.He pocketed them and secured the rest of the scrap before he took the tools back to the airlock and keyed himself out.
-
They landed on a station at the outskirts of the sector they’d been working in, the delineation of which was marked with competing advertising for people to sign up to jobs with other corporations, or the ubiquitous calls to join the exploration forces. Hyunjin had started paying more attention to when and how the targeting advertising shifted, and the way it provoked discomfort in him he wasn’t expecting to feel. Why should he care which corporation controlled which mapped sectors, or how many people they needed for new projects? There was no specific thing he could point to which had started it, only that once he had begun to notice he couldn’t stop. Calls to sign into lucrative, competitive rates and promises of see new worlds! crackling out of any commlink not in use, assaulting them with false promises.“Ooh, you’re making the face again,” Changbin said, when they’d nominated themselves to go on a hunt for a particular drill-bit Changbin wanted. Felix and Chan had stayed aboard with Minho, and Jisung, Seungmin and Jeongin were out for consumables. “We don’t have to eat.”“I always want to eat,” Hyunjin muttered. “It’s the noise.”Changbin grimaced at the next flashing message. “It’s bad on this one.”Hyunjin didn’t feel the need to add to that. It was.“I fell for it,” Changbin said, ducking them onto a shabby lift platform, empty except for them, going down. “Signed up for an extraction job, the works.”Hyunjin could only look at him.“Yeah, I mean, I grew up on a terraforming world, right? You ever been to one of those?” The levels clanged past, and Changbin ticked them off on his fingers. “Shit, fifth one down, I think. How many was that?”“Three.”“Spook.” He grinned and reset his fingers. “I wanted to go to space so badly.”“Why?”Changbin looked up at him, only one finger still sticking out. “People leave home for all sorts of reasons,” he said, unusually quiet. “You know plenty of them. Terraforming takes forever. My sister was sick, my parents were busy, I wanted to do my own thing. You pick.”The platform started to flash past the next level and Changbin cursed and threw himself for the stop. They slammed to a halt, and Hyunjin grabbed him by the back of his shirt when he almost fell and put him back on his feet.“What would we do without you?” Changbin asked, delighted.“Fall over.”“So true. C’mon, I really wanna talk to this girl, you’ll love her.” He jogged off the lift and down the grimy hallway, without waiting to see if Hyunjin would follow.They clanged across a series of flimsy-looking gantries, and then Changbin turned them into a line of workshops, mostly with open doors, a hot, close corridor filled with a very different kind of noise. Hyunjin froze, and Changbin only took two steps before he looked back. “Hey, what’s the matter?”It was discordantly loud, and hot, and Hyunjin really had gotten hungry. “I’m fine.”“Doesn’t look like it,” Changbin said, peering up at him. “You should—”“Don’t tell me what I should do,” Hyunjin muttered.Changbin stepped back, quieted. “Yeah, I walked into that one,” he said. “Okay. What do you want to do?”Hyunjin was thinking of the advertisements, and the things Felix had told him about Chan, and how Changbin was here instead of on an asteroid somewhere, trapped in a contract he’d never pay out of. Hyunjin wanted to go back to the ship, quiet and warm and filled with things which were familiar. He wanted to sit in a corner and draw until his eyes hurt. “Can we eat before we do– this?”“I did promise you dinner,” Changbin said. “Tools can always wait. Self included.”“You’re not a tool,” Hyunjin hissed, something in his hearing vibrating with a terrible, high-pitched whine before it died off, coming from one of the shops. He put a hand to his ear, as though that might make it better.“That’s not what I meant.”“I’m going back up,” Hyunjin said. And then: “please come with me.”Solemnly, Changbin held out a hand. “Anywhere you want. I’ve got your back.”Hyunjin took it and dragged him back towards the lift, shocked at how easily Changbin had let him.
-
Changbin let the silence stretch after the food arrived, and Hyunjin should have known that such an unusual display of tact was too good to be true.Changbin waited to speak until Hyunjin had a mouthful of hot noodles, spice going blissfully up his nose.“It’s sexy when you inhale your food without chewing it, don't listen to anything Jisung says.”Hyunjin swallowed by force, wondering if it was possible for him to die from choking.“Do you feel better?”“I liked it better when nobody cared how I felt,” Hyunjin wheezed, forcing down the last of it.Changbin just looked at him, stirring his own broth with his chopsticks. The cafe was as faintly shabby as everywhere else on this station, but much more crowded. People crammed themselves onto benches, eating in small, grimy groups, chattering in a scattershot variety of languages. Hyunjin and Changbin drew eyes despite their ordinary clothes, not because they were people who stood out but because they were cleaner, neater, more obviously cared-for. Hyunjin hadn't spotted anyone trying to pick their pockets. It wasn't that kind of attention.Changbin either hadn't noticed or didn't care.“What was it like? Where you're from.”Changbin shrugged. “Oh, you know. It's like anywhere. Some good things, some bad things. A lot like this.” He waved, drops of oil dripping across the table. “Hot and crowded in the domes. I was always good at making stuff, so I could have stayed, been a fabricator. It's not a long life, but it can be a decent one. The environmental conditions were really good for metallurgy, don't ask me why.” He smiled, his broad face creasing. “I wanted more, but it was hard to leave. They try to keep labor dirt-side to finish the environmental engineering. And then–”“It got harder?”Changbin grimaced. “Well, yeah. But I don't have to explain it to you.”Chastened, Hyunjin kept eating.“Fuck. No, I meant… I think you already understand that it's not always the first big choice you make which ends up being the difficult one.” Changbin flushed and stuffed a mouthful of noodles into his cheek.Hyunjin had never made any big choices.Only a series of smaller ones, gently creeping towards something he could feel building between them which he didn't have a name for. “Why did you kiss me, really?”Changbin couldn't answer right away, still chewing. “Just so you know the offer’s there,” he said, surprisingly serious when his mouth was less full. “I'm not sitting here waiting for you to take me up on it. I like you. We're friends. I never thought you were that scary, even after I saw you get-”Hyunjin leaned across the table and pressed his lips to Changbin’s, unpracticed, and discovered the delight to be had from his shocked little gasp and the lingering taste of spice on his skin.“I'd never done that before,” Hyunjin explained, when Changbin just grinned at him, transparently delighted.“Fantastic,” Changbin breathed. “Everyone else is a loser. Do you want to go back to the ship?”Hyunjin looked around over the last of his steaming bowl and saw that their little display had turned away the interest of most other people. “Yes,” he said, and drank the rest.“You're such a freak,” Changbin said, with great admiration. “I wish I could do that.”Hyunjin could have told him the cost of it, the lingering weight of its price, but instead he just smiled back, grateful beyond measure that Changbin had wound up exactly where he was, too. “If you want to try I'll probably help you when you choke,” he said instead, just to make him laugh, and he did.
-
Hyunjin had never been in anyone else’s room on the ship besides Chan’s. There was an unspoken barrier in his mind, a sort of unbreachable forcefield which he’d always assumed the others shared. They couldn’t come to Felix’s room, a space in which only two bodies resided. Even Chan had never come beyond the door, sensing something Hyunjin hadn’t articulated to him, and he doubted Felix had either. It was just how it was, that there needed to be a place where the two of them could be alone. Over the last few months he’d noticed that to others the barriers elsewhere were more permeable. Jisung and Minho were in and out of each other’s beds all the time, barring the occasional screaming argument nobody else understood, and everyone had space for Jeongin if he wanted it. There was some hidden hierarchy of age which Hyunjin didn’t fully understand, but Chan was the undisputed oldest. Somehow this seemed to mean he was more available to everyone than anyone else.“You can just come in,” Changbin said, when Hyunjin caught himself hesitating at the hatch. “I don’t have a roommate, Seungmin moved out ages ago.”Hyunjin let Changbin pull him over the threshold and palm the door closed behind them.“Hey,” Changbin said, in the profound silence afterwards, “I’m gonna kiss you again, okay?”Hyunjin decided it was time he exercised some initiative and took Changbin’s face between his palms, feeling the warm prickle of the beard he shaved off every morning, leaving little traces behind in the recyclers, and the way his muscles moved when he smiled. Hyunjin kissed him, unsure of everything except the new familiarity of the warmth which was creeping up his body.“Ooh, better,” Changbin said, when Hyunjin needed to breathe. “Hold still.”Changbin did it back, deepening it. It felt natural after a while, the way Hyunjin had ever learned anything, with repetition and imitation until it settled into his body, but without the sense of terror which had accompanied so much of his training. It nearly stopped him cold to realize it, that this was a pleasure, uncomplicated and offered as exactly what it was.“Hey,” Changbin said, brushing some of his hair back behind his ear. “You good up there?”“Yes.”“Cool. I’m about to take all my clothes off and sit on the bed looking seductive, and my intention here is to get your cock in my mouth.”Hyunjin could only laugh.“It’s not meant to be funny,” Changbin exclaimed. “I’m deadly serious about this mission.”Hyunjin only laughed harder, leaning on him. “Is it always like this?”“It’s never always anything,” Changbin said, kissing him on the cheek. “It’s whatever you want it to be, even if we stop here and I coax you into bed so I can play with all that hair.”“No, I like the first plan better.”“Oh, good,” Changbin said, and grabbed him by the shirt. “Off?”“Off,” Hyunjin agreed.He’d never been naked by choice in front of anybody except Felix, but the way Changbin grinned at him took the sting of vulnerability out of it. “I knew it,” he said, admiringly. “You’re perfect. Bastard.”Hyunjin pushed him down only the bed, climbed on top of him and started pulling his pants off. “It’s just how I was made,” he explained, much more interested in seeing what someone else looked like under their clothes.Changbin stroked a thumb across his jaw, close and warm. “Sure. Does that mean you don’t want me to say it?”Hyunjin paused, ferociously ready to be touched. “It’s just not interesting.”“Okay,” Changbin said. “I’m gonna bite this, then.” He flicked one of Hyunjin’s nipples and did it, sending a rush of something not unlike adrenaline through his body. Hyunjin yelped, not ready for the way the faint pain of it mingled with the buzz of want under his skin, making him even harder than he already was. He finally succeeded in undressing Changbin all the way, both of them tangled together in Changbin’s sheets, and got to discover that the skin on his thighs was very soft, and that the heavy muscle across his shoulders continued to a strong, pleasing waist and a surprising lack of hair between his legs, where Hyunjin had a sudden urge to put his face and breathe. He did it, figuring if Changbin wasn’t happy with it he’d say so.Changbin gasped and threaded his fingers into Hyunjin’s hair, very different from how Felix sometimes absently scratched across his scalp when they were nearly asleep. “Whoa, hey,” Changbin said, quietly. “If this is your first time—”“It is.”“Will you let me make you feel good, first?”Hyunjin laid his cheek on Changbin’s thigh and looked at him, elongated, from such a new angle. “Why?”Changbin shrugging moved his whole body. “I want to see you enjoying yourself.”Hyunjin could feel his face heating up, a horrible little squirm of want in his chest. He didn’t usually feel any urge to explain himself, but something in how Changbin was touching him made him want to. “I know what I look like,” he said, trying not to get overwhelmed by the scent of him, the warmth of his skin, the faint pulse of his femoral artery which Hyunjin could feel against his ear. “People have always looked at me.”“So you don’t like it?”“I never cared,” Hyunjin said, feeling it out as he put his palm on the rise of Changbin’s hip, pressing down gently on the hidden bone. “It had nothing to do with me.”Changbin cupped the back of his head, his arousal very obvious in Hyunjin’s near vision, but he just stayed there for a second, holding him. “Hey,” Changbin said, breathlessly. “I’m not going to lie to you. You’re insane to look at. It’s like someone dropped one of those composites from a serial into real life. But you’re also a fucking weirdo. You make me laugh. I like you.” He reached for Hyunjin’s hand with his free one, lacing their fingers together against his ribs. “It's not a performance review. If you want to stop, we stop. I’ll play cards with you any day.”Hyunjin held his hand as tightly as he thought he could without hurting him. “I make you laugh?”“You have clearly never seen yourself eat,” Changbin said, running his thumb over Hyunjin’s knuckles. “I’m a little worried about what you’re about to do to my— ah!”Hyunjin hadn’t thought tasting him like this – warm, a little bit salty, a scent around him which was just like how he always smelled but stronger, more immediate – would make Changbin breathe like that, even if it had started as a bright, shocked laugh, just like he’d said.Changbin, because he was Changbin, talked the whole time. Hyunjin didn’t want to take direction the way he’d always been given it, without equivocation or kindness, but the way Changbin did it was as though they were playing another game. Hyunjin felt like he could have made it go on for hours, if he wanted. It was a surprisingly powerful thought, that Changbin was letting him do what he wanted because it made both of them feel good. The friction of his body against Changbin’s legs was pulling him tight, building new anticipation under his skin. The taste of him was new. He hadn’t thought his skin would be so soft, or that he’d want to be surrounded by the scent of him for as long as Changbin would let him.He like the way Changbin shivered when Hyunjin dragged his tongue up under the delicate tip of him.“I’m about to—”Changbin’s warning came slightly too late, but Hyunjin could still feel his pulse, his breath, the minute way his muscles shifted, and he already knew. He swallowed, not sure what else to do, and found himself faintly disappointed it couldn’t have lasted longer; soft on his tongue and hot all around, the combined heat of their bodies surrounding him as the specific sour taste lingered on his tongue.The fading noise Changbin had made, like he’d tried to hold it in and couldn’t.When it was finished, Hyunjin’s mouth felt very wet and empty, and he had no idea what to say.Changbin looked breathlessly at him, propped on one elbow, and swiped his fingers across Hyunjin’s lips. “Hyunjin,” he said, very seriously. “If you don’t want me to admire you, you have to stop looking like everything I’ve ever fantasized about when I jerk off.”“You can admire me now,” Hyunjin said, hoarse.“Great,” Changbin whispered, before he wrapped his thighs around him and turned them over, a neat throw of his hips that Hyunjin, off-guard, didn’t defend against at all. He flailed, but Changbin caught him with a kiss to his throat. “Your turn.”Hyunjin almost hadn’t expected it. He’d gotten so used to ignoring the new urgency of his body that it had nearly become a constant, but when Changbin’s lips closed around him he nearly jumped away, overwhelmed by the heat. He must have made a noise because Changbin slowed down, long, even strokes and the familiar roughness of his palm stroking down Hyunjin’s thigh, but it still felt like only seconds before Hyunjin dug his fingers into his shoulder as a warning, finding he couldn’t speak at all.Changbin hummed, a pleased, smug little sound, and Hyunjin lost himself to it all, the intensity of climax making him close his eyes against it.He could see now why people spent their lives chasing it.When he opened them again, Changbin had rested his head on Hyunjin’s chest and was stroking his fingertips absently across his ribs, nearly tickling him. He seemed content to wait however long it might take for Hyunjin to come back from it, and Hyunjin was suddenly overcome with the patience Chnagbin was offering, as though that was an easy thing to give.Hyunjin pushed Changbin’s hair off his forehead so he could see his eyes, and Changbin looked up at him, lifting himself away. “So how was that for you?” He asked, starting to smile. “Not bad for a first time?”Hyunjin kind of wanted to smack him, a laugh creeping up on him as soon as he thought it. “Don’t look so smug.”“Can’t help it,” Changbin said, grinning again. “That’s just my face.”Hyunjin pulled him up for a kiss by the hair, as gently as he could manage.He felt him smiling and didn’t need to see it to know what it looked like.
-
The next time they passed a node Hyunjin sat down in the comms chair and keyed himself in. He didn’t have any messages, but he had only come here to send one.He turned the camera on after a moment of hesitation, unsure what he’d see if he was confronted with his own moving face.It looked different, even though he’d seen himself hundreds of times in reflective surfaces, in the mirror Felix had in their room, stored next to the makeup he wore sometimes.Hyunjin was confronted with his features in the dim light, and quietly keyed in the command to brighten the area.The lights came up and he looked at himself, the moving image: his high cheekbones and wide-set eyes, the distinctive nose Felix had stroked once and said it made him look like old portraits. His small, pointed chin, and the thick fall of black hair he hadn’t quite known had gotten so long.His cheeks were leaner, his jaw sharper. His eyebrows were the same, dense and sweeping, and so was his mouth, wide and mobile no matter how hard he tried not to let things show in his expression. He was frowning the way he’d often been told not to; that it was his duty to be calm, unobtrusive, easy to ignore. Opinionless.All of him looked… finished, like something of childhood which had been lingering in him had melted away.He started a recording before he could talk himself out of it.“I just needed to thank you.” He drew his bottom lip through his teeth, watching the white-on-pink obscenity of it. “I knew why people looked at me. I just didn’t think it was something I could have, or anything I wanted. But now I know.” He paused again, looking at the time stamps. It had been a long time since Yunho had treated him, but not nearly enough that Hyunjin could have pretended he hadn't been given back something which had been taken from him without his knowledge.It had begun to sit in him like a stone, that how he'd been made wasn't finite, had never been, and even Felix hadn't known how managed he'd been, lost into the routine of their life.“I never thought it would make me so angry.” He stared at himself, meeting his own eyes, wide-set and furious, just like he’d said. So many things he'd never been meant to do, which he had the capacity for. Practical jokes. Dinner with a friend. Sex, for all he'd been told what it was and that he might one day be expected to endure it despite how explicitly prohibited he'd been from desire of his own.Allowing himself to sit with his anger, too. It wasn't anyone else's.He sent it unedited, the long stretch of him looking at his own face as honest as anything he'd managed to say.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Chan got a message from Hongjoong about a year after they’d retrieved Felix, from a node on the outskirts of where Chan knew he usually went. It could have been a year for Chan but less or more for Hongjoong, and he checked against the timestamp just in case. It seemed like Hongjoong had been in jumpspace for a bit longer overall, and Chan wondered at the resource output that required, hoping against his best judgement that he was okay.It was voice-only, and Chan listened to it before he ran it through the translation software, just in case. Hongjoong’s accent was sometimes a little difficult to decipher, but Chan preferred to listen to people as they were. Hongjoong sounded tired, and he was asking for a favour.“I’d appreciate it if you’d take a crew member of mine outside the border. He’s our medic, so try not to break him. I’ll want him back at some point.”Chan ran it through a few times, making sure he hadn’t missed any nuance, but that was what it amounted to. Hongjoong wanted Chan’s services, and Chan did, in fact, owe him one.He’d probably charge him a little bit, just so Hongjoong didn’t get suspicious about the freebie, but Chan had someone else he’d have to check with first before he could say he’d do it. Two people.Chan sent him an acknowledgement ping, just to see if it went through in real time. It didn’t, so Chan had at least a few days before he'd be back to check on it, and could construct a better agreement before he sent it.He went back to his room stewing on how he’d phrase it. Felix wasn’t there, something Chan felt stranger and stranger about. He’d started expecting him, now that Felix wasn’t quite so religious about telling Hyunjin where he was. The lingering worry Chan had to sit with was that while Felix might not be receptive to the idea of a passenger from Hongjoong’s crew, it was Hyunjin who’d had the worse experience with them. Chan didn’t understand all the details, but, just like Felix had told him all those months ago, it was because he hadn’t asked.Hyunjin wasn’t difficult to find usually, or really that difficult to speak to. He just didn’t start conversations, and Chan had long since settled into the habit of assuming that meant Hyunjin didn’t want to talk to him.It was easier, and it had increasingly made Chan feel like the biggest dickhead in the universe.He put on a different shirt for some reason, lingering in front of his storage drawer for too long, and then told himself he was being ridiculous and went to find him.Hyunjin wasn’t with Changbin, for once, or with Felix when he checked their room. It figured that the one time Chan really had to speak to him he was suddenly nowhere in sight. “Hey,” he said, when Felix looked blearily up from where he’d fallen asleep after the night shift on watch he’d volunteered for. “Do you know where Hyunjin is?”“Huh?”Chan would never get tired of the way his deep voice went rough and low when he was half-asleep. He wished he could come in and climb into the bed with him, but Hyunjin would smell it if he did, and the thought still filled him with a sensation like he was holding a bomb in both hands. “I got a message from Hongjoong and I need to talk to him about it.”Felix pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and sat up, letting the covers slide off his chest. He wasn’t wearing any clothes, and Chan had a sudden wish they’d stopped somewhere cooler instead of one of his favorite stations in the whole area, one which had a robust cottage industry of fruit production, a wildly specific and wealthy enterprise. It was hot and humid everywhere, and Chan had chosen to pay for an atmospheric dock, so they could take on supplies more easily and so he could enjoy the weather.“What message?”“He wants us to take their medic somewhere,” Chan said, because he’d have to tell Felix anyway. “I was going to talk to you about it too, but—”“Their medic?”Felix really was tired. He took working seriously, something Chan hadn’t honestly expected, and when Chan left him encryptions to do he did them well, efficiently, and with a great deal of conscientious attention. He also spoke more languages than anyone else except for Chan himself, a side effect of his wildly expensive education and his own quiet acumen for them. He'd also been pulling hours in the flight control simulator until Jisung had just started rotating him in for pilot duty, which was mostly a standby role unless they were near other craft. “Yeah, Yunho.”Felix stared at him, slowly coming to life. “You’re going to say yes.”“I haven’t decided yet. I wanted to talk to the two of you about it.”“You owe Hongjoong a favour,” Felix pointed out, swinging his legs over the side of the bunk and treating Chan to a view of his calves, lightly dusted with dark hair which Chan still found compellingly at odds with his startling white head. Neither he nor Hyunjin had asked for a haircut in all the time they’d been in space, and Chan had always quietly wondered if it was some kind of mark of time for both of them.“I won’t say yes or no until I know you’re both fine with it.”Felix pushed his fringe out of his face, finally alert. “He doesn’t like me, but I don’t care,” he said. “So don’t say no just because of that.”“What do you think Hyunjin will say?”“Ask him,” Felix said, reaching for a shirt which was crumpled on the ground, a dark green one Chan recognized after a second as Changbin’s. Felix pulled it on without looking and it hung off his frame, exposing a maddening glimpse of freckled collarbone. He got up to put on some tight shorts, which could have been his or Hyunjin’s; neither of them cared at all whose clothes belonged to who. Felix’s perfectly-tailored wardrobe had been, as Chan had quickly learned, only an imposition. Hyunjin had worn black in all the times Chan had seen them when they’d asked for his help to leave, but in private Hyunjin would put on whatever was closest which would fit over his shoulders, as Chan had also learned the hard way.Now he had a tendency to wear reds, teals, bright white which he regularly painted onto. Or clothes which had migrated from Changbin’s storage to his. “Is he painting or something?”“I was asleep three minutes ago,” Felix muttered, “I’m not telepathic. Ask Changbin.”“Tried that,” Chan admitted.Felix grinned, sudden and bright. “Chan. Does this mean you don’t know where your crew is?”“Hey. We’re on—it’s shore leave. People can do whatever they want, as long as someone’s—”“On the ship,” Felix finished. “Someone meaning you.”“Well, it’s my ship.”As if to make a liar of him, Minho’s cat came trotting down the hall and brushed past his ankles to leap onto the warm bedding, and Felix perched next to it to give him a little rub behind the ears. “Hi, Soonie.”Soonie purred aggressively, butting his head against Felix’s fingers.Chan had acquired the necessary shots to mitigate his allergy, and he couldn’t deny it was nice to have a little creature around, but Chan would die before he’d ever admit that to Minho.“I’ll help you find him,” Felix said, “but you’re the one who has to ask him.”“Deal,” Chan said.“You can come in, you know.”Chan put a hand on the doorway, hesitant for no reason he really had words for. “I know. It’s just—”“Yeah,” Felix said, like he’d given up on winning the argument. “Let me find some boots.”
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Chan caught Jisung coming out of Minho’s room and flagged him down, feeling lighter than usual in the lower gravity of the dock. “Hey, can you stay aboard for a bit? We’re going down.”“We’re on a level dock,” Jisung protested, proving Minho had rubbed off on him. “I was just about to leave.”“You can go back to bed,” Chan suggested, dodging Jisung’s outraged squawk as he jogged past him towards the airlocks.Chan could hear Felix laughing behind him, racing to catch up while Jisung called him a traitor to pirates everywhere.Felix collided with his back in the chamber, not quite used to the lighter gravity all the farms here swore by, and Chan turned to steady him. Felix was the one who turned it into a kiss, holding him by both cheeks.Chan returned it, relaxing into it. “We should go,” he said, remembering he had a mission.Felix reached past him and activated the air cycle, and the press of his body and the delight on his face made it easier to feel good about leaving the ship. Felix never seemed to get tired of traveling, the places Chan showed him all received with the same kind of bright interest, though Chan could tell he liked the warmer ones as much as he did.The airlock opened to the profuse humidity Chan had been craving, a blast of wet climate which started dripping off his eyelashes immediately.The ship was beaded with moisture, and when he closed the locks behind them he put a hand on it, reassured by the bulk of it curving sleekly away from them, sealed into the level dock membrane.There were three more locks to go before they were on an atmospheric deck, with perforation suits hanging in emergency lockers all the way through, but Chan hadn’t brought his own out. This station was such a resource for this sector that barring accidental damage it was unlikely to suffer sabotage. Pretty much everyone needed oranges once in a while.Felix was smiling up at the climate cyclers when they finally reached the public levels, his hands turned up to feel the moisture as though it really was rain. “Doesn’t this cost a fortune?”“It’s part of their oxygen cycle,” Chan explained. “And yeah, it does, but there’s a lot of reasons people might have for not trying to steal it.”“The advantage of providing something everyone wants?”“At a price a lot of us can afford,” Chan felt compelled to point out. “Most of it goes back to station maintenance. The people who live here are mental, but that’s kind of why it works.”“I like it.”Chan could already tell, but it was nice to hear it anyway. “I was hoping you would.”Felix glanced at him. “Someday you’re going to have to stop treating me like a tourist.”“But I like showing you the places I love,” Chan admitted, feeling his face heat up. “If you were Hyunjin where would you be?”“Where the food is,” Felix said without bristling.“This way, then.”The markets here weren’t all fruit, though it was heavier on it than anything else. Felix stopped dead in his tracks when Chan led him to the prepared food market, a long, narrow series of galleries arranged over many years as what could only be described as a maze, long alleys and claimed areas for sitting, crowded with people of every imaginable kind.“What does he like?” Chan prompted, when Felix just stared.“Oh. Uh, anything spicy.”That didn’t narrow it down, but it did take them to savoury, a sort of loose organizational system in place which was mostly logical. Chan led them down towards the section where the people who farmed peppers tended to have tasting stalls. “You couldn’t convince him to take a handheld?”“I didn’t know he was going out,” Felix said.It lay unspoken between them, in the space under Felix’s delight at where they were, that this was new.“Shame you aren’t telepathic.”“Don’t joke about that,” Felix said, still smiling. “We might have tried.”“I think that mod drives people crazy.”“We didn’t need any help there,” Felix said, before he scanned the market again, peering into every booth and recess. Chan left him to it. If anyone was going to find Hyunjin in a crowd it was Felix, who ducked under a hanging sign even though there was no way it would have hit either of their heads. “Hyunjin!”He was sitting in a corner booth with his knees up against the table, crammed in so someone even longer than him could fit opposite, both of them bent over a shared bowl of something violently red.Hyunjin looked up, even though he was still far enough away that had Chan been sitting where he was he might not have heard it. He waved, a laconic raise of his long, bare arm, and Chan had to fight hard not to stare. He was sweating, as he always did any time the temperature was even slightly raised, a flush glistening across his skin. Hyunjin said something to his guest, and when he looked around, Chan and Felix took a long pause. Chan looked at him, watching a frown settling between his eyebrows before Chan watched him smooth his face out. He and Hyunjin had a shared knack for it, as though they’d taught each other.“Look what I found,” Hyunjin said, when Felix and Chan sat down in the space that had been made for them. “Who’s the stray now?”Yunho laughed, though it tailed off into an awful cough which sounded like it hurt. He waved off the offer of another napkin from Felix, indelibly well-mannered, breathing into a portable mask he slipped over his mouth instead. “It isn’t contagious. The humidity helps.” His voice came out slightly distorted, a nebulizer showing green on the underside. “You inhale enough swarf from a mine and it doesn’t do good things to your lungs.”Yunho took the mask off after his breathing had stabilized and kept eating like nothing had happened, clearly accustomed to the process.“How long have you been here?” Felix asked, very politely.“A few days,” Yunho said, with equal remove.“I picked up one of his messages in real time, and I said we could meet if we landed on this station,” Hyunjin explained. “I hope that’s okay.”It wasn’t Felix he was looking at when he said it.“Oh, uh,” Chan managed, eloquently, before he remembered Hyunjin’s hand warm on his cheek, asking him if he was the captain or not. “Yunho’s actually the reason we were looking for you,” Chan said, doing his best not to stumble. “Your time’s your own when we’re in dock, unless we’ve agreed on jobs, you know that.” He did his best not to look at Felix, or to imagine how he might be reacting. He turned to Yunho, the crux of the issue. “Hongjoong says you need a lift?”“Does he?” Yunho looked displeased, which Chan wasn’t expecting. “How unusually meddlesome of him.”Hyunjin smirked.Chan felt like he’d been hit in the head.“Stop, I talk enough about it.” Yunho said, moving himself slightly over so Chan had more room. Felix, apparently giving up on making any more space, had settled up against Hyunjin, and Hyunjin had lifted an arm without looking, holding him close with his hand dangling down Felix’s chest while Felix tried their soup and gasped.“I don’t meddle,” Chan felt the need to point out.“He doesn’t meddle with me,” Hyunjin admitted.Yunho gave him a very level look, and then turned to Chan. “I’m on vacation. I don’t need to go anywhere else.”“You guys get vacations?” Felix asked, incredulous.“No, we have to run away and then beg for forgiveness.” Yunho finished his drink in the profoundly awkward silence after Hyunjin had quietly laughed. “I leave when I need to,” Yunho explained, relenting. “A long time in the recyclers sometimes doesn’t agree with me. Short of a lung transplant there’s just times I need to be somewhere like this. A planet’s better, but I like it here.” He shrugged, his broad, bony shoulders taking up a shocking amount of room when he wasn’t trying to make himself smaller. “I don’t want to give my genetic information to any growers until I absolutely have to. Where did he ask you to take me?”“Outside the sector,” Chan said, trying very hard to sound neutral about it.“Pass,” Yunho said. “I’ll make my own way if I need to go.”“What’s out there?” Felix asked, unexpectedly.Chan should have known his curiosity about space would win over Yunho’s patent suspicion of him. Chan loved him for it, for always wanting to know, even if he often got an answer which wasn’t kind or easy.“Home,” Yunho said, cryptically. “How much do you charge to keep a secret?”“A lot, usually,” Chan said. “I can do a friends and family discount.”Chan felt hot all over when Hyunjin laughed again. “I told you he wasn’t as soft as he looked.”Chan fought the urge to duck his chin, reminding himself of all the times he’d avoided being alone in the room with Hyunjin again because it always made him feel like this; scoured somehow, like Hyunjin could see right into him, and often found him lacking. Like Chan owed him more than he gave, and didn’t know how to fix it or how to explain how badly he wanted to.Like he wanted Hyunjin to stare down at him again and tell him what to do about it.So many times since Felix had joined his crew Chan had wondered how Hyunjin felt about it, but now he couldn’t claim he didn’t know. Hyunjin had the capacity to leave if he wanted to. He just hadn’t, and now Chan had to face the undeniable fact that even if Hyunjin was staying for Felix, he was still staying, and he was more and more himself the longer Chan chose to look at him.Felix had said Hyunjin wasn’t negotiable, but Hyunjin had never said it about himself.“Are you telling people I look soft?” Chan asked, feeling like he’d just put his hand on a sheet of hot metal.Hyunjin just sipped his drink and looked at him.Felix, conspicuously, didn’t say a word.“I’m telling people you aren’t,” Hyunjin corrected, softly. “Am I wrong?”As if on cue, Yunho coughed again. “Fuck,” he muttered, when it was over. “It really is getting better, stop looking at me like I’m dying.”Hyunjin handed him the thing he’d been drinking, a bright blue substance with a straw sticking out of it, condensation beading on the outside. “If you were dying you’d probably want to go home,” Hyunjin pointed out, as though that was a completely normal thing to say, and hadn’t made Yunho look like he’d just been slapped. “Maybe your captain thinks you are.”“Hyunjin…” Felix murmured, “I don’t think that’s our business.”Yunho glared at Felix. “Don’t—”Hyunjin shook his head. “Stop it, both of you.”Chan felt like if there was ever a time to gently interrupt it was now. “I can tell Hongjoong you don’t need a ride, if you just don’t want to talk to him.”“Don’t get mixed up in my personal issues,” Yunho said, with the calm menace Hongjoong was also extremely capable of. “Why are you here, anyway?”In the morass of it, Chan had nearly forgotten. “Well, I came to ask Hyunjin if he’d mind us taking you as a passenger, but that was at least three conversations ago.”Yunho laughed, though he looked like he didn’t want to. “Oh.”“I wouldn’t mind,” Hyunjin said, his fingers loose around Felix’s wrist. “Thank you for asking. Can you leave now?”Chan put his hands up, unbearably relieved, only to realize that Hyunjin was looking expectantly at Felix, whose arm he had quietly released.“Sure,” Felix said, hoarsely. “Of course.”Hyunjin smiled at him, as brilliant as it always was whenever Chan had the pleasure of seeing it, even secondhand, and it made the sting of being ejected feel both better and worse, all at once.Felix didn’t say anything until they were halfway back.“Are you okay?” Chan ventured, unsure how he could be.“I just didn’t know they were keeping in touch,” Felix explained. “Am I a bad person if I’m upset?”Chan put an arm around his waist and stepped to the side of the concourse, shielding Felix from the press of the moving crowd, holding him as tightly as he could. “I don’t think so.”“I’m happy, too,” Felix said, like he had to explain himself. “Fuck.”“I’m pretty mad about it,” Chan said, only half joking. “He’s my crew, I don’t need to get mixed up in whatever’s going on with Hongjoong’s.” He paused, letting the heat and humidity press in on them. “Do you think Yunho wants a job?”Felix punched him very gently, but Chan had made him laugh, which was always a good thing.
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Chan found Hyunjin a shift later, when Felix had gone out with Seungmin and Jeongin in search of, in their words, the weirdest fruit they could find.Chan would greatly enjoy whatever they brought back, and thought, privately, that it was probably good that Felix was going out without telling Hyunjin, just as much as it was probably good that Hyunjin had begun to do the same. It was just surprising, a kind of stretching out Chan hadn’t honestly expected of either of them.It didn’t feel better when he did finally seek him out, knowing he was in some way trying to get him alone on purpose.He and Changbin looked up from the game they were playing, laying nearly across each other on the cool floor of the room Changbin had long ago repurposed as a common area. Changbin had half a shirt on, but Hyunjin was wearing the shorts Felix had been wearing the day before under one of Chan’s shirts, stolen from Felix’s possession, and Chan only hoped they’d been cycled through the cleaners. Nobody had volunteered to do a real laundry run yet, and Chan was very close to assigning it to someone at random. He didn’t want to think about why it had suddenly occurred to him that Hyunjin might have chosen that shirt on purpose, either because he liked it or because Felix had worn it last.He cleared his throat, and they both looked at him. “Hey,” he said, standing his ground. “Can I borrow you for a second?”Hyunjin got up, not betraying any curiosity. Chan hadn’t realized how much he’d relaxed away from what Chan now thought of as his professional facade until it was back, a pleasant, expressionless stillness occupying his face.Chan took them to the galley, because Hyunjin had laughed at him there once, and Chan was still thinking about it.“So.” Chan started, unsure how to do this except to dive in. “Yunho.”Hyunjin didn’t say anything, and Chan realized that he hadn’t asked him a question, so Hyunjin, hiding behind the awful carapace of his training, wouldn’t volunteer a thing unless he did. “I really don’t have a problem with you being friends with him,” Chan said, too quickly. “I’m glad you’d be fine with having him aboard if we did have to take him somewhere. I was just surprised.” Chan could feel himself floundering, and forced himself to take a breath. “Do you remember when you asked me if you were on my crew?”“Yes.”Not good enough, and Chan knew it. “I’m really glad you are. I’m glad you want to stay, not just because Felix does. I just want to know… what you need, okay? I know it’s something, because everyone does. Even me.”Hyunjin blinked at him, slowly, like Minho’s cat did sometimes when it was half asleep in someone’s lap, and Chan suddenly felt as though something he had said had exposed the skin of his throat like prey. “What do you need?”And because Chan couldn’t ask him for honesty he wouldn’t give himself, he had to answer. “I need to know why you keep looking at me like you want to eat me, so I can relax.”Hyunjin took a step closer, and Chan was reminded again that he might not have been a very big person, as people went, certainly nothing on Yunho’s size, but he was bigger than Chan, longer, and Chan knew he was much, much faster. Hyunjin stopped just in front of him, looking down, his beautiful face framed by his loose hair, close enough that Chan could smell something on him which wasn’t the scent of his skin, like he’d found a soap which he liked, at last.“I don’t really want you to relax,” Hyunjin said, and brushed his warm, warm thumb against the corner of Chan’s mouth again, reminding him silently of what Hyunjin had already told him he wanted: for Chan to be firm in what he asked for, and for it to be Hyunjin that he asked. “Did you know that when you're jealous you turn red?”“I'm not jealous,” Chan lied. “I'm just–”“You can be jealous,” Hyunjin said, in exactly the same tone of voice, standing so close to him that Chan could have licked his neck if he'd wanted to. “You can even be angry.”“I'm not either of those things.”“I'm staying whether you are or not,” Hyunjin explained. “If I leave–”“Don't leave,” Chan said, from the place where he so often hated to look. “I don't want you to leave.”Hyunjin reached forward and cupped his hand around the back of Chan’s neck, preposterously warm and shockingly gentle. “Is that an order?”“I'll never make that an order."“Okay.” Hyunjin, still looking at him, leaned down and bumped their foreheads together. Chan was more shocked than if Hyunjin had kissed him right there, where anyone could see. Up close he was even warmer, huge and solid and present in a way Chan had never quite convinced himself to ignore. “Figure out what else you want,” Hyunjin said, like he was the one who'd taken Chan aside, and not the other way around.Chan couldn’t help but think of the first time he and Hyunjin had ever had a conversation alone, and how different it felt now. When he’d first realized that Hyunjin making friends with Changbin wasn’t just a side effect of Changbin’s irrepressible ability to befriend anyone but something mutual, that there was a whole person inside Hyunjin who Chan didn’t know but Changbin did, it had made him feel like such a terrible failure he hadn’t been able to think about it, another in a long line of things about Hyunjin Chan hadn’t wanted to admit to fearing.He hadn’t been lying to Felix when he’d said he wasn’t scared of Hyunjin; he wasn’t, not physically.He’d been afraid of him because he’d known for a long time now that the way Felix loved Hyunjin – undeniably, wholly, without question – wasn’t the way Chan could claim to share.Felix and Hyunjin had never touched each other the way Chan wanted Hyunjin to touch him, like he was touching him now, and between the three of them it was too close, too dangerous, and Chan didn’t trust himself to face it honestly, the way Hyunjin deserved.“I kind of want you to kiss me,” Chan whispered, too thick in his mouth. “I know it’s–”“Okay,” Hyunjin said, and did.It was chaste, as these things went, but his lips were as warm as the rest of him, wide and soft where they pressed against Chan’s shocked and open mouth.Then Hyunjin pulled back, leaving Chan so bereft he couldn’t do anything but run his tongue past his teeth, just to chase the taste.“You really don’t have to,” Chan whispered.“Of course I don’t,” Hyunjin pointed out, very reasonably, still huge and amused, taking up all of Chan’s vision. “I’ll have to ask Felix, first.” Hyunjin put his thumb right on the center of Chan’s bottom lip. Chan couldn’t help the terrible, guilty flush which crept up his cheeks, not helped by the way Hyunjin was looking at him, a kind of knowing amusement in his big, dark eyes. “Since you’re his.”Chan wished he hadn’t gasped as soon as he realized he had.Hyunjin pressed down harder, just to make his point, and then he retreated.“Yunho might call you to discuss terms,” Hyunjin said, back behind the formal tone he hid in when he'd surprised himself, which Chan knew so much better now. “I told him he should.”Feeling stupid and bold, Chan said: “I might go red again.”Hyunjin smiled, small, and didn’t say anything else.
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Yunho came aboard a few shifts before they were due to depart, after Chan had prepared a terms sheet and sent a message to Hongjoong, which Yunho had agreed was probably for the best.Chan didn’t feel the need to point out that Hongjoong had kidnapped Felix and Chan would have been well within his rights if he was in any way petty enough to do the same. Then again, he didn’t think Yunho was the missing heir to a corporate empire, and they probably wouldn’t have gotten much more than the standard bounty for outlaws unless he was personally wanted for something specific. Besides, Chan could grudgingly admit to himself. Hongjoong hadn't done it on purpose.“Do you have any outstanding warrants in any of the sectors we’ll pass through?” Chan asked, once Yunho had settled into a guest cabin on the passenger deck, where he was currently the only occupant. Chan had hoped to take on some more clients from the station, but their route would be dangerous enough and to such an out of the way destination that he didn’t think it would be worth the risk this time.“Probably not,” Yunho said, peacefully. “I don’t kill people very often. I have plenty of aliases.”“Wow,” Jisung muttered from the other side of the cockpit. “You guys are nuts.”“Do you have a medical bay?” Yunho asked, examining his long fingers when he put the tablet down on the armrest. “I’m prepared to take some shifts if you need it.”“If you think he’s coming anywhere near me with drugs you’re even crazier than I thought, Chan.”“Yunho, Jisung. He’s kind of my second in command.”Yunho raised an eyebrow. “Kind of?”“Changbin’s sleeping,” Jisung contributed.“Right,” Yunho said. “Do you want me to sign, or what?”“Use an alias if you want, this is just—”“I know what it is,” Yunho said shortly. “It's so you can prove to Hongjoong you aren't holding me against my will." He shrugged, hugely. "You don’t have to hide me, I’m not on the run from any labor contracts, I don’t expect you to take me all the way. I’m frankly more interested in how you’ve managed to keep moving so easily with Lee Yongbok on your ship, but that’s none of my business.” He smiled brightly. “I’ll let you know where you can drop me off when we’re closer.”“Is this not where you want to go?”“I don’t really want you to get blown up,” Yunho said, signing the pad with one delicate fingertip with a name that definitely was not his. “There’s at least one of you on here I really like.” He handed it back, still smiling. “Do you need me to stay on the passenger deck?”“Well, if you get lonely you can just come up,” Chan said. “We’ve got set mealtimes but it’s pretty flexible.”“How the hell are you still alive?” Yunho asked, getting up but managing not to loom, somehow. “Okay. Thank you for the lift.”He left, and Chan watched him go feeling as though he’d just missed half of whatever Yunho had said.“They’re such a bunk of freaks,” Jisung said, incredulously.“Do you think he’s an alien?”Jisung snorted, and Chan felt better about it.
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Felix was working in one of the storerooms trying to stay out of the way when Yunho found him. He knocked on the frame of the hatch once he’d opened it, looking down at Felix who had arranged himself on his front on the floor with the chart projections of their sector-hop spread out around him on the walls, trying to memorize them. He had language maps overlaid, and was enjoying pre-calibrating their translation aids.“You’ll clear customs, I assume?” Yunho asked, tilting his head to look at them.“I guess you guys don’t bother.”“Not usually, no.” Yunho paused, his long fingers clenching into his bicep where he’d crossed his arms. “Can we talk?”“You’re talking now.”Yunho turned a palm up, acknowledging it. “Can we have a discussion about something you’re going to find very uncomfortable, then?”Felix shut down his projections, palming his pad back into his pocket. “What happens if I don’t want to?”“I go away and find something else to do.”Felix could only pretend at disdain for so long no matter how hard anyone had tried to instil real remove in him. He had never taken it to heart. He sighed and sat up, crossing his legs. “Okay. Come in.”Yunho folded the whole length of himself down in front of Felix on the bare floor, his hands on his knees. The jumpsuit he’d turned up in did a lot to disguise it, but Felix thought he’d lost weight. “You’re not really dying, are you?”“No more than anyone else is.” Yunho smiled a little bit, like he didn’t want to, but it reached his eyes anyway. “I'm pretty sure. Does that bother you?”“I don’t want you to die just because you don’t like me.”Yunho gave into the smile, and Felix was shocked at how it transformed his face; he was handsome in an unassuming sort of way, long and thin and yet warm and rounded in the cheeks when he did. “It’s usually hard for people not to like you, I’d imagine,” he said, though he didn’t contradict Felix’s assumption. “I owe you an apology. I’m not very happy about it.”Felix, despite himself, had to fight not to laugh.“But your company will never stop looking for you,” Yunho said, like Felix wasn’t already terribly aware of it. “You really haven’t done much to disguise yourself. And I just want to know why that is, when it’s not you who should be worried about what happens when they find you.”Felix ran a hand through his hair, conscious of the way Yunho was watching him do it. “What else is it you think I should have done? New face? There’s only so much I could buy without someone selling that information too.”Yunho looked at him, level and very serious. “Of course. But you understand what happens if you get caught.”Felix, his heart in his throat, wanted to leave so badly it itched. “I thought you were here to apologize.”“I said I owed you one, not that I was planning to pay it out,” Yunho corrected. “I’m here to warn you about your attachment to yourself. I should apologize for making assumptions about what that rested on, that’s all.”“Make all the assumptions you want,” Felix said, allowing just enough ruthlessness to come into his voice. He usually hated to do it, knowing how he’d learned it and why, but if Yunho still thought he wasn’t capable of being more than how he’d been bred to be, then Felix saw no reason to show him. “You don't know me. Are you worried I’ll be on the ship that takes you somewhere?”“Sometimes we have to run as many times as it takes before it sticks,” Yunho said, still just sitting there, smiling at him. “So I’m sorry for not giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’d tried. And yes, I am.”Felix couldn’t feel the little tattoo Hyunjin had given him, resting under his collarbone, curled into his skin, but he knew it was there. “Apology accepted."“You do understand I can't risk exposing you to places where your corporation might have a vested interest. So, you and I need to decide if I get off first and make my own way for the final leg, or you agree to step off somewhere.”“Just me?”“Just you and whoever wants to stay.”“What’s the catch?” Felix asked, knowing instantly how dangerous that would be, and knowing in his bones why he was warning Felix in advance. “What makes you think Chan wouldn’t just tell me where you went later? Or Hyunjin?”“Think about it,” Yunho said, pushing himself carefully to his feet like he wasn’t quite used to their ship’s high gravity setting yet. “This is your crew, not mine. I’m fine with traveling alone. Are you?”“You’re ill,” Felix murmured. “I wouldn't make you do that.”“Not very. I know how my body works.”Felix let the textured insult slide, and then, at the last minute, decided not to. “You can be angry with me for what neither of us knew all you want and it won’t change it,” Felix said. “If you think I’d ever let anyone take him back while any part of me is still alive then you don’t really know either of us.”“I’m always willing to be proved wrong,” Yunho said, before he walked carefully out.
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Changbin had been making himself scarcer than usual so Hyunjin cornered him in the shower and got in. Changbin yelped and covered his nipples with an arm, and Hyunjin burst out laughing.“Hey!” Changbin yelped, “don’t fucking— what the hell are you doing?”“I’ve seen those,” Hyunjin managed, giggling. “Are you avoiding me?”Changbin had already started the water cycle. It was drenching them both in a hot, gentle spray. Slowly, Changbin reached down with his other hand (poised to retaliate) and covered the rest of him, too. “No, I'm not,” he said, looking up through his soaking wet hair. Hyunjin brushed it back for him, so he could see him better. “Thanks. I just didn’t know us sleeping together was going to make Chan insane, and I like it when Chan’s not insane.”“So you want to stop?”“Do you want to stop?” Changbin seemed to have accepted that Hyunjin was in the shower with him now and slowly lowered both his arms. “Look, pass me the soap if you’re just going to stand there.” Hyunjin did, his own clothes dropped in the locker outside, waiting for when he was finished. He didn’t strictly need to shower, but if he was here anyway he might as well. Hyunjin soaped Changbin’s back for him when he turned around, and Changbin sighed. “You’re the most complicated friend with benefits I’ve ever had, you know.”Hyunjin handed him the rest of the bar and put his cheek on Changbin’s shoulder, settled by the warm bulk of muscle and the fact that it was Changbin. “Sorry.”“Don’t be. I asked.” Changbin reached up to cup his head, and they rested like that for a while, not looking at each other. “So what’s the deal with Chan?”“He's jealous. I made it worse.”Changbin laughed quietly, scratching a hand through Hyunjin’s wet hair. “How?”“I kissed him.”Changbin sighed, huge and easy. “Good, maybe he'll calm down.”Hyunjin buried his face in the side of his neck and Changbin let him, still holding him close, letting Hyunjin breathe him in, the wet scent of him more powerful than Hyunjin had expected. “Are we still friends?”Changbin turned around and kissed him. It was quick enough that it took Hyunjin by surprise, but he didn't fend him off. Instead he kissed him back, enjoying the familiar taste of him despite the lingering soap on his skin. “Of course we're still friends,” Changbin said. “Please, if I stopped liking everyone who’s kissed Chan I'd have half a crew.”Hyunjin held him very tightly, making Changbin gasp before he returned it, his arms locked around Hyunjin’s waist. “Yeah?”“Did you stalk me into the shower because you're nervous?”“Maybe,” Hyunjin admitted, resting his cheek on Changbin’s hair until the water cycle stopped.“Chan's not going to make it a problem. He'd give away his skin if he could live without it.”“I thought he was afraid of me.”Changbin snorted. “Of course you did. That's what he's like when he's got a crush on someone. Like if anyone looked at him wrong he’d combust.”Hyunjin couldn't argue it, and it made him smile. “You knew.”“I could tell. I didn't think he'd do anything about it.”Hyunjin shook his head. “I did it.” And then because he wanted to, because Yunho was here somewhere and Hyunjin was covered in the weight of it, the knowledge of how much he’d changed and how strange it felt to see it, he just kept talking. “You're still the first person who ever kissed me. I wouldn’t have known how if you hadn't.”“And believe me, I'm taking that to the grave,” Changbin said, making no move to draw back. “Bragging rights for the rest of time.”Hyunjin laughed again, delighted by him, the first person who wasn't Felix who'd ever told Hyunjin he was funny and meant it. “Are you going to turn the water back on?”“And waste it? Absolutely not. You did this to yourself.”“Fine,” Hyunjin allowed, full of overwhelming fondness as the air cycle started. “Can I use your comb?”“You're so lucky I love you,” Changbin stepped out to the anteroom to hand it over, leaving Hyunjin quietly reeling as he went.
-
Yunho’s distinctive, rasping cough transferred faintly through the plates from the passenger deck, and by the third shift Hyunjin couldn’t stand listening to it from a distance anymore and got up.Felix mumbled and turned over, but he didn’t wake up immediately like he’d used to, only stretching into the warm spot Hyunjin had left behind. They didn't overlap so much anymore, Hyunjin's sleep gradually moving to a different schedule, and seeing Felix at rest filled him with an emotion he didn't have a name for. Hyunjin rearranged the covers on him and checked everything in the cabin was secure like they’d both gotten into the habit of and slipped out the hatch. There were airlocks between the decks, but Hyunjin didn’t particularly care who saw him going down. Someone would be awake, likely Chan. Jisung and Minho had been volunteering for third shifts lately for some arcane reason all their own which Hyunjin thought was likely to be due to the fact that Soonie was a demon as soon as the lights on the main decks went out. He found Yunho in the passengers’ storage room, browsing through the emergency environmental suits. “Are you planning on throwing yourself out into space when we decelerate?” Hyunjin asked, before he remembered he’d snuck up on him and Yunho jumped back like he’d been scorched. Yunho whispered a heartfelt curse and Hyunjin guiltily felt himself go still and stone-faced.Yunho, hand over his stomach like he felt sick, just breathed. “Hi,” he said, when he looked less white. “What are you doing here?”Hyunjin had to force himself to speak and was suddenly reminded that they hadn’t met so often, all things considered. Hyunjin didn’t really know him as well as he knew anyone else on this ship, not the way it felt, with the weight of gratitude behind it. “I can hear you coughing,” he said, sticking to the explanation he felt was most reasonable.“Oh,” Yunho murmured. “Sorry.”Hyunjin had thought it would be easier to try again. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I came down to see if you needed anything. If you don't, I can go.”“Please stay,” Yunho said, finally smiling a little bit. “Your company is very welcome. I was seeing if these models have orthostatic regulation. They’re expensive.”“You should steal one,” Hyunjin said, meaning it, but Yunho laughed and it made Hyunjin feel better immediately. He had never cared, not for so many years, that his presence made people uncomfortable in ways he couldn’t help and couldn’t change, but it felt different, knowing he’d done it to someone he had begun to think of as a friend. Whatever ease they’d found on the station had deserted him, and he wanted it back. “Do you watch any serials?”“Sometimes,” Yunho said. “Can I access them from the terminals here?”Hyunjin didn’t think there was even a slim chance he hadn’t, but he led him to one of the entertainment rooms anyway, and soon the menu came up. Hyunjin chose one at random and arranged himself on the soft seating, where Yunho joined him at a careful arm’s length. Hyunjin closed the distance and leaned on him, letting his head come to rest on his shoulder.“Hyunjin?”“I know you only took passage with us because I said you should.”The serial played quietly. Yunho had turned the volume all the way down. “I have something I want to ask you, but I don't know exactly how.”Hyunjin watched the composites move across the display, saying something about a core meltdown. None of them looked like him, despite what Changbin had said. “Just ask.”“I’d like you to come with me.”Hyunjin could feel the hitch in Yunho’s breath, the tension in his body as he asked, but none of it came out in his voice.“Why?”Yunho thought about it, both of them staring at the figures on the screen instead of each other. “Because if Felix ever gets bored of space-”“He won’t.” Hyunjin knew it, the way he knew he’d never go back to their home planet unless everything on it was different, even the things about it he had loved. Not unless it changed so much it would be unrecognizable.“If he does, I want you to know you have somewhere to go and people who can protect you.”Hyunjin had never been given gifts as a child, though Felix had often tried to mark occasions for them both: graduations, though Hyunjin’s had never been causes for celebration, only relief, and Felix's birthday before Felix had become too embroiled in the world of his grandfather’s work to mark it quietly. New Year, when every member of the household, even those without ancestors or traditions among them, had been outside to watch the moon house burn, was the closest Hyunjin had ever felt to home as if it were a certain place. It had taken him not much time at all to understand that for him it never would be. But people gave gifts and offered welcome in all sorts of ways. Chan and his bedroom when Hyunjin had badly needed it, warm and safe, without expectation or demand. Changbin and the irrepressible way he’d kept offering Hyunjin things to say yes to, as though he’d known any curiosity Hyunjin had about how they lived would simmer under his skin forever, otherwise. Yunho and the brutal kindness of his honesty about Hyunjn’s body, about what he felt, about his mistrust of Felix despite anything Hyunjin might say about him. It came from somewhere Hyunjin couldn’t see, and Yunho was offering it to him. “You’re not like me,” Hyunjin ventured, determined not to move, even if he couldn’t see his face. “When I thought you were a doctor I was ready to hate you. But if you’re not lab-grown and you don’t trust Felix then there must be someone you know who is.”He felt Yunho nod, and let himself listen to the crackle in his chest, deep under the reassuring constancy of his breath. “I was adopted. They're much older than you, I think, but the research that made you had to come from somewhere. I didn't really understand why they were different for a long time, but trust me when I say that when a conglomerate makes an investment in something they don't let them go very easily. It took me a long time to find them again after that. They saved my life, but it meant sending me away. If they have to move because Lee Yongbok showed up on their threshold I’d never forgive myself.”“I didn’t know any of us had run away before,” Hyunjin ventured, taking it in with as much practiced stillness as he could keep hold of, vibrating with the knowledge of it. The angry possibility that people had always known, long before him, that he’d had the capacity to do it too.“It’s a long story. They were from military research. Not entirely grown, like you were. Too much autonomy from too young an age, and I think any good propagandist from the project would have made sure nobody else might get ideas.” He laughed a little bit, grimly. “I don’t know why they decided taking in stray human children was how they were going to spend their time. I don’t know why they do half the things they do.”“Can they fix your lungs?”“Short of a transplant, no. I don't think they have the facilities for clean organ growth, or the surgical experience. But going home does help. Just rest, that’s all it needs for now.” Hyunjin felt him shrug, broad body making every movement bigger. "They heal slower than you, but when I got older I think I understood better why they always looked so startled when we scraped our knees."Hyunjin tried to give the shocking confidence he was being offered the weight it deserved, but the words came out anyway, so small but so insistent that he wondered when he had lost his ability to be silent. “I’m not a child. They don’t need to take me in.”Yunho wrapped an arm around him, and Hyunjin relaxed into it nearly despite himself, the familiar gesture of acceptance he’d only ever had from Felix before all this, and had discovered such a power in; people loved to touch each other, needed to touch each other, and he was no different, it turned out. He could offer it back, too. It wasn’t forbidden. Just like his fading reserve. “Okay,” Yunho said, unusually peaceful. “But if you ever need to–”“I’ll get in touch.”“I hope you’ll get in touch anyway,” Yunho said, jostling him a little bit. “I enjoy your messages now that you actually talk.”Hyunjin elbowed him gently and let the quiet stand, different from an enforced silence.“I hope he knows how much you love him,” Yunho murmured, when Hyunjin could feel him starting to slow into sleep, a particularly human quirk which made him happy whenever he noticed it in anyone, the quiet deceleration making everyone soft no matter how much they pretended otherwise. “I really hope he deserves it.”Hyunjin couldn’t see how Felix possibly couldn’t, but knew it was an argument he’d never win and didn’t want to have.Instead, he let himself listen to Yunho falling asleep beside him, and wondered if it was as obvious to Felix as it was to him, that everything which had changed between them hadn’t changed that at all.
-
Felix had taken a long time to get used to having nights again, but once he had he'd discovered to his own disgust that he was a morning person.Hyunjin didn't seem to have anything like the same rhythm now that he didn't have to be awake when Felix was, and had turned into a night bird all on his own. It wasn't really very unusual anymore for Hyunjin to come back at the end of the night shift when Felix was waking up and nap for a few hours before he got up to bathe and eat. This morning wasn't very different, even though the specter of Hyunjin’s regular nightly absences felt different with Yunho aboard.Felix was trying not to think about it when Hyunjin came back.“I made you something,” Hyunjin said. He climbed into bed without putting his outer clothes away, even though they might end up everywhere if the ship kept being shunted like it had been lately as they traveled into less mapped areas, or if they had to make a jump. Felix put down the tablet he was using, trying to convince himself he wasn’t looking around on the latest network download for mentions of him, or an increase in the standing reward for his retrieval. It seemed like the murder of the last people who’d been sent to get him had sent an effective message and the compensation had increased, but the contract was no longer open. It wasn't a good sign. It just meant the search had no longer been delegated to the public. He was only thinking about it because Yunho was on board and Felix was trying not to let the memories of his time on Hongjoong's ship become his problem, knowing the ultimatum Yunho had given him.He put his head on Hyunjin’s shoulder, wanting to give him all of his attention. “Yeah?”Hyunjin fished around in his pockets and produced four rings in a strange, coppery metal, two burnished to a brighter shine and two more oxidized, clinking heavily together in the palm of his hand. “I think they’ll fit. Mine do.” To illustrate this, he pulled out the two larger ones, one in each colour, and slipped them over the middle finger of his left hand.Felix, feeling so fragile that he almost didn’t want to take them, tried the other two on the same finger. They were snug, and very heavy, but they seemed to fit together, a groove in one catching the indent in another.Hyunjin took his hand to look, making a small, satisfied noise. “Changbin said the metal was fine, it’s from an inner plate so it isn’t radioactive.”“You made these?”“Yes.”“They’re amazing.”“You should ask me why.”Felix had been dreading it, this exact conversation, or some harsher version of it. It needed to happen. He wanted it to, but not one part of him wanted to admit that it would be now, not when he’d already started bracing himself for it. Hyunjin spent his time so differently, folded into the work rotation with the crew more likely to be engineering, and Felix more and more working with Chan on the sheer volume of information he accumulated and sold, slowly sinking into the reality of a shadow economy he was better placed than most to understand.Felix cherished these moments so much more now, the sensation of homecoming Hyunjin brought with him when he came back.“Why?” Felix whispered, relishing the heat of him.“You can’t put a mark on me,” Hyunjin said, equally quiet but not nearly so rough. “But this way we can look at them and know where they came from, and that they’re the same.” He laced their fingers together, left and left, their arms crossed over. “You wanted your name. I want this. It’s the same.”“Are we the same?” Felix asked, feeling a sort of wonder which came from deep within him, not surprise but gratitude, or something so close to it that the difference didn’t bear naming.“In the ways that matter. Neither of us was ever going to leave the other one behind.”“And now?”Hyunjin leaned in and kissed him.Felix, stunned, put his hand up to feel Hyunjin’s cheek, the awful closeness of him, the shocking familiarity of something which was so new, and felt so, so easy. “Hyunjin?” He asked, when Hyunjin pulled away.“I figured we might say we’d kissed each other at least once.”He was smiling.Felix kissed him back, toppling them both down together.Hyunjin curled into him after, both his long arms coming around Felix’s waist, and didn’t say anything else. Felix stroked his hair, watching the rings catch the light. “Does this mean you’re leaving with Yunho?”“Not now,” Hyunjin murmured. "Not with Yunho. Are you jealous?"Felix couldn't honestly call it jealousy. It was more a terrible fear that he'd proved himself a liar in saying that if Hyunjin wanted to go he'd accept it with grace. “Not of Yunho. Just... I'd never stop you.”“I know.” Hyunjin clung a bit tighter, that perfect, familiar hold. “One day I might. But not soon, anyway.”“Is it wrong to say I’m glad?”Hyunjin shook his head. “No secrets, remember?”The earliest and only promise they had ever made to each other. “You know I love you, right?” Felix asked. “I just wanted to say it.”“I know,” Hyunjin said, staying right where he was, Felix’s hand in his hair. “I used to think I didn’t have a choice whether I loved you or not, but I do. I need you to stop feeling bad about it.”“I’ve never felt bad about it,” Felix whispered, hoarse now despite himself. Hyunjin showed no sign of wanting to move, curled around him like Felix had missed so badly when they’d first been apart. Felix let himself sink into it, realizing it was now a gift right along with the rings, something they might never disentangle from entirely. But they could try, and fail, and come back to each other now, knowing it was because they wanted to.“I kissed Chan, too,” Hyunjin whispered, like it was very fragile.Felix had something in him which had been an ember for months, and now felt as though he was cupping it with both hands. “I thought he was still scared of you.”“He is,” Hyunjin said, and kissed Felix again, soft and slow and lingering.Felix, overcome and hungry, couldn't help but return it. There was such a lack of fear that it nearly left him breathless, and he felt himself begin to tear up when he noticed: that it felt beautiful, only because Hyunjin had asked him to let it go, and that it had been so easy in the end. Felix breathed long and slow when Hyunjin pulled away and let their foreheads rest together, like they always used to. Felix didn't bother trying not to cry. “His loss,” Felix said, hoarse with it.“I told him I'd have to ask you before I did it again,” Hyunjin whispered, “since he's yours.” He paused, and Felix looked at him, catching a new expression in his eyes. Interest, hunger. The sense of urgent heat he'd been so startled by when Hyunjin had first begun to change.“And what did he say?” Felix asked, hot all over with the thought of it, despite himself, the guilty flush coming back as quickly as he'd pushed it aside.He should have protested.Hyunjin just smiled, a hint of a smirk in it, and laced their fingers together.They went to sleep together, and Felix hoped he'd still be there when he woke up.
-
Chan wasn’t prepared for Hyunjin to appear on the bridge looking tousled and honestly a little bit tired. Chan was more used to seeing Hyunjin calmly amused about something, and had found himself guiltily imagining it more than once since Hyunjin had kissed him. In the time since Yunho had come aboard Chan hadn’t had a chance to seek him out and had let himself stew in it instead, the remembered warmth of Hyunjin’s lips and the way his lankiness made him move, how quickly he could be anywhere.It had been a few shifts since he'd seen him properly, and they were all worn a bit thin.“Hi,” Hyunjin said, almost as though he was trying not to silently surprise them.Jisung cursed anyway, but Chan just looked up from Felix’s chart projections from the next customs point and said hi? right back, like an idiot.Hyunjin snorted. Chan immediately felt less stupid.“You coming in or what?” Jisung asked. “The hatch has to close or it’ll get angry.”Hyunjin closed it behind him and curled up in an available seat to watch what they were doing. “Did Felix make those?”“Yeah,” Jisung said. “He’s actually really good at language mapping, it’s kind of annoying. I put him in the piloting sim too and he’s got a knack for it. Thank fuck, to be honest. Finally, someone else can drive.”Hyunjin laughed his surprisingly big laugh. Chan felt himself trying too hard not to smile even though they were in a sector with a lot of unmarked obstructions and they were running slowly with the hull shield up, occasionally bumping off something which had kept Chan awake long past when he’d rather have been asleep. As if on cue, the ship grumbled its way across something which rattled the plating, a small vibration which came up through the metal and into his boots. The gravity fluctuated, deceleration and the interior pre-settings clashing with each other in a queasy moment of interaction that made Hyunjin’s mass of thick, black hair float off his shoulders while it stabilized.Can you make it stop doing that while I’m shaving? Seungmin’s voice demanded from a comm-set, likely a handheld which he had a tendency to put in his pockets and walk off with.“No,” Jisung said into the nearest receiver. “Go back to bed, it's barely morning.”
I need medical attention. I’m dying.
“You’re fine,” Jisung muttered. “Go get a collagen pack.”“Yunho could probably fix him,” Hyunjin said, when Jisung had run the stabilizers again anyway.“Yunho isn’t touching any of our stuff,” Jisung corrected. “Also isn’t he asleep?”“No.”Jisung looked at Chan, who had so far stayed out of this, but who Jisung knew perfectly well was only making this expensive and moderately dangerous run as a favor not for Hongjoong, who he had sent a bill to, but for Hyunjin.“We need to drop him off,” Hyunjin elaborated.“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”“And I need to talk to Chan.”“I guess I’ll see if Seungmin’s dying, then.” Jisung threw his hands up and left, abandoning Chan in the very moment Chan’s terrible flush of want at Hyunjin’s careful statement had reignited.When Jisung had gone the familiar hum of the instruments and the usual comfort of the cockpit seemed distant in the face of it.“Are you leaving?” Chan asked, astounded at the steadiness of his voice.“Come here,” Hyunjin said, and didn't get up.Chan went.Hyunjin had arranged himself with his legs crossed, and when Chan approached he opened them, making a space for Chan to stand in.It shouldn't have felt so penitent to look down at him, at the lazy slouch of his shoulders or the elegant, bony drape of his wrists where they rested over the arms of the chair he'd chosen.He had two new rings on his left hand and no tattoos for once, only a few glimpses of bare skin.He hadn't worn just black like this for months, not since Chan had noticed him wearing out the clothes he'd arrived in. The high neck of the underlayer he was wearing made his startling face look even stranger in the low light Chan liked on the bridge.“I spoke to Felix,” Hyunjin said, after a long, close silence.Chan breathed out, about to apologize, when Hyunjin carefully reached for his hand and ran one hot thumb over the back of Chan’s fingers. “I like that you're a little bit afraid of me,” he said, in exactly the same tone of voice. “But you're the captain. You have to tell me what you want.”“I can't have what I want.”They were alone, with only the charged space between them to witness it.Hyunjin stroked his fingers again, as though he was feeling the texture of him. “Why not?”The ship lurched before Chan had a chance to blurt out how wanting too much had been his downfall more times than he could count, but instead he ended up sprawled across Hyunjin's chest, his long arms wrapped solidly around Chan’s waist to hold him while it stabilized.Chan could feel a very fine tremor in his hands. The terror of it all seemed so small in comparison to what Hyunjin was offering him. “You should come to bed,” Hyunjin murmured. “If you've been up all night.”Chan had, and so had Hyunjin.“Okay,” Chan breathed, letting Hyunjin set him back on his feet.
-
Felix was righting the cabin after the latest lurch had thrown him out of his seat, debating whether it was time to engage either a magnetic function or old-fashioned deceleration straps while he secured everything that wasn't already stored or clipped down. He was still holding a tablet under his arm when the hatch chimed. Felix assumed it would be Hyunjin without looking, too busy searching under the work surface for something which had jolted away.He only looked up when he heard two sets of footsteps and the distinctive clink of a magnetic edge catching on a bulkhead lip. “I hate these things,” Chan muttered awkwardly, and there he was, standing inside the threshold with Hyunjin behind him in the doorway, looking so pleased with himself that Felix couldn't help but smile back. “He's been up all night,” Hyunjin said, crowding Chan into the room like he knew it was only on his invitation that Chan would ever have come close in the first place.Felix stood to catch him, his hands around Chan’s cheeks so he couldn't duck Felix’s eyes. “You came in.”“I was invited,” Chan said, already blushing furiously.Felix kissed him too gently. “Are you okay with it?”Chan looked right at him. “If I wasn't, I would never have come.”It meant something that Chan had finally come in, but equally as much that Hyunjin had finally let him. Felix had never been sure if he would. Not that he wouldn't have accepted Chan's presence in their room but that Felix knew Hyunjin still needed to have a say in it, that his trust for Chan was real and when Felix had invited him in it was honest, but for Hyunjin to stand behind him and herd him in was a different declaration entirely.As if in slow motion, Felix watched Hyunjin slide his fingers into Chan’s hair from the back, not quite gripping but taking the ghost of a hold, like he was prepared to catch him if he wavered.Chan shivered.Hyunjin had said he had kissed him.Felix had spent too much time in the hours since trying not to imagine it, not to attach the sharp longing it provoked to anything.In all the time Felix had known him he had never guessed at what Chan might look like spread out under him, and the thought came fully formed and all at once, as though it had only been waiting for something to provoke it. Felix and Chan had settled into each other the way Felix had never settled into other lovers. With ease, with a kind of recognition which felt calm, and safe, and nothing at all like the sensation of sudden, incredible want which shot through his body with the possibility of Chan coming to him like this, bashful the way only Chan could be, allowing them the possibility that Felix might be seeing something Chan had denied himself for a very long time. Between them was one kind of love, one kind of safety, one way of taking pleasure from it. With Hyunjin in the room it was different.Hyunjin leaned in and bit the bottom of Chan’s ear, gently, with his perfect teeth set only just hard enough to make him gasp. “You have to tell him what you want,” he said, when he’d made his point, his hand still cupped, huge, around the back of Chan’s head.Chan looked down, the flush of something Felix desperately wanted to see better coloring his cheeks.It was only morning, and there was nothing special about it. Felix had only started working, vaguely wondering where Hyunjin had gone so early when he’d spent only an hour or so in bed.Felix had his answer now.Nobody could ever have accused Hyunjin of indecision, it turned out. Felix had thought he’d known him better than anyone could know another person, and had thought it went both ways, that nobody would ever know Felix the way Hyunjin knew him. But Hyunjin had grown, and his new distance had given Felix the space to do the same.“Both of us?” Felix prompted, needing to hear him say it.Chan tried to nod and couldn’t, Hyunjin’s hand in his hair stopping him. He went a bright, vivid pink right up his neck and cheeks. “If that’s not–”“Yes or no is fine,” Hyunjin said.“Yes,” Chan said, after a moment of terrible, lovely hesitation, like he was about to deny himself this right up until the end if he could.Felix wouldn’t be cruel enough yet to ask him to say why. In some sense, Felix could feel the shape of it out of sight, just like he could feel the building of something tense and forbidden deep in his own body, the thought not just of Chan, deeply beloved now, but also of Hyunjin, whose body he thought he’d known so well, always in the corner of his eye and always nearby willing to hold or be held but never touched the way Felix had always stopped himself from wanting to.It would have wounded them both, no matter how much love was in it.Felix’s wants had gone in other directions, with other people. Girls who’d told him to get on his knees and open his mouth, gloriously assured and amused by his generosity, boys who’d wanted to pull his hair, drawn by the flame of knowing who he was and what he was giving them. But never himself, the messy whole of it, the little mean streak Hyunjin had always smirked at when it came out, which Felix had always thought of as a symptom of something indelibly terrible lurking in him no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.The voice which was loud in the back of his mind now, asking him what if you could?Hyunjin vocalized the command for the lights to go down and for the bed to fold out of its storage, as though waiting for Chan’s whispered assent was all which had been stopping him.Chan made a low, inarticulate noise that Felix longed to tease him with, knowing it was entirely involuntary and they’d drawn it out of him at last, the thing he might really, actually want. So many times when they’d been together Felix knew now he’d caught a glimpse of it, in how Chan melted quietly when Felix stroked his back, or in how he’d shied away quietly from what Felix had assumed, incorrectly, he didn’t like. Resting too long with his head on Felix’s chest, even more now when he caught sight of the tattoo, his eyes wide and shocked in a way that Felix had thought meant he didn’t like it.Felix had never cared whether anyone but him did, but Chan’s desperate, visible blush had told him all he’d ever needed to know.“We should undress him,” Hyunjin said, matter-of-fact, right past Chan, whose eyes drooped closed as though he thought he might be imagining it all. “I don’t think he can move.”“No, I want to watch him do it,” Felix said back, looking at Chan, and finally giving in to his own worst, cruellest impulse and propping Chan’s chin up with his fingertips, digging into the soft underside of his jaw. “And I want him to look at me.”Past the satisfaction of feeling the nearly imperceptible shiver which passed through Chan when he said it, past the wet, fragile way he met his eyes, Felix could see Hyunjin grinning, like he’d just solved a puzzle he’d been working on for weeks. “Should I let you go?” Hyunjin asked Chan, who was looking at Felix like Felix was going to save him from this, from actually having to feel it.“You should answer him,” Felix whispered, low and unequivocal.“Please,” Chan managed, which was close enough.Hyunjin stepped back, and between them Chan undressed, showing what Felix thought nearly everyone aboard had seen, his sturdy shoulders and broad thighs, all of him well-built and compact, made with a certain amount of vanity Chan would never admit to at the risk of being admired, something Felix fully intended to do now that he had him like this, blushing and naked standing between them, with nowhere left to hide what it was doing to him. Felix hadn't expected how visceral the feedback of it all would be, the way his own arousal had leapt to meet him. So many times in the last year Felix had let Chan touch him and wondered what it was he actually needed, why it was Felix, specifically, that he needed it from.He still didn’t know, entirely, but now he had a better guess. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he?” Felix asked Hyunjin, looking over Chan’s shoulder.Hyunjin draped an arm over Chan’s bare chest, suddenly pressed against his back, and Felix had an awful, revelatory vision of how it must have looked to Chan all those times when Hyunjin had done the same to him, all the times Felix hadn’t even thought about it, beyond the ease of knowing it didn’t matter now whether anyone saw.“I think so,” Hyunjin said, more softly than Felix could spare any agony for.Chan closed his eyes. Felix took a chance and kissed him.Chan kissed him back immediately, any hesitation Felix was expecting perfectly absent, despite the heat of his cheeks when Felix couldn’t resist the urge to cup his face, to feel the movement of his jaw when he opened up to it.Hyunjin picked Chan up and dropped him on the bed, an indignity which thoroughly broke the moment.Chan wheezed when he landed, and the ship lurched again, throwing Hyunjin down half on top of him. Hyunjin yelped, and Felix felt himself laughing before he could stop when they were briefly forced into a battle of elbows before they wound up side by side. Felix climbed up too, lighter than he’d felt in years. “Should we turn the gravity down?” Felix asked when Chan tried to move, shoving him right back down so he was splayed on his back with Hyunjin laid out between him and the bulkhead, one of his bony hands on Chan’s thigh. “I can call up.”Chan threw an arm over his eyes. “I think I’d like to die now, if it’s all the same to you.”“No,” Hyunjin said, and took his clothes off.Felix had seen Hyunjin naked so many times that it hardly registered, except that in all that time he’d never really let himself look. Strangely, allowing himself to find the want in it didn’t make him any different. He was still Hyunjin, beloved, no matter how his shoulders had filled out, or how new it was to see him hard, as though Felix had needed any confirmation that Hyunjin’s initiation of this was honest.Honesty first and above all between them.“Hey, Yongbok.” Hyunjin looked across Chan, stroking his thigh again, fingertips catching at the downy hair above his knee which was making Chan twitch, still hiding himself as though by refusing to see them he could pretend they hadn’t seen him either. “You’re staring.”“I am, yeah,” Felix whispered.Hyunjin reached across Chan and took his hand, warm and brief.It was the only encouragement Felix needed.Felix peeled Chan’s arm off his face, revealing his wet, dark eyes and the look in them, like he still thought he might be having a particularly revealing nightmare. Felix put Chan’s hand on his chest where the top of his zipper was, and left it there. “You should undress me, too.”Chan had done it dozens of times. Absently, frantically, and once memorably with his teeth when they’d both been a little bit embarrassed about it. This time, Chan just nodded and did it, something serious and reverent about the care he gave it which made Felix feel newer himself, being uncovered like this. Hyunjin had seen him before, but the appreciative glance he graced him with before he took hold of Chan’s chin and pulled his attention away tightened Felix’s skin all over, even more than the sight of him kissing someone else possibly could have. “Good,” Hyunjin murmured, when Chan needed to breathe, a low, wet gasp. “Now what?”Chan looked at him like Hyunjin had betrayed him terribly, and Felix was overcome with it all, all together: muddling through, all the newness between them making every fumble a little bit beautiful.“Now Chan gets to hold still,” Felix said, low in his throat.“Can I—” Chan stopped himself, his entire face creasing like what he was going to say was trapped before he forced it out. “I haven’t given you anything,” Chan said to Hyunjin, small and honest. “Half the time you’re in the room I feel like I can’t speak. It’s just—”Hyunjin put his hand over Chan’s mouth. “You don’t need to give me anything I don’t already have. Hold still.”Chan protested. It was muffled, indignant, a little bit silly, and Felix could feel the moment Chan stopped fighting himself when Felix wrapped his lips around him, enjoying the familiar scent and taste of him, the way Chan was always so quiet when Felix did this, like he didn’t want to enjoy it too much.Felix tried to make it last, but the next creak and rattle of the ship made him choke a little bit, taking Chan deeper than he’d meant to, and Chan, so sensitive and so gentle, made a noise past Hyunjin’s hand that even Felix could feel was utterly involuntary. Felix swallowed before he fell off the bunk, startled but not angry.The stabilizers ran in the silence, and then Hyunjin slowly unpeeled his hand from Chan’s lips, a little bit of blood left behind on Chan’s teeth, but no wound.“Maybe we should turn the gravity down,” Hyunjin said, when Chan just stared at them, paralyzed and slack across the covers.“Maybe, yeah,” Felix whispered, hoarser than he’d really wanted to be. He got back in bed before Chan could escape and wrapped his arms around him. He reached for Hyunjin too, who was right there, and who had flung a leg over Chan’s thighs to stop him rolling, the three of them all tangled back in together.“Chan?” Felix asked, when his breathing didn’t even out.His own arousal had subsided slightly, half-hard and willing to be revived, but Felix thought maybe the moment was gone this time, lost in the newness and the circumstances of his ejection from the bed. He glanced across Chan’s chest at Hyunjin, less visible in the low light than Felix wanted.“I can wait,” Hyunjin said, nearly imperious, though he kissed Chan on the cheek very, very gently. “I’ll just be thinking about it.”Chan laughed, nearly. Felix was willing to let him say it was laughter, anyway.“Are you okay?” Felix asked, propping himself up to look at Chan’s face just to make sure.Chan looked back at him, sweaty and streaked across his lips with a smudge of Hyunjin’s blood, his eyes huge and dark in his face. “I don’t think I can answer that.”“Stay here until you can, then,” Felix said, vowing to himself that he wouldn’t move until Chan was ready to be let go. “Jisung can take care of the ship.”Chan looked at Hyunjin, the look Felix had seen him give him so often and hadn’t understood. “Can you message him?”“Captain’s orders,” Hyunjin said like it was a joke Felix didn’t understand, getting up to look for Felix’s borrowed handheld by rolling over them both, bony and dense and so familiar still that it ached, a new, gentle pain that Felix never wanted to be without, right along with the known and precious shape of Chan beside him.“I’m so happy you came in,” Felix told him, just so he’d hear it. “You don’t have to say anything.”Instead, Chan turned to Hyunjin and deliberately, silently, reached for the hand he’d bitten as Hyunjin came back to bed. “I was invited.”There was so much Felix could have said, and so much he would have to ask, but for now, he was just happy to curl around Chan as the environmental settings changed around them, lightening the pressure and his head, the rush of blood around his body changing by the breath.“Will you stay?”Chan let his head rest against Felix’s chest, still holding Hyunjin’s hand. “Yeah, okay.”
-
Chan heard the alarm as though it was in his sleep first, a low drone on the edge of his hearing. Hyunjin answered the comm, reaching for the handheld clipped to the bulkhead. “Yes. Yes, he’s here.”The gravity was still low, and Chan remembered where he was abruptly and all at once. “What’s wrong?”Hyunjin handed it over.“Chan,” Changbin said, from the bridge. “We’re getting hailed. You have to come up.”“Shit. Shit.”“What’s happening?” Felix mumbled, his hair wrapped around his face, white and distinctive and soft. He swatted it away. “Gravity still—”“Some kind of patrol, probably,” Chan said, fumbling for the first shirt he could get to and his boots, remembering at the last moment he didn’t have anything else on, either. Hyunjin followed suit, more elegantly, throwing things up in the air which hung long enough for Felix to catch.“Aren’t we in the middle of nowhere?” Felix mumbled, looking more awake as the alarm settled in.“No, we’re just on a border,” Chan said, distracted by the hint of hip he could see over Hyunjin’s leggings. “We shouldn’t be anywhere near a customs station though, I was just going to file an exit notice and find a jump point which wouldn’t get us smashed into millions of pieces.”“That sounds sub-optimal,” Felix murmured, dressing as well. “Are we going?”They ran as fast as it was possible to in lower gravity. Even though Chan was used to it, it never felt less ridiculous. Changbin and Jisung were on the bridge at the same time, and were speaking in their weird little half-code, not a full sentence between them.“But if—”“Yeah, no, we gotta… okay.”Jisung input a command into the navigation screen and the ship decelerated erratically, like they were having engine trouble. It was a gamble, but a protocol they’d used before. “That’ll buy us a little bit of time,” Changbin said, looking up. “It’s military, I can’t tell which corporation,” he elaborated. “They may be conscripting. I’ve got registrations ready, we’ve got about half an hour.”A lightness descended on him, sensation leaving his limbs as he concentrated. “Good,” he said, meaning it. “Bring up everyone’s alias, make sure we’re airtight.” He looked back at Hyunjin. “Go warn Yunho. He’s had a crew briefing, he’s on our manifest as a medical contractor.”Hyunjin nodded and jogged away, leaving him Felix. “We’re not in your sector, how do you want to play this?”Felix frowned. “Will they make us muster?”“Maybe, yeah.”Felix had mapped all the sectors they’d pass through on the way to Yunho’s nebulous destination. He knew as well as any of them where the borders intersected, which corporate monopoly had the strongest foothold and which government was its closest enforcement. They weren’t in a section of the galaxy which Felix’s family controlled, but it didn’t mean they didn’t have interests. It didn’t mean it couldn’t be some kind of espionage. Felix had told him so much more than he’d have needed to about the undercutting and the theft, the real venality of acquisition. “Bioscans?”“Maybe.”“I’ll translate, then,” he said. “The suit worked last time.”Chan nodded and Felix went to get it, ready to encase himself in the protective skin and live-feed mask employed by professional translation specialists which were expensive but not unusual on a ship of Chan’s occupation. An aid was common, and almost everyone had one, but high-end translation was different. It was hiding Hyunjin in plain sight which was more difficult. He’d never been bioscanned before, and Chan didn’t know precisely what might come up if he was. Most places with biolinked entry were only looking for infectious disease, which as far as Chan knew Hyunjin was completely immune to.“Jisung, how big’s the patrol?”“There’s only one ship. But it’s huge.”“Jump capability?”“High drive from what I can pull off the specs, and they’ll have a lot of fuel. As long as they don’t land a trace on us we’ll be faster though.”“Okay.” The deceleration command came through, the low drone of the ship announcing it as Jisung’s erratic engine protocol ran again, leaving them all a little bit lightheaded as the ship complied. “Get everyone up here. Have they run out a script?”Changbin threw it onto the main screen and ran the decode, unspooling the text into a screed of legalese that amounted to if you run we’ll shoot.Chan snorted. “Standard. Any chance of us paying a fine?”“I don’t think that’ll fly. We were gambling on this quadrant being sparsely populated.”And that was the crux of it. Chan took a deep breath and settled into it. “Get Seungmin to bring the guns up. I want them nearby.”“Chan…” Jisung started, then stopped. “Right, actually, I know what you’re going to say. I just want it on the record that I don’t think we’ll win that fight, if we have to fight it.”“And there’s at least one person on our crew now who we can’t let them take alive,” Chan said, alone in the cockpit with his two most trusted friends, the ones who’d followed him for years, who he relied on and laughed with and loved unconditionally. The ones who were always honest with him. “Agreed?”“Is it worth your life?” Jisung asked, very quietly.“Yes,” Chan said.“Okay.” Changbin drew in a huge breath. “Here we go. We’re not losing anyone this time. Together or not at all?”“Together or not at all,” Jisung echoed, his eyes screwed tightly closed. “Fuck.”There was a final staggering burst of deceleration and then the captain of the carrier must have gotten bored of waiting for them to comply. There was an enormous, all-encompassing bang which reverberated through the atmosphere. Even the ever-present hum of the engines seemed to go quiet in the aftermath.“They’ve clamped us,” Changbin said, when it had settled. “Guns it is. I did prep us an evacuation protocol,” he said. “Right?”“I don’t like it,” Jisung muttered.“Just because the pods—”“I’m here,” Seungmin announced, carrying an enormous bag as he skidded in with Minho and Jeongin on his heels. Jisung tapped a button on the console and Seungmin’s call tone stopped sounding off the handheld. “Thank you. Hey, where’s Felix?”Chan heard footsteps in light magnetic boots before he saw them, and when the three of them burst in — Hyunjin, Yunho in tow and Felix last, lightest on his feet, encased in the augmented headset which made him look even more otherworldly than he usually did — Chan could only let himself wish to push the last bit of white hair behind his ear.“Not a word, agreed?” Chan said, when everyone looked at him. “Hide those, Seungmin. I’m going to let them in.”“Is this what you meant by clearing customs?” Yunho asked, still out of breath.“Not exactly,” Chan admitted. “Try not to kill anyone.”“No promises,” Yunho muttered, but he straightened up anyway, his back to the bulkhead as soon as Chan nodded for Jisung to send the override.
-
Hyunjin wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting from the captain of the enormous ship which had detained them, but he had been expecting a captain. He’d spent too long on small ships, with people whose idea of chain of command was nebulous at best, with people who treated each other like people. The lieutenant who came aboard had an augment wrapped around the back of her head which took the place of one of her ears, two deputies and at least five soldiers who’d been tasked for a full inspection while she perused the manifest Chan had sent her.Hyunjin had to fight himself not to stand to any kind of attention, not to meet her eyes with a pre-prepared report he couldn’t shake the sensation that he ought to have had, but it wasn’t him she was looking at.Instead, it was Felix.She read his assumed name off their crew list, the name he’d had for long enough now that it sounded only a little bit wrong to hear someone call him by it, and for him to respond to it. He did, though he didn’t come forward. Nobody was ever eager to be inspected, and Felix couldn’t act any differently.“There are no passengers on your manifest,” she said to Chan, still looking at Felix, who stared steadily back at her with the visible half of his face. “Why is your translator equipped?”“We’re not from this sector,” Chan said, calmly. “We thought we might need it for you.”“We have our own.” She briefly glanced over the rest of them, comparing faces to the faint overlay Hyunjin could see the reverse of flickering over her irises. Ocular implants too, then, and the thought of it made him queasy. “Take it off.”Felix did it, leaving behind the imprint of its adhesion across his face on a diagonal, occluding his mouth. It made him look bruised, and Hyunjin could feel himself clawing at the sensation of terrible failure it still provoked as the manifest scan continued in her eyes. Felix’s face, his terribly distinctive face, flickered into her overlays. Chan had explained it all once, the way the recognition software worked, the lengths they’d gone to encode a pattern spoof onto any of the ID images Felix might have to provide, but the sight of it, the possibility of a cross-reference coming through in real time made Hyunjin’s ribs contract like a fist, forcing the air out of him.And then it disappeared, replaced by a manifest notification that they had a full complement of crew and a medical contractor, and her overlays went blank.She was a deathly pale color, like the ceremonial parchments Felix’s grandfather had kept in his dining room to represent the original contracts which had awarded the Lee company their first holdings. Hyunjin couldn’t have said if the lack of pigment in her irises was a result of the alterations or if she’d been born that way, like space had leached the warmth out of her. He wondered what kind of choice she’d had in it, whatever the origin.One of her deputies came back, carrying a tablet which she flicked her fingers across before she handed it to the lieutenant. Hyunjin found it powerfully difficult not to assign rank by the insignia on their uniforms, all of their markings subtly unfamiliar to his eye. She perused the report at her leisure, glancing at each of them in turn while a soldier stood guard at either entrance to the bridge, weapons equipped and unsubtly displayed.She looked down at Chan when she was finished. “Transporters usually don’t travel empty.”“We’re planning on taking up a contract in the next sector.” Chan said it like he was eager, and the hair on the back of Hyunjin’s neck stood up. “It’s been a little lean lately, but we do okay going a little further afield.”“Luxurious for a transit ship,” she observed. “Who do you subcontract to?”It was a trick question, and even Hyunjin could tell.“Whoever bids on the route,” Chan said, letting a hint of defensiveness creep into his voice. It was a good performance, and Hyunjin was only glad he could tell that’s what it was, now. Apparently, Yunho didn’t know Chan well enough to feel the same. He was edging quietly towards the largest soldier’s position, a look in his eyes Hyunjin wished he didn’t know.“You’d take a bid from our partner company, then?” She asked, ticking her box for questions she was coming to the end of. Whatever she’d been sent after it wasn’t an empty transport liner with nine people and a cat on it. Hyunjin began to breathe again, relieved that Felix had passed beneath her notice.“I’ll take a bid from anyone,” Chan said, peacefully. “That’s business.”The lieutenant’s ocular display came back on. “There have been raids in this area,” she said. “You’ll have to proceed to a customs dock and register your manifest. You also owe an outstanding fuel tax.”“Bullshit!” Jisung exclaimed, before he clenched his jaw shut, visibly furious. Hyunjin could have told him not to keep talking, if he’d been fast enough. “We haven’t made profit in this sector, we don’t owe any tax.”“It can also be paid in a conscription forfeit,” she said, sounding bored at his outburst. “We are currently recruiting for medical personnel and engineers. Your choice.”Hyunjin took two steps to the left and reached for Yunho’s hand, gripping too hard as he pulled him behind his body, not all the way but enough. Yunho squeezed back, his fingers not nearly as strong as Hyunjin’s and shock all over his face for a moment before Hyunjin forced himself to loosen his grip.“He’s right,” Yunho said, quiet and matter-of-fact. “And it's not high on my list.”She looked him up and down, past Hyunjin’s shoulder. “Signing to an empty transporter isn’t exactly lucrative for its crew.”Yunho only looked at her, level and tall, and said nothing else.“Why this ship?” She asked, interested now, a gleam of something sharp in her ghostly eyes. “Have you got a contract history?”“I paid out of a long term placement. I didn’t want to stay. I’m sure you understand.”“How long have you been on this ship?”“It’s on the manifest,” Chan said, when Hyunjin saw Yunho’s jaw clench from the corner of his vision. Felix was staring at him, trying not to make it obvious, and Hyunjin caught his look and shook his head. No notice, no attention. Let the gift of anonymity do its work. Hyunjin had never worried Felix wouldn’t understand him. For far too long all he’d ever had to do to make himself understood was look at him and wait, because it was all he’d been able to do.The lieutenant looked down at Hyunjin. “Long enough to make a friend.”“Come on,” Chan said, with a faint, bored edge Hyunjin recognized. He’d borrowed it from Felix, nearly wholesale. “Are you actually looking for anything, or are you just bullying us? Can I talk to your superior?”“A flight plan skirting a debris field isn’t the best way to get anywhere, Captain. Especially if you’re running empty. Be careful out here, there are known to be pirates on this border.”“My flight plan is my business. You’ve never tried to save fuel before?”“Not my department,” she said. “We’re impounding the ship for a full inspection,” she informed whoever was recording this, tapping the augment. “Detain them.”Chan pinched the bridge of his nose like she’d just overcharged him for dinner. “Jisung?”Jisung groaned and tapped a command into the console.Hyunjin heard the roar of an explosion while he was already diving for Felix. All the blood had drained out of his face, leaving his freckles stark across his cheeks, but he was upright and he was angry, such a rare sight on him. “Get me a gun,” Felix said, low in his ear, just like they’d drilled for years.Any of the ones the soldiers had would be biometric, and useless to any of them. That didn’t seem to matter to Yunho, who had tackled the lieutenant bodily and thrown her gun out of his reach, his long hands instead going straight in for a chokehold around her pale neck. She flailed, astonished, but Yunho didn’t budge, anchored to the deck plating by the magnetism he’d engaged while he was jumping, using their low gravity setting to his advantage.“I said not to kill anyone!” Chan yelled, while Hyunjin leapt to where Seungmin was already kicking a bag across the cockpit towards him. “Changbin, now!” The jump warning was astonishingly loud, even after the reverberation of what must have been the ship ditching part of its hull casing. There was no other way Chan could have rigged an escape from a clamp, and Hyunjin thought of all the work it would need to repair it, a tear in its skin it couldn’t heal by itself. “Hold onto something!” Chan shouted again, right before the whole ship slipped into jumpspace, unprotected, and Hyunjin slammed himself into Felix’s chest and clung on to the nearest fixed console, heedless the burning sensation that ripped across his shoulders as one of the soldiers fired in a panic.The disorientation of it never got better; every reference for stability was meaningless in the fractional moment of displacement, in the stretching and compression of matter that was a complex object moving faster than light could travel, cutting into a place where light didn’t exist.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When the jump was over one of the soldiers had been slammed into the plating hard enough to leave dents and was lying unconscious, crumpled against the secured bulkhead, and the others, the soldier who had shot at Hyunjin and the deputy who’d rushed back in with a report, were disarmed. The problem would be the rest, the boarding party beyond the bulkhead doors. Yunho hauled the lieutenant to her feet, no evidence of the exhaustion Hyunjin had seen on him in the days they’d been travelling visible now, like he had plenty of experience in hiding it. “Stand them down or you die,” Yunho said, easy and quiet and terrifying.“Yunho,” Chan said, which wasn’t the name of his alias. Realizing his mistake, he grimaced. “Let her go.”“We can’t leave them alive now,” Yunho said, tight and low.“That’s not up to you.”Chan was unequivocal, as quietly sure as he’d been hesitant in bed, only hours ago.Felix’s bare palm was on the back of Hyunjin’s shoulder where his clothes had burned off, carefully pulling the edges away from where they’d stuck to his skin. It hurt, a short, tugging pain which anchored him back into his body.“I fucking knew it,” the lieutenant rasped, putting her hands up when Minho aimed at her face. She tapped her augment and nothing happened. They must have been comprehensively out of range of their parent ship.“Take it off.”Slowly, she shook her head. “I can’t. It’s grafted.”“See?” Yunho asked. “You’d be better off—”“It’s my ship,” Chan said, sounding too tired as he said it.“And who are you, exactly? There was no Yunho on your manifest,” the lieutenant said, testing her hand comm, saying something into it which only Hyunjin heard, a low, subvocalized code sequence.“She’s probably telling them to kill us if we open the doors,” Hyunjin said, low and focused. “Don’t let her out.”“What is that dialect? That’s Lee sector or I’m—” she blurted, exasperated rather than afraid for her life. “You don’t have any augments registered. It’s like you’re not even trying. How the hell did you even hear that? It’s not… oh fuck me,” she blinked, taking a better look at him and Felix now that her implants weren’t running the recognition protocols.Hyunjin knew what she’d be seeing now that he’d given her an inkling of what to look for. Felix must have too, because he rested the gun he was holding in his left hand across the top of Hyunjin’s shoulder, as close as he could be and still be a separate body. Her laugh startled Hyunjin badly enough that he flinched when Felix pulled the last shred of his burned shirt clear of his healing back.“Right in front of my eyes. The programmers don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” She looked over Hyunjin’s shoulder and back, then across at Chan, as though the whole situation was at best an inconvenience. “There's a huge ransom building interest. It could change your life. I’m willing to bargain. Letting him get retrieved in a competitor's territory? That could be bad for him.”“We're not bargaining.”She stared at Chan, her pale, strange eyes focusing again. Hyunjin could see the pupil overlays better now, reflecting in the low red light which hadn’t yet cycled off. “You’re making a mistake.”“Maybe,” Chan said. “It’s still my ship. Stand down your boarding party and you live. I promise.”She stared at him. “You really think so, huh?”“The pods have plenty of support.”She looked back at Hyunjin and then at Felix, finally taking him in. “Oh,” she murmured. “I have no doubt they do. I won’t be getting in one, though. You’ll have to kill me or forfeit me back.” She looked back at Chan, at Yunho, still too close to her, at all of them: Seungmin and Minho ready to fire if the doors breached, but there was a conspicuous lack of noise from beyond them, like anyone unsecured had been slammed unconscious or worse by the jump. “You either have no idea what you have or you know and you’re just stupid. Do you have any concept of what my superiors could do for you if you gave them up? Marooning us won’t do you any good, but returning us might. Or just kill us. It’s a quicker death.”Chan just looked at her, something profoundly sad about it that Hyunjin suddenly ached to understand. “You could have just let us go,” he said, before he turned to Hyunjin. “I’m not going to kill them. Do you think you can get them in a pod?”And it would have to be him. Nobody else was strong enough to manage them if they banded together, but this time he’d have help. Felix, who could shoot, and definitely Yunho, who looked like he was about to protest but hadn’t, still glaring acidly at the lieutenant but with less overtly murderous intent. Minho and Seungmin and likely Jeongin, who had taken so many of Hyunjin’s lessons to heart when Felix had been missing in a way he’d never expected.It was just that Hyunjin found he didn’t have the urgent drive of it anymore, the part of him which had been trained so carefully laying dormant in his chest, quiescent. Felix wasn’t injured, first among his priorities still, indelibly, probably forever. But something of Chan’s gentleness had crept in, and Hyunjin didn’t know where to put it or how to hold it away. “Yes,” Hyunjin said, straightening up from where he’d crouched, touching ground for as long as that had meaning. “Where are you sending them?”“I didn’t know they were allowed to ask questions,” she said, looking past him at Felix. “He’s done a very good job so far, do you want my report to reflect that?”“You talk to him,” Felix said, low and awful. “Don’t even look at me.”She wiped at her nose, nothing coming away even though one of her soldiers had gone down with a pressure bleed from the unprotected jump and hadn’t yet regained consciousness. “Does it matter?”“You can walk or I can drag you.” Hyunjin said.
-
The last injured soldier almost regained consciousness as Minho buckled him into the evacuation pod, but only thrashed a little bit, lolling back into the straps when Minho just looked at him and said “the show doesn’t start for another ten minutes,” and he nodded, clearly not quite in charge of himself.“You really take orders from someone who won’t kill to protect your charge?” The lieutenant was still trying to get through on an emergency wide-band frequency, her augment audible to Hyunjin, who didn’t quite have the urge to rip it off he might have once.“You should stop trying to broadcast, you never know who’s around.”“So how does it work?” She stared down at him again like her height would make a difference, surrounded by her subdued people and the bodies of the two who hadn’t survived the jump. “How did he convince you to let him run?”Her augment made another call on another frequency. If he could hear it, it must have been nearly unbearable for her. “He didn’t,” Hyunjin said, even though she didn’t deserve an explanation. "What about you? Is this what you wanted?""Does it matter?" She looked closer, as though maybe her implants weren't functioning as they should have been. "I'm just doing my job. Most of us don't run from it."Hyunjin resigned himself to the answer he’d gotten and the feeling in his chest that it did, that there was more than one way to make that decision, and more than one way to live with it if you couldn't. "I haven't."“When they take your brain out what will they find, I wonder,” she mused, one hand touching the roof of the pod like it was the sky and she was holding it in place above herself.Hyunjin could have said anything, but instead he stepped back and closed the hatch.Minho was looking at him, something more like anger on his face than Hyunjin had expected to see. “She can’t tell anyone where we are if we don't really know,” he muttered, looking at the hatch and not at Hyunjin. “Would they really take your brain out?”“Yes,” Hyunjin said. “It’s proprietary.”Minho laughed, short and abrupt, and all of a sudden Hyunjin was overcome with it too, the emptiness of the threat, the distance he’d clawed out for himself in his body, his, not anyone else’s, filled with the knife-edged terror of it, even under the release of Minho devolving into a strange giggle and saying "why? There’s nothing in it," before yelping when Hyunjin punched him in the arm.“Hey, can you find my cat?” Minho asked, checking a hail from the bridge once he'd gotten over his mortal injury. “I have to stabilize our saturation.”“Why me?”Minho shrugged, looking up at him. “You won’t have to look so hard. Probably something to do with your brain.” He broke, looking sidelong at the closed hatch. “And he likes you.”Hyunjin wasn't sure how Minho could tell.He was still thinking of the soldiers, the way the lieutenant had watched him as he'd closed her in, like he was hardly there.
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“Don’t worry. I skimmed her implant frequency. They won’t have a recording.” Jisung cracked his neck when the hatch closed behind them, the boarding crew and Hyunjin and Minho with Jeongin and Seungmin in tow, leaving the bridge feeling astonishingly empty.“You’re a genius,” Chan said, sounding like it hurt him to say it, even though Jisung smiled, tight and satisfied. “Thanks.”“Sure, anytime. Don’t talk to me until tomorrow.” He put his head down on a console and closed his eyes, and Felix knew he was exhausted even if he wouldn’t say anything more about it. The weight of the jump had landed on all of them, but it seemed like none more than Yunho, who had gone furiously pale and still.“How bad’s the damage?” Chan asked Changbin.“Listen, I’m not going to say it’s good.”“Drop me off,” Yunho said, low and awful. “Anywhere. I don’t want to be here when this comes back to bite you.”“What will it take for you to trust us?” Felix asked, feeling as torn open as the ship. “Isn’t this enough?”Yunho started to reply but got caught by a shred of his cough, short and sharp, and Felix was reminded why he’d come in the first place, and why he’d agreed to stay this long. “It’s not,” Yunho said, once he’d conquered it. “Enough? You nearly got us impounded.”“Actually,” Chan said, “that was me. Sorry.”Yunho stared at him, incredulous. “Is this how you live? Hoping for the favor of the universe?”“Just because I’m not a murderer doesn’t mean I’m going to let you speak to me like that,” Chan said, very, very softly.“Aren’t they your family?” Felix asked, furious and hoarse, glad for the first time that Hyunjin wasn’t here to see him let it take over, astonished with the force of it, the urge he had to step in front of Chan and protect him. “The others, your crew. Would you want them to do something they couldn’t stand? Isn’t that what we’re all running from?”Yunho let out a rough breath. “My family.” The very last thing Felix was expecting was a wry little laugh, his head going back with it. “As if you know the first thing about it.”“I know more about it than you can imagine. Maybe it looks different to you.”“Felix…” Chan said, but Felix wasn’t finished.He could feel the tears again, always ready to well up in him at the slightest tide, any pull at all drawing them out. “Haven’t you ever loved anybody enough to not want them to have to do things they hate?” Felix couldn’t spare a glance at Chan anymore, too close to the knife’s edge of his confession, that this place felt like home in a way no other place ever had, and it was just a ship, a fragile shell keeping them from the void. “What would yours do?”“For me?” Yunho shrugged, Felix’s emotion sliding off him like it always seemed to, something built hard and fast around him which Felix really didn’t understand. “More than you’ll ever know.” Felix remembered the profound, forceful kindness he’d shown Hyunjin when they’d all come to get Felix from Hongjoong, what felt like a whole life ago, and held his breath. “But you must have better luck than anyone in three galaxies.” He looked at Chan. “Where are we?”“Uh,” Chan said quietly, sounding nearly as surprised as Felix felt. “We hopped the border. We’re—”Changbin pulled it up, their navigational model showing its error margins in red. “About here.” Changbin cleared his throat. “Listen, not to interrupt this, but we’re venting atmosphere, so we need to decide where we're going quickly. I've run the isolators on the life support and it’s holding in the intact compartments, Minho can do a manual check, but one bad bump and we’re boned. Technically speaking.”Yunho closed his eyes and recited a string of numbers which Felix only recognized as such when the translation aids picked them up and started cycling them. “Go there. It's not too far. We’ll be met.” He opened his eyes again, looking at Chan and nobody else. “Jettison your cargo first.”Chan looked at Changbin, who shrugged. “There’s nothing there but abandoned terraforming projects.”“Not so abandoned,” Yunho said.“Launch the pod,” Chan whispered, compromising the way only Chan did. True to his word to both parties, and unequivocally opposed to being forced into a corner where the only choices were between two kinds of cruelty.“They’d have killed you,” Yunho said. “Without even thinking about you afterwards.”“I’m not like them. I choose not to be. At least this way they have a chance.”Felix had known for a long time that Chan was more than he let himself appear, but he hadn’t understood before now quite how much it was possible to love someone who wasn’t Hyunjin, how much weight it had in his body. It took up space he’d found himself opening up on purpose, with every slow, quiet moment that Chan had given him; to breathe, to think, to be near him, to trust him, and to believe him when he told Felix who he was.Yunho shrugged. “Not everyone has the luxury. But it’s done now.”Felix wanted to be in fresh air suddenly, the very first time he had noticed himself craving it since he’d left his home, the first time the trade he’d made for himself, for his own life, and yes, for Hyunjin’s, before he’d ever conceived of them as separate, had felt heavy.He’d settle for the next best thing, and didn’t stay to listen to anything else before he went to find him.
-
Hyunjin was in Minho’s room, sitting in the corner with the cat on his lap.Felix stopped in the doorway, looking for Minho.“He’s gone to check on the oxygen cyclers,” Hyunjin explained, when Felix didn’t say anything, just watching Hyunjin’s fingers in Soonie’s orange fur, listening to the hum of the cat purring as though none of the past few hours had happened.Things in Minho’s room had flown out of storage, but Hyunjin had only cleared a space against the bulkhead and curled into it, cross-legged, the shirt he’d gotten out of bed wearing hanging off the back of his shoulders where the shot had burned a tear across it.“That cat is indestructible,” Felix found himself saying.Hyunjin looked up at him through his hair, silent, a sheen of something Felix had never seen before in his eyes. Felix went to him, all his hesitation gone, and threw himself down, aching for the warmth of him, for the specific feeling of his body, utterly unprepared for the way Hyunjin breathed into his skin and then suddenly, frantically, burst into tears.Soonie streaked away, up and out the door by the time Felix wrapped both arms around him and pulled Hyunjin into his lap, as best as he could with the gravity so light, with the long second of settling any movement provoked.Hyunjin’s mass of black hair was in Felix’s mouth and the awful, silent vibration of his grief thundered through Felix’s chest, shocking and new and so, so precious that Felix could do nothing else but let himself feel it too, clinging tighter than he could have imagined.He had never seen him cry before.Not in all the years he’d been right next to him, out of sight so rarely.Not even when they’d been children, paralleled but not the same.Someone had taught him not to.Felix rubbed his back, caught in it, closing his own eyes to the flood. “I love you,” Felix found himself murmuring, over and over again, as many times as Hyunjin could stand to hear it. “I love you so much.” Hyunjin just cried without a sound until he couldn't anymore, even his endurance waning with the settling of his ragged breath, and then Felix was just holding him. He stroked Hyunjin’s hair off his cheek, looking with new eyes at the length of it, feeling it soft between his fingers, even wet and tacky with sweat. “Are you okay?”“I don’t know,” Hyunjin said for the first time, his eyes still closed.Felix pressed his cheek into the top of his head and breathed. The stale ship’s air, the faint burning edge to it, which explained where Minho had disappeared to, and Hyunjin above and below it. All the times Felix had failed him, just by taking him for granted: that he would always be alright, that he could heal from anything. “It’s fine not to know. Most of us don’t. I'm sorry she said that to you.”Hyunjin made a low, wet noise, almost a laugh. Anything but. “I hated doing that. I don't know why.”Felix hadn’t. He’d had a small, vicious little thought as Chan had said it, that he would send people out into space to be picked up, probably, but maybe not, and Felix had hoped they wouldn’t. It would be better if they weren’t. But what Hyunjin had seen and what else the lieutenant had said, only he knew.Hyunjin breathed out, long and slow. “I already know what will happen to me if we get caught,” he said, instead of answering outright. “So do you. It doesn’t matter.”“Over my dead body.”“Maybe,” Hyunjin murmured. “I know you’d try.”Harder than Felix had ever tried for anything. Harder than he had to try to stand when Hyunjin did, aching when Hyunjin wouldn’t look at him, swiping at his eyes with his shirt pulled down over his fingers until Felix couldn’t stand it any longer and brushed his hair back with both hands, taking Hyunjin’s face between his palms: perfect, known, familiar the way his own was. Warm against his cold skin.Hyunjin let him do it. “I would have gone anywhere with you, no matter what.” Hyunjin said. “But you didn't ask me. Was it because you were worried I’d say no, or because you knew I wouldn't?”Felix kissed him as gently as he could, hardly any pressure to it, delirious that he was allowed to, determined that it be something which they had given each other, not something he had taken.Plenty of times, Hyunjin had told him something would be risky. He’d always done his job, keeping Felix safe in any way possible. Information. Coordination. His own physical presence. But not once had he tried to convince Felix that he was making a mistake.Hyunjin kissed him back, too softly, and when he spoke it was gentle, his lips still brushing Felix's. “What if I'd said no?”“I would have stayed,” Felix said, knowing everything he was confessing to.“I’m glad you didn’t,” Hyunjin whispered, pulling back. “I’m so angry you didn’t.” He bit his lip, his perfect teeth white against his skin. “She didn’t even care if I killed her, like it didn't matter. Like she wasn’t even real.” Felix folded him into his arms again, regardless of whether it was right, or kind, needing to feel him breathing against his chest. Hyunjin clung back just as tightly, his arms like a vise around Felix’s ribs. The place they always came back to. “I’m so angry,” Hyunjin repeated, like saying it would let it out, would ease it.“Then be angry.” Felix tried not to let his own rage hold him in its jaws. “Be as angry as you want.”Hyunjin let out a long, ragged breath.“Maybe we’re both defective,” he murmured, settled, a terrible calm coming over him that Felix could feel in his own body, mirrored.Felix could only imagine what Hyunjin had just seen. The specter of himself, hardened into an instrument of something which didn’t care about him at all, despite all Felix would have done to prevent it. “Maybe. Good thing we’re lucky.”Hyunjin laughed, the sound Felix cherished above any other, more of an offering than Felix had ever felt like he deserved. “Good thing we were right about Chan.”Family, Felix had said to Yunho, including everyone who had made it true. Chosen, beloved, furious. Human, in all the ways which mattered most. Both of them.“Minho asked me to find the cat.”“We can find the cat.”Hyunjin just looked at him, his face so familiar, changed so subtly, but still. Changed.“She asked me how you’d convinced me to go along with it. Knowing the odds. I didn’t tell her I came with you because I wanted you to live, and whatever happened to me didn’t matter.”“It has always mattered,” Felix managed, tight in his throat. “It was the only thing that did.”“Not the only thing,” Hyunjin said. “It shouldn’t be. It isn’t anymore. Promise me it isn’t.”“I don’t feel bad about it,” Felix said, as honest as he’d ever been. “I never will. If we get caught–”Hyunjin knocked their foreheads together. He breathed in, and Felix wondered what it would tell him, all the things Felix would never know about how he experienced the space around them. “I’m never going to let them have you back, no matter what they do to me.” He put his hand on Felix’s neck, his thumb stroking up under his jaw. “And I'm going to go find the cat,” Hyunjin said, very, very quietly. “I don’t want you to come with me.”“Okay,” Felix murmured, helpless with the force of his love for him, and the agony of knowing that nothing could protect Hyunjin from this, no more than any other person. He'd have to feel it. Felix would have to let him. “You know where I'll be.”
-
Hyunjin had to put an environmental suit on to find Changbin. It was easier once the gravity was off, the ship reverted to prioritize life support above comfort functions. It was even running off emergency lighting, a darkness which Hyunjin found comforting. He had always liked night time, when things were quieter. Changbin had stabilized the hull damage as well as he could, but the repairs were temporary at best, and at some point any emergency perforation skin would run out of energy, or be displaced by debris. Hyunjin knew this and didn't need to be told but the sight of it stunned him, the translucent temporary material leaving him with a sensation of just how little was between them and the vacuum, the immense and beautiful blackness which was just outside the walls of their tiny little world.“Hi,” Changbin said, his voice through the helmets a comforting vibration. “I’m done, you don’t have to be here.”“I wanted to see.”“Oh, well in that case, welcome to space,” he said, sounding more tired than Hyunjin had ever heard from him before. “It wants to kill us.”“I’m hard to kill.”“Not to that, you aren’t.”Hyunjin looked at it, only a thin diaphragm between him and the entire breadth of it. The lack of everything that sustained life, and the whole of all that did, somewhere. Changbin hung next to him, the disorientation of weightlessness hitting him when Hyunjin realized Changbin was upside down, or at least how Hyunjin perceived it. He had never been nauseous as its own condition, but it might never stop surprising him how profoundly odd it was to be without weight, untethered.“It’ll be cold soon,” Changbin said. “I’m going back to where the air is.”“Can I ask you something?”“Hm? Sure.”“Do you love it?”Changbin hummed again, sending it through Hyunjin’s jaw, a welcome, grounding buzz. “Hard to say. It’s hard to love something which can’t feel anything. But yeah, I do.”“Why?”“We’re not really meant to be here,” Changbin said, after a long while. “But we are. So fuck it, you know. Look at it. It’s beautiful.”It was, even past the ragged tear in the hull layering, and the destruction Hyunjin could see the aftermath of, the ferocious decompression which would have followed.“Are we getting irradiated?”“Yeah, a little. Suits will need a decontamination.”“Then let’s go in.”Changbin layered his clothes back on when they were back in the relative warmth of the life support, and he watched Hyunjin fight with his hair when he did the same. It was ragged at the ends now and grew relentlessly, in a way he’d enjoyed seeing for so long, a kind of testament to having nobody enforce it. No appearance guidelines, no household preferences.He’d liked it when Changbin had played with it, too.Hyunjin looked back at him, shoving the whole cloud of it out his face. “What?”“It’s gotten really long. I hadn’t noticed.” Changbin shoved a hat down on his own short hair, backwards, slicking down the sweat environmental suits always left around the helmet seal. “Want me to tie it for you?”“I want you to cut it off.”Changbin pushed towards him, letting his momentum carry him closer to where Hyunjin had found a stable place to wedge himself and touched down on the bulkhead next to him, making it seem like he was sitting straight out from the wall. “Right now?”Hyunjin found the tie he’d been using and managed to put most of it up. A whole stretch of time since he’d last been on a planet, marked out on his body in the only way it seemed to hold onto it. Suddenly Hyunjin wanted it gone, to peel back the last trace of what he’d left with and see how he felt without it. “Can you?”“I’m sure I can spare the energy to use some scissors,” Changbin said, too gently.“Shave it.”Changbin looked around at the space just beyond the emergency airlock he’d built over the hatch which they’d been using to decontaminate in. “It’s going to stick to you though. Remember the showers aren’t working.”“I don’t care.”“Okay,” Changbin said. “Wait here.”While he was gone Hyunjin listened to the ship.It was different now, knowing exactly how fragile it was. All of them held in such a precarious balance.Changbin came back with a bag and a look on his face like he wasn't sure he really wanted to be here. He had come back, though.“If you're too tired you don't have to,” Hyunjin said, looking at the dark circles under his eyes.“I'm just worried about you.”“Why?”Changbin anchored himself near Hyunjin again, close enough to touch. “Look, I know you've almost died more times than anyone should. But you did get shot a little bit, remember? I just can't imagine it ever feels good.”“It doesn’t.” Hyunjin tried saying it, finding it was easier than he’d expected.“Also, that was kind of awful all around,” Changbin continued, pulling things out of his bag, a comb, clippers. “People don't usually want haircuts right after they've been shot, is all I'm saying. Most people don't want to see the hole in the ship, either.”“You did.”“It's my job to patch it,” Changbin said, carefully untying Hyunjin's hair, separating the front out. “You'll have to help me catch this.”“I thought we'd do it in the airlock.”“Nah,” Changbin drawled. “You're sure?”Hyunjin looked at him, wondering how to put it into words. Wanting to. “I know you've left things behind, too.”There were a dozen small scars on his body, nothing anyone would look twice at, except that Hyunjin remembered where they were, a little starburst of burns across the top of his right arm, going up his shoulder. Things bodies held onto.“Okay,” Changbin said, after a long, strange pause. “Hold still.”Hyunjin had learned how to do that very young, and it wasn’t a skill he’d ever lose.The clippers buzzed against his scalp, and the first patch of hair came away, tied at the ends and set into the bag, so it wouldn’t separate into a million strands to clog the filters with. Hyunjin tried not to smile, imagining it. He’d gotten less practiced at keeping what he felt off his face, because Changbin paused, frowning. “What’s so funny?”“I was thinking about the filters.”“We’ll make an engineer of you yet,” Changbin said. “I can’t stop now, you’ll look ridiculous.” When it was done Changbin ran his hand over the curve of Hyunjin’s skull, fingers skimming the new fuzz, raising an unexpected shiver of pleasure. “Well, you don’t look ridiculous.”Hyunjin thanked him, too hoarsely.Changbin rubbed his head again, like he couldn’t help it. It was an unexpected pleasure, a brand new sensation. “Hey, what are friends for?”For the things you couldn’t ask anyone else, who didn’t have to know everything you’d ever been to love you enough to do them.
-
Felix stirred when Chan came to bed, forced off the bridge by Jeongin, Minho and Seungmin, who’d rotated out for a rest first and come back after to bully the others into getting a half-shift of sleep. The ship required constant monitoring, though by unspoken agreement (and Changbin’s quiet insistence) nobody had tried to shift-rotate Felix and Hyunjin.Felix had gone to bed, it turned out. In Chan’s room.The camera wasn’t on but Felix hadn’t locked him out of his own cabin, and when Chan tentatively climbed in next to him he rolled over, half-asleep, and fisted a hand in Chan’s shirt like he’d been waiting hours to do it. “Hey,” Chan whispered. “Are you okay?”Felix pulled him closer, his eyes still closed. The soft sweep of his hair was everywhere. He hadn’t tied it back to sleep, even though the gravity was negligible now to save the generators. Chan pushed it back to settle, feeling the weightlessness as a horrible burden when he had to gently pry Felix away to rearrange the straps to keep them in place.Chan had resigned himself to the strange feeling that Felix wasn’t going to answer when the door quietly slid open.Chan, expecting another emergency, reached for the light.“Don’t,” Hyunjin whispered.Felix looked up, attuned to him in a way Chan never would be. Hyunjin paused in the doorway, lit green by the emergency lights in the hallway, and it took Chan too long to understand what was different. He was too tired to see it at first, the tight curve of Hyunjin’s newly exposed skull lined out by the green glow, making the shadows of his eyes seem even bigger. He looked faintly alien, like he’d been remade and poured back into the same mold.“Come in,” Chan managed, unsure what was happening. Remembering Hyunjin’s hand on the back of his head, holding him in place.Hyunjin did it silently, slipping out of most of his clothes until he was just in his underlayers, running too hot despite the minimal climate control in the emergency life support. He climbed into bed on Felix’s other side, unclipping them all until he was in and under the covers and the straps were tighter over the three of them, holding them down together. Felix sighed hugely, awake now but silent, and laced their fingers together once Hyunjin was pressed against his back, keeping himself and Chan facing each other, so Chan had to look at both of their faces, what he could see of them. Felix’s hair had been disturbed again, a spread of fine white strands like filaments, blocking half his sight.Hyunjin stroked it down, looking past Felix’s shoulder, his face pressed into Felix’s freckled skin.Felix reached back and ran his fingers along the new fuzz where Hyunjin’s hair had been. “Hi,” he said, quietly, deep in his chest.“I don’t like sleeping alone,” Hyunjin explained, looking over Felix at Chan, letting Felix touch him.“I’m glad you came, then,” Chan managed, meaning it.
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Chan went to wake up Yunho himself. He felt like he owed it to him after letting his name out, and all the rest of it. He didn’t for an instant regret not killing the soldiers who’d boarded them. Chan would rather have given them a chance at life, even if the foul taste in his mouth was the knowledge that it was a slim one. Yunho wasn’t asleep when Chan arrived, and he was dressed in what Chan now understood to be his traveling clothes, close-fitted and durable, making him look taller and thinner, belying the amount of force Chan now knew he could exert. In certain ways he did remind Chan of Hyunjin, no matter how many times he told himself that nothing about Yunho wasn’t the result of ordinary human evolution.He was eating something out of a wrapper when Chan tracked him down in the passengers’ storage lockers, holding it in his teeth while he packed the last of his things into the compression bag floating open by his knees.“Hi,” Chan said, when Yunho only glanced at him and gestured at his occupied mouth. “We’re arriving. Should we be expecting a hail, or what?”Yunho shook his head and finished biting off what he was working on, chewing before he responded. “Just wait.”“For how long?”“You’ll probably get a bit of comms interference,” Yunho explained. “When you do, just open the docking bay. You won’t register any craft.”“You expect me to just let some invisible stealth tech come inside my ship?”“Well, I wish you hadn’t said it like that.”Chan could feel himself blushing. “Don’t.”“Sorry.” Yunho zipped up the bag and ran its vacuum, shrinking it down around its contents. “Do you want me on the bridge?”“Yes.”Yunho nodded his understanding. “Lead the way.”Chan didn’t like it when someone was shadowing him, and the feeling intensified the longer it went on in silence. He still didn’t understand how Felix had stood it for so long, even knowing that the person just behind him was as trusted as it was possible to be. The fact that it was someone who wasn’t Chan’s crew made the skin prickle over the back of his neck. “Look,” he said, waiting for Yunho to catch up and trying not to make it obvious. “I’m really sorry I let your name slip to those soldiers. If you need me to do anything to rectify it...”“Yunho’s not my real name,” he said, with quiet amusement. “It’s a name I chose when I was adopted. My real name is long gone, if anyone could even find it in the first place. The ship I was born on was full of unregistered refugees, so I don’t have any birth records anyway.”“Fuck,” Chan muttered quietly. “It’s like you were born to be a pirate.”“Nobody should be born for that,” Yunho said, too peacefully. “Does it make you nervous if you can’t see me?”“Honestly, yeah,” Chan admitted, astonished. “So hurry up.”“Noted.” Yunho paced him the rest of the way, the click of their boots matching in the silence.
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Yunho was sprawled across a chair a few hours later like the gravity was still on when Jisung stopped where he was turning in lazy circles just because it made Changbin try and hurl things at him, splaying his limbs out to catch something. “Chan–”Chan had heard it too: a crackle on the open receivers, exactly like the interference from radiation flares. “Open the bay.”“Man, I sure hope this isn’t a trap,” Jisung said, very loudly.Yunho laughed and caught one of Changbin’s ricocheting stylus missiles. “They’re hoping the same thing, if that makes you feel better.”“You know,” Changbin said, “somehow it doesn’t.”“Changbin, what are our chances if we can’t repair the ship?”“I’ll open the bay,” Changbin said, keying it in.“Now what?” Jisung asked.“Now we go get everyone else,” Chan said.
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They gathered in the small craft docking areas. Changbin had put them all in suits as a precaution, but the hatch had sealed and the atmosphere had been successfully re-pressurized, though the gravity had become too temperamental to trust, so everyone was relying on magnetic attachment points to stay anywhere.Yunho peeled his faceplate back first, then stowed the helmet.The ship which had landed was only a terrestrial-distance craft, not capable of any long hauls. It was still nearly too big for their bay. Whoever had piloted it in was skilled, it barely fit. Something this size should have showed up on any scan, but not one blip of proximity had come up, even though Chan had been running up and down the detection ranges for days. The engines had already cycled down when the hatch opened and someone climbed out from under its landing gear, moving fluidly despite the lack of gravity. They touched down on the plating and engaged their boots, standing for a moment in the shadow of their ship. Then they moved, and Chan had the strangest feeling of familiarity, like he’d seen this person somewhere before, a specific proportionality which itched at him.They came close enough for Chan to realize how tall they were, and then they stopped. Their reflective faceplate sent them all back at themselves when the stranger looked at each of them, pausing on Felix and Hyunjin before looking back at Yunho.Chan had warned all of them not to come armed, and he thought at least they’d taken him at face value. He couldn’t see a knife or gun on anyone, even if Minho’s exposed face was deeply, obviously skeptical.Then the newcomer stowed their faceplate, retracting it back into their suit before the suit itself folded off his head and stowed itself liquidly around his shoulders. He beamed, a perfectly ordinary-looking man at a glance, and one whose happiness was so at odds with the situation that Chan nearly shook him. “Yunho!” he exclaimed, drawing Yunho into a big, long-armed hug.Yunho was taller, but not by much.“Hi, Dad,” Yunho said, returning it. “Thanks for coming.”“What a lovely surprise,” Yunho’s father said, his voice soft, gently accented with a distinctive, familiar cadence. Like Chan, like Felix. Like Hyunjin, who moved the same way. “We do try to keep track of passing traffic, you know. I did think, when the hangar was open… well, still. How wonderful to see you. How can we help?”“I take it you’ve seen the hole?” Yunho said, still hugging him.“I really wish you hadn’t said it like that,” Chan muttered.Yunho laughed, soft and low. “Dad, this is Chan. He’s the captain.”Yunho’s father looked at Chan with a quiet, patient assessment, and then he looked right at Hyunjin. “I see. And who’s this?”When none of them answered, Yunho whispered something which Chan couldn’t hear but he thought Hyunjin could. He frowned, every expression on his face made more prominent by its bareness, something which still startled Chan whenever he noticed it: Hyunjin’s big eyes and dark eyebrows starker against the short black fuzz of his hair, all of him more delicate, somehow. Finely drawn.“Well, you’ll need a repair plan,” Yunho’s father said, ignoring the awkwardness by pulling a handheld of some kind out of a thigh pocket and expanding it, immediately taking notes. “Who’s your engineer?”“Uh, me,” Changbin said. “Look, sorry, but who the fuck are you?”“Oh, forgive me,” he said, looking genuinely contrite. “I assumed Yunho had explained, since you were waiting for me. I’m Yunho.”“Am I having a stroke?” Minho asked Jisung, loudly.“Only if all of us are,” Jisung replied.“Just checking.”“Yunho and… Yunho?” Chan cut in, trying to keep his shit together. “Can I borrow you for a bit in private, please?”“Of course,” the newer Yunho said, casually handing Changbin his handheld on the way past. “I’ve taken the liberty of pulling up our list of available materials, you can cross-reference for what you’ll need. There’s a subcategory for what I can synthesize if you’re desperate. We can discuss options for delivery when you’ve had a look.”“Is it priced?”“Oh, well, any friend of Yunho’s is a friend of ours,” Yunho said, with all appearances of sincerity. “Even you, Lee Yongbok.”“Shit,” Jisung muttered.“I told you God was real,” Jeongin said to Seungmin, who started laughing quietly and still hadn’t stopped by the time Chan had started taking both Yunhos back to the living quarters.
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Next to each other they didn’t look very alike. Chan had to remind himself that according to Yunho there was no biological link between them, but he had to try hard not to feel small in comparison, and couldn’t help but notice the way they spoke to each other, with deep patience and an alarming amount of sincerity. Yunho, the newer one, had taken Yunho’s hand and was holding it, gloves retracted back into his suit the same weird way his helmet had, like it didn’t quite exist on the same principles as the materials Chan’s was made of did, and had been chatting quietly for as long as they’d been walking.“Dad,” Yunho said, finally, “really, I’m fine. I was on vacation, we ran into each other, I agreed they could give me a lift. It’s not me we should be worrying about.”“Of course, your guest does present a problem,” he said, finally paying closer attention to Chan. “We can’t hide him, you understand.”“Who’s we?” Chan asked, exasperated.“Yeah, where is Max?” Yunho asked. “He–”Then, the strangest thing Chan had ever witnessed a human being do happened right in front of his eyes. Yunho blinked and his face changed entirely, without changing shape at all. “Hello, Yunho,” the other Yunho said, in a totally different voice. Tonally it was the same, but even the inflection was different. The same accent, but there was no other way Chan could describe it: someone else was looking at them. It was obvious, and it was so terrifying Chan found himself holding his breath, astonished beyond words. “I’m at home, is he talking your ears off?”“Yes,” Yunho said, fondly. “Can we land?”“I’ll ask.”And then the stranger disappeared, and the gentle, chatty Yunho of moments ago was back. “I really must have been,” he said. “I’m just too happy to see you.” He beamed, still ignoring Chan profoundly. “You can’t land in this state, no. The atmosphere would implode you. I’ll take you down, though, if you need me to.”He looked back at Chan, finally more serious, his big eyes round and honest. With a gun to his head Chan couldn’t have said how old he was, or precisely what he was, save that there was either something profoundly wrong with him or he was a thing Chan had never encountered in person before: one of Hyunjin’s precursors, products of his parents’ generation, the speculative evolutions brought out by Felix’s grandfather’s first partnerships with the military. The last of the stories people had told him as a child, about what could and couldn’t be fought against. The ones who had been eradicated, too unpredictable for their purpose. Redeveloped. Things people like his parents, defeated and relocated, had used to warn him about how much the company owned. Every officer, every research arm, every mineral right claimed by force. Proprietary technology.Chan had known what Hyunjin was long before he’d known who he was.“Captain,” he said, too gently, “I’m sorry. Of course this is your call.”“Chan.”“Hm?”“Call me Chan.”“Of course,” he demurred. “Yunho usually only brings friends to us if they’re in need–”The Yunho Chan knew better grimaced. “Hey, that’s not entirely true.”“-Or if they’re in danger,” Yunho continued. “I see you have a certain passenger.”“He’s not a passenger,” Chan said, surprising himself with how adamant he sounded, but meaning it. Just like he’d said to Hongjoong, just like he’d said to Yunho. “Felix is my crew for as long as he wants to be. He’s not a guest. He does his share. Even if he didn’t, he’s part of this ship. That’s it.”“I see,” Yunho said, some of the softness falling off his face, as though Chan was now occupying more of his focus. Or maybe whoever else was in his head was listening too. “And his bodyguard?”“Hyunjin too. For as long as he wants. Forever, even if he outlives us.”“He will,” Yunho said, with a hint of awful pity that Chan didn’t want. “Unless he chooses not to.”“Dad,” Yunho warned, “he does mean it.”“And that’s very reassuring,” the other Yunho said, still holding his hand. “I’m just not sure he understands what he’s going to have to carry, in that case.”“So tell me.” Chan spread his arms. “Tell me! Everyone keeps warning me and nobody will explain, so fucking tell me.”Yunho disengaged the magnetism in his boots and drew his legs up, wrapping his arms around his knees. Most people didn’t exist without gravity with such ease, a kind of strange peace to him as the reminder settled into Chan’s body, that there was really nothing holding him down except his desire to be, for his own reference. “If Lee Yongbok’s heir has run from his inheritance, that’s his decision. I don’t need to know why, but even out here we do receive some news from home. What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s all well and good to pretend he can grow into anonymity. Maybe if he had six lifetimes to do it in, he could. Maybe if you spend every spare moment of your travel in jumpspace and stretch it out that way. Maybe if you use those stasis pods you’re keeping in storage, and go as far away as you can. But if that was his plan he’d have done it already. So, one day you’ll have to fight for him. He’ll have to fight for himself, and whatever it is he believes in.”“We already have.”“And are you prepared to do it again? Again after that?”The astonishing kindness with which he said it took none of the sting out of it, and Chan could feel his skin heating up as he said, tightly, through his teeth, “Yes. And for Hyunjin, too.”Yunho looked at him, smiling very, very gently. “Yunho,” he said, looking at his son, “Do you think that’s true?”“It’s none of his business,” Chan said, feeling it crawling up his throat.“It is if he’s brought you here, Chan,” Yunho said, gentle and unmoved. “Because if he’s making your fight our fight, then it’s bigger than you. Do you understand that?”“I never asked for that.”“But here you are. And if we help you, and you know we exist, if any of you get caught it has consequences. Yunho’s crew know this, too. All I’m giving you is a warning, for now. Assistance, because you’re here, and you’ve brought me my son, which always makes me happy.” He smiled at Yunho, genuine and warm. “We lost him for a long time, and when you get to our age, time together is really all that’s precious. But we won’t bind you to anything. You can stay here and we’ll do the best we can to help you with your repairs, and we won’t have to move again, if we’re all very lucky. Or you can ask us for what we know, and we can tell you. And then you might have to use it.”“What makes you think I won’t sell it?”“You’d have been a rich man dozens of times over if you’d chosen to give up your friend,” Yunho said, smiling. “I’m sure you know.”“They’re not just my friends.”Yunho regarded him quietly. “And you’re not a coward,” he said. “You have no idea how pleased we are to hear it.”That nebulous we again, absent the terror it raised in Chan, the knowledge that whatever Yunho considered himself, it was beyond Chan’s comprehension. The idea of anyone else in his mind made him feel cold all the way through, a total refutation of the concept settling in his bones.But he was something not entirely unlike Hyunjin, so Chan had to look at him and know it.“I thought you said you were done getting involved in causes,” Yunho said, looking at his father.“I said that,” said the person who wasn’t Yunho, stitched into him, listening. “But you know what he’s like. If you’re coming down I’ll make dinner.” And then Yunho was back, beaming. “He will. So?”He stuck his hand out and Chan shook it, terrified. “I’ll have to stay with the ship.”“Oh, trust me,” Yunho said, the younger one, “if anyone was going to do anything to it here we’d already have been disintegrated.”Chan forced himself not to shiver and let go of Yunho’s warm, firm, long-fingered hand, leaving behind the same distinctive heat as Hyunjin’s. “You could have just pretended to be colonists or something.”“You have someone aboard who would have known right away we aren’t,” Yunho explained. “So.”“You also aren’t very good at hiding it,” Chan heard Yunho mutter.“I take offense to that,” Max said, as though he – whoever he was – was in the room with them and not speaking at a distance, using someone else’s voice.“He’s joking,” Yunho said, taking his face back. “Bring what you’ll need for a few shifts.” He beamed, done with Chan in favor of taking Yunho’s hand again and pressing it to his chest. “Welcome home.”
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Max was taller again, their Yunho’s size and broader, with a stern, elegant face softened by big ears, his reddish hair brushed firmly back from his forehead. He stepped forward to meet them where Yunho had landed the ship and waited for them with his arms crossed, for all the universe like a disappointed parent telling his children they were late.Yunho – the younger version, Chan still couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose the exact name of someone else – staggered in the gravity as he stood to leave the ship and unthinking, Chan steadied him.Yunho looked down at him, frowning, but didn’t step away. “Thanks,” he said instead. “I’ll get used to it.”And then he was gone, dropping out of the ship without using the ladder, and Chan followed him just quickly enough to see him embrace the figure at the edge of the landing pad, set against the odd twilight offered by three moons, too close to the horizon. The planetoid was dark to the eye, oceanless, with dense, springy topsoil that felt odd underfoot. Changbin bent down and touched it, holding a handful up to sniff. “Fucking hell,” he said, “this is spored.”Whatever that meant.Chan had taken Felix and Hyunjin aside before they’d gone down to the surface, futilely, if Hyunjin was anything to go by. It was likely Yunho would hear them if they were anywhere nearby with any atmosphere to carry sound.“He knows who you are,” Chan said to Felix, without preamble. It was too important to get it out. “More than that, too. I don’t know exactly what he is, but he’s not going to sugarcoat it. If you want to stay on the ship it’s up to you.”“He’s a prototype,” Hyunjin said, too calmly. “Yunho already told me.”“My parents used to tell us about military research. Perfect officers, that kind of thing. How I should never assume they weren’t still around, even if the public information said they’d been decommissioned.” Chan caught himself shaking his head. “They were always campaigning for more transparency.” Like that would really do anything, however well intentioned. Secrets had always been currency, and no corporate edifice ever gave them up without a fight. And even if they did, they were never secrets which benefited any ordinary person. Only rivals and upstarts.And Felix, giving them up for passage.“They don’t make them anymore,” Felix said. “Not for decades. Maybe now we know why.”“They make other things instead,” Hyunjin said, with a terrible little smile. “I want to go down.”So they had.Minho, Jisung, Jeongin and Seungmin had elected to stay on the ship. I’m not leaving it Jisung insisted, with surprising force. It got us this far.He’d been right, though Chan had to force the guilty worry out of his mind.And now they were here, with Felix glued to his shoulder and Hyunjin on the other side, like they were both protecting him, for some unfathomable reason.“He prefers to be called Felix,” their Yunho explained, when Max just looked at them all, scanning carefully across their faces. Of course, he had already heard what the other Yunho had, or possibly seen what he’d seen. The concept was electrically awful to Chan, still. “And this is Hyunjin.”“He can still come in for dinner, whatever he likes to be called,” Max said. “I’m Changmin.”“What?” Chan exclaimed. “Then who’s Max?”“I am.” Changmin looked down at him, amused. “My children call me Max, but you can too, if you want.”Before Chan could answer, the other Yunho had arrived, closing up their landing craft and walking off the landing pad to join them. “Hello,” he said to Changmin, before he kissed him deeply, in full view of everyone.Changbin made a noise like he was being strangled and went to look at the dirt again.“They’re always like this,” their Yunho said to Hyunjin, not even bothering to whisper. “We’ll go inside in a minute.”It did not escape Chan’s notice that the other Yunho’s first interest in Hyunjin, visible from the moment he’d landed in their hangar bay, hadn’t come up again at all. Then again, it wouldn’t need to. They were in each other’s heads.
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Hyunjin liked the soup more than he’d expected to. It was powerfully fragrant and had a deep, new spice in it, like a base note in a perfume. The things in it were the ordinary kind people put in everything in space, generic proteins which were most easily grown and preserved to be rehydrated, but he found that with the broth and the crunch of an unexpected vegetable he enjoyed the chewiness, and was so surprised to be enjoying it that he almost didn’t notice Felix turning red and starting to sweat from the hairline. Changbin made a noise like he’d been holding in a moan and served himself a second bowl, and Chan whimpered like watching Changbin do it was wounding him.Yunho – his friend, amused and not much changed with all that Hyunjin now knew about him – smirked and handed Felix a napkin before turning back to his parents. “Where is everyone?”“Minna and Jun have gone to scout universities,” Changmin said. “They’re looking for independent polities to sponsor them, but of course we thought they should find the ones they liked before they committed to a program.”“No new faces?”“It gets harder to see them go,” Changmin said, without much more expression, though the other Yunho reached across the low table and briefly patted the back of Yunho’s arm.“He’s not trying to make you feel guilty.”“I know.” Yunho smiled at him, easy and fond. “I don’t worry you’ll be lonely, trust me.”Changmin wasn’t nearly as demonstrative as his counterpart, but he did smile back. “Your lungs sound worse. Are you staying long?”Yunho didn’t seem to mind him sharing this. Hyunjin assumed that traveling with him had given them all an assumption of knowledge. It was like that in space, when everyone lived so close to each other. And besides, Hyunjin could hear it too, the low crackle under his breath.It was very, very strange to have to remind himself not to assume they wouldn’t hear or see or smell the same things he did. Or even taste.The whole dwelling was set into the soil, low down and well-insulated, dug out for high black ceilings with sliding skylights, angled to open or close with the breeze unless they were programmed to shut. It made everything quieter, easier to see in. The stars outside the atmosphere were barely visible past the brightness of the moons, and Changmin had only turned on the lights once Chan, Felix and Yunho had come inside. It didn’t escape Hyunjin’s notice that he hadn’t needed them, and it didn’t escape Changmin’s that Hyunjin had grimaced when he did, briefly startled by the low, soft glow of them after he’d started to enjoy the darkness. He hadn’t been badly injured, but the toll of healing was still close by, noticeable to him now that he was so much more aware of it.He went for a second bowl too, and Changbin patted his leg under the table, warm and familiar. “This is really good,” Changbin said, when the silence had stretched. Hyunjin had been watching the others, Yunho and Changmin, who hadn’t been speaking but who he thought were always speaking, probably. Whatever had grafted them into each other was long-settled. If it wasn’t they’d have been driven mad by it. The thought of it itched.“Thank you,” Changmin said. “You can have as much as you want.”“Have you got any milk?” Chan asked, faintly.Hyunjin couldn’t help but laugh, watching Felix silently slide a glass of water at him, joined in sympathy apparently to the point that he couldn’t speak either.Yunho looked at him. The elder one, who had come to their ship and seen him right away, like something about Hyunjin was a beacon to him, just like seeing him move had called to something in Hyunjin who had immediately recognized him as not quite human. Almost. Very nearly. But not quite.“I wasn’t planning to come,” Yunho interjected, finally answering the question. “But Hongjoong was meddling, and I wanted to spend some time with Hyunjin, so here we are.”“How is Hongjoong?” his father asked, diverting his scrutiny from Hyunjin for a welcome moment. “Is his eye still bothering him?”“Not as much as it used to. Mingi makes him rest. Are you keeping busy with an empty house? Is there anything we can help with while we’re here?”“Oh, let’s focus on Chan’s ship first. We can’t leave it open out there for too long, your temporary radiation seals won’t hold indefinitely. We’re fine, you know we are.”“I know you always say it,” Yunho probed, but he let it go, getting up to clear plates, moving like he knew where everything was. Of course he did, this was in some sense home to him, even if Hyunjin didn’t fully understand how. Feeling daring, he got up too, rescuing Felix and Chan from the food and leaving Changbin to his last few mouthfuls, an expression of blissful calm on his face. It didn’t take long before everyone was finished and the table was cleared, informal the way Hyunjin had learned to enjoy, but he knew he was being watched and the prickle of it was inescapable, as present as the faint burr of surprise which still caught him whenever he reflexively went to push his hair back and found it gone, his palm meeting the pleasing fuzz across his scalp instead.The older Yunho looked at Changbin. “Have you had a chance to make us a list yet?”Changbin startled and pulled out his own handheld, which now seemed clunky and small compared to the smooth lines of everything here, and the strange, flexible expansion of everything Yunho seemed to touch. Much to Hyunjin’s surprise, Yunho pulled out a pair of glasses, unfolding them and setting them on his nose so Changbin’s screen wouldn’t make him squint.Hyunjin had a sudden, aching memory of Yunho telling him he should watch out for his eyesight, before Hyunjin had ever known it was something in him which might degrade.Suddenly, he didn’t want to look. He caught Felix’s eye, knowing he would understand, even if he would never know everything Hyunjin thought or felt. Felix, still flushed, offered him a hand, and Hyunjin took him outside, navigating the warren of corridors which had led to the living space by memory and the faint light glowing in the alcoves, knowing Felix probably couldn’t see much until they were outside again under the moons.The dirt was black too, hard-packed around the sloping entrance and not much disturbed anywhere else, blending in with the sky on the short horizon, all the soft darkness and muted color making even the humps of other buildings seem smooth and insignificant when he sat down in it, breathing real atmosphere for the first time in too long.It was warm and a little bit humid, leaving a feeling on his skin which reminded him of home in a way he hadn’t expected to be nostalgic for.Felix sat down next to him, looking up. “They scare the hell out of me,” he said, when Hyunjin didn’t say anything first. Felix took his hand and held it in both of his, toying gently with his fingertips. It felt nice, the kind of absent touch he’d missed so much when Felix had been gone, a lifetime holdover from when they’d been children. “I don’t really know why,” Felix continued, still blinking at the moons.“Because they look human, but they aren’t.”“I don’t think it’s that,” Felix mused. “Not all of it.”Hyunjin let himself settle into his nearness, into the light pleasure of being touched by him. Comfort of the kind he’d never questioned. Felix, close by. Too beloved to fathom otherwise. Not just because he’d been made to protect him but because he’d chosen to. He couldn’t help but wonder how many others like him had ever grown into a close, hardened dislike of their charges. It must have happened. It was impossible that it hadn’t. It was an awful thing to hold inside himself, that in a slightly different life he and Felix might have been bound together forever, a tool and its user.Yunho and Changmin were the same as each other, unapologetically linked in a way only they could have withstood. A kind of acceptance of alienism which Hyunjin couldn’t reconcile with the reading glasses, with children coming home. “Our Yunho told me I could stay here if I needed to. When he came aboard on the station.”Felix said nothing for a long time, still holding his hand. Cradling its warmth. Shoulder to shoulder Felix felt solid, small and dense despite his delicacy, something in him adapting quietly to a new environment. “Hyunjin…” he said, saying his name like he was tasting it. “There’s a lot you could learn here. Not for anyone else. For you, if you wanted. I think they’d tell you.” He paused, taking a deep, slow breath, his shoulder moving against Hyunjin’s. “Is it terrible if they scare me because they just prove that everything I was told about power was a lie?”“What do you mean?”“If they’re who I think they are, then they were developed to be elites,” Felix said, settling quietly into the remote, factual voice he used when he was talking about the company. “A vested, biological interest. A benefit to the military, able to step into governance positions. Built for loyalty, so even separate entities would have a company asset.”“They’re built and I’m not?” Felix frowned at him, broken from his train of thought. “You used to get so angry when I said I was built.”“Not angry,” Felix said. “Sad.”“Why?” Hyunjin asked. “I was. Nobody gave birth to me.” He had very few memories of his earliest years, but some persisted. The banks of others, a faint sense of other children, decanted at similar times for other clients. “Isn’t that something that’s built?”“My grandfather’s first act when he took over was to have the last ones killed,” Felix said, sidestepping the question. “It was what solidified him as director. No more speculation on post-human development. They were too independent to use as proxies.”But of course, Hyunjin existed.Hyunjin absorbed it like a blow, thinking unwillingly of the older version of him which had protected Felix’s grandfather so constantly. Impossible to tell his age, only that whatever mix had been preselected for him had come with a different phenotype, tall and dark, only their eyes and proportions showing any similarity. He’d wiped the blood off Hyunjin’s chin the first time he’d ever been shot, and had pretended to ignore the way he was shaking even as he’d left his other hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder, squeezing very gently until he stopped.One rule for one, another for everyone else.“I think they must have escaped,” Felix said. “They must have. It would have been covered up a long time ago. I didn't know about it. Any of it. I was just meant to be a figurehead.”It was easier to train independence out of someone early than it was to remove it once someone had it.Hyunjin laced their fingers together. “Do you want to know?”“Not if it means you stay just to find out.”“I wouldn’t.” Above them, the moons hung huge in the sky, utterly alien. “You’ve seen them now. You know where they are. Maybe you could just ask.”Felix laughed quietly, the tears he was so prone to coming out and rolling down his cheeks, silent. “If I’d inherited my company I’d have wanted to know every filthy secret about what we’ve done to people, and I’d have had to live with that. But it turns out I already do, and I can’t keep looking away. So they scare me. One more thing I shouldn’t look away from.”“You’ve never looked away from me.” And it was true, in all the years they’d been tied together. Moments of ignorance, kept opaque by design, yes, but never once had Felix pretended Hyunjin was something he wasn’t, or told him he couldn’t grow into what he was now. “They scare me too.”“Why?”“Because they’re old,” Hyunjin said, squeezing his hand. “They’re old and they have each other. But neither of them is human, and you are.”“Yeah,” Felix said, squeezing back. “Yeah, I am.”And so was Chan, though Hyunjin couldn’t say it. All the people who made up his life now, who were so precious because of it. It felt like a stone on his chest, like too much gravity after too long without it.“When you died I would have been decommissioned too,” Hyunjin said, aloud for the first time.“And now you’ll have to live.”Felix had always understood him.Hyunjin put his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes, listening to all the small sounds of his body. The breath in his lungs, the beat of his heart. The quiet creak of a joint when he moved his fingers. The rasp of skin on skin when he wiped at his cheeks. “I want you to live a long life,” Hyunjin said. “Promise me you will.”“Nobody gets to promise that,” Felix whispered. “I’ll try, though.”“I’ll make Chan promise.”Felix sighed, letting their heads bump together. “For me or for him?”“Both,” Hyunjin said.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
As the repairs progressed – the ship drawn into a stationary orbit above the unmapped planetoid, cloaked out of detection range by something Yunho had enthusiastically explained to Changbin – Hyunjin settled into a tense anticipation which he knew was eating at him but couldn’t seem to break the longer he was planetside.The next repair shift was going up with materials in the morning, and so when the star which served as a sun here rose, blazingly hot for a few hours before the orbit of the planetoid dropped them back into twilight, Hyunjin climbed in with them.Changmin was piloting this time, letting Changbin ask him a half-dozen questions in the same amount of minutes, answering each of them factually, but without the gentle enthusiasm Yunho brought to whatever he was speaking about. Changmin was quieter on the whole, a better cook, something more focused about him at a glance. Hyunjin didn't feel he knew him, nor did he expect to. They hadn't tried to approach him, even to reiterate his Yunho’s offer. Hyunjin had no doubts that they'd have harbored him if he'd asked, but he hadn't. He felt the gravity lift off him and listened to Changbin’s irrepressible voice, his presence unremarked upon until they disembarked to unload and Seungmin, who had stayed with the ship most recently, stared at him. “Oh, you're back.”Hyunjin nodded and went to start disembarking plate composites.“Is he okay?” Jisung asked Changbin, trying to whisper. Jisung and Minho had finally come down, persuaded by the offer of food, and had come back up with them.“Leave him alone, man,” Changbin muttered. “Take the day off, Seungmin, we've got new radiation shielding to fit.”“Sweet,” Seungmin said. “Hey can Jeongin and I come down with you again later? I need some sun and a day off.”“Ask him,” Changbin said. Hyunjin saw him nod at Changmin. “It's his house. Promise to do the dishes and you'll have a better shot.”Hyunjin brought the first stack of plates over to the hatch and then closed his environmental suit over his head, wanting to shut out the majority of the sound.Do you have a closed loop? Changmin’s voice trickled through in his receiver, a different vibration from Changbin’s comforting buzz.Hyunjin shook his head.That’s fine, Changmin said. Put this on your helmet. Hyunjin took it in his glove, turning the small, metallic disc in his fingers. Changmin took its pair and pressed it to the side of his helmet. Hyunjin did the same, imitating the movement. Suddenly the ambient sounds of everything faded out, leaving only a soft, thick silence. It was a terrible relief, and Hyunjin could only stand there, looking at him.Changmin waited until Hyunjin had settled to speak. Is that better?
How does it work?
Changmin smiled behind his faceplate. You’ll have to ask Yunho.He smiled every time he said his name.The way voices traveled through the link was softer than the headsets, without their signatory crackle of static. Hyunjin almost missed the buzz of the bone conduction, but the easy quiet was too peaceful to resent. What about the others?
They can still hear us if you speak loudly enough. But you’re being very quiet.
He hadn’t noticed. Silently, he set his audio from automatic to manual transmission.Hyunjin was perfectly aware that Changmin and Yunho were letting him come to them first. He'd made his point that he'd be sleeping with Felix and Chan, and that no, he didn't want his own room, and beyond that they had treated him just like all the rest of their odd little human guests.Changbin had leapt at the opportunity to discuss how they'd been completing the abandoned terraforming project they lived on, and had run around the entirety of the homestead with Yunho, sinking his fingers into the dirt and coming out with an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm for mycelia which had baffled all of them except Chan, who had just smiled to see it happen.“Anyone would think your father had actually done a day’s gardening in his life,” Changmin said quietly to their Yunho at breakfast one morning, when Changbin's curiosity had already sent them out the door. Yunho had laughed until he'd coughed, and Changmin had gently rubbed him on the back until it stopped. “Do you want an infusion?”Yunho, drawn and wry, had just shrugged. “I probably should.”“Doctors are always the worst patients.”“Still not a doctor,” Yunho had said, but he'd gotten up to follow him anyway, leaving Chan, Felix and Hyunjin alone at the table.Chan got up to clear the plates, snapping Hyunjin out of his observational fugue to help. They had a sanitizer for implements just like on the ship, and Hyunjin found the rhythm of it settling. “Does anyone else feel like an alien here?” Chan asked quietly, looking around at Felix, too.Felix nodded emphatically, and Hyunjin couldn't help but laugh.The fiction could only go on for so long, but it had held.Changbin was in charge of the repair work, discussing it quickly with Jisung about who would do what, and Hyunjin slotted in where he was useful, tethered to the outside of the hull with Minho, who was also a good riveter and who blissfully didn't chatter very much. Hyunjin could still hear him when they needed to speak, but it was usually only Minho hailing him to readjust position of the panel before Changbin marked the attachment out. They’d only riveted a few so far, a surprising amount of adjustment being required for a fit along the warped tear in the hull the clamps had left.Rebuilding the interior plating over the hole had been the most difficult part, and now they were setting the lining for the outer hull to be laid on, carefully reconstructing the void space Changbin had been hidden in when he'd taught Hyunjin to do this.It felt better to be doing something useful, even if they had to work in short shifts doing this in vacuum. Exposed to the ambient radiation of space they only had a limited amount of time outside before Minho would have to come in. Hyunjin would survive longer and need less treatment for potential overexposure, but it was good to come in and out anyway.Minho’s timer beeped. I’m heading in, he announced, going for the airlock. Hey, are you coming?I’ll stay, Hyunjin said, surprising himself. Take your time.
You’re acting weird today. Weirder.
In the close, lovely silence Changmin had given him, it didn’t sting. You’re getting irradiated.Ugh, Minho said, precisely, and walked back along his tether until he was on the cradle by the gate, telling Changbin to let him in.The change took a few minutes while the airlock cycled, and then it was Changmin walking back across the hull, resetting the tether line as he went like he’d done it thousands of times. Hyunjin couldn’t now turn around and ask to come in. It would be a waste of limited air, and he’d already said he was fine to stay out another shift.This one? Changmin asked, when he’d set his tether near their working zone. Hyunjin nodded and handed him Minho’s riveting gun. It’s peaceful out here. I’d forgotten.I like this ship. Hyunjin listened for Changbin, but he must not have been in position yet. I don’t mind being out here to help repair it.Hey, you there? Jisung asked. We can set forty-six, I’ve marked it, you good?Yes. Hyunjin moved over to it, setting the brace for the gun. On you.The rivet punched through and Jisung sealed it. There was no sound to it outside the hull, just the vibration through his body. He moved to the next brace and waited. They did all three with Changmin watching.
I can do the next one.
Hyunjin almost thought he'd imagined that instead of heard it. He glanced at him, breathing. He could feel the exertion in his arms now, and the sweat down the hollow of his spine, getting slowly reabsorbed into the suit’s moisture regulation system. It was all sensation he’d never expected to get used to, all a place he’d never expected to be. He found he wanted to answer him, the loud and unspoken question which was all around them, as real and weightless as the vacuum.
Yunho said I could stay with you.
You can. We’ve got plenty for you to do, if you want to, or not, as you prefer. There’s a lot we can tell you, if you want to know.
Is your Yunho listening?
He’s asleep. He gets tired more easily than he’ll admit.
Okay, forty-seven! Jisung called through. Something about it was itching at him. Jisung's voice had hit him in his body, just like sound always did in the suit, but Changmin's didn't.Changmin moved into place, setting the brace like he’d done it before. Hyunjin called it back and Jisung fired from his end. Changmin grunted softly like the force of it was unexpected, but he sealed it neatly.How does it work? Being in each other's heads? Hyunjin asked, despite himself. The thought of it still terrified him, even days after he’d first seen it happen; each of them able to use the other to see, speak. Watch.It’s a long story, Changmin said, moving to the next attachment.Hyunjin didn’t expect to be told it. He wanted to ask a thousand questions, but instead, he reset his tether’s closest magnet and laid back against it, letting the feeling of it pervade him. The mystery of why someone would allow anyone to have such control over them seemed like something he’d never understand.
It was Yunho’s idea. I don’t think he really thought it through, but I did.
Hyunjin didn’t know him, really, but he’d never have a better chance to try. Why?When we left together we had to learn to talk to each other again, Changmin explained. It was harder than we expected.Hyunjin understood that better than he wanted to, an unwilling clench of sympathy taking hold of him. He didn’t think Changmin would want or need it from him. They must have understood what it meant to lose all sense of structure in their lives, but they were so settled here, so entirely at home in each other, that Hyunjin couldn’t fathom it being otherwise. So you linked your minds?When we were first partnered it was discussed. For operational reasons. Hyunjin couldn’t tell, but he sounded almost amused, as though the concept was funny. It killed another pairing, and we weren’t quite so expendable.
How?
They went mad. As you might imagine, it’s quite difficult to reverse. Neural pathways grow around it.
Hyunjin felt himself recoiling from the thought, remembering all the times when his body had pushed out foreign objects, the way it absorbed and discarded the ink he used himself as a canvas for. Maybe they were different. They were older, less perfected. More able to sustain permanent modification. Was it really better than talking to each other?Changmin paused. It taught us how to be better to each other. When we were separated for a long time, I could feel him. You might say it was what kept me sane without him.It wasn’t the answer Hyunjin wanted, not even close.All it did was raise more questions: had they done it with their own hands? How long had it taken before one of them had regretted it, even once, knowing it couldn’t be reversed?How far away would they have to be from each other for it to be nothing but an echo, a neural pathway left behind as a ghost?
How long?
Too long, Changmin said, softly.Hyunjin heard the pain in it, and didn’t want to cause him any more. He knew better now how much it mattered not to.After a while he turned the lights on his helmet off, and there it was in front of him: the ship, yes, the massive curve of it like the huge swimming creatures he’d read about in Felix’s books, and the blackness beyond. Stars. He felt huge instead of tiny in the face of it. Something in him had grown to meet it. He put his finger on the little disc, the genesis of this quiet place between them which Hyunjin already knew he’d miss when he took it off. Thank you, he said. I don’t want to stay.
I know. But if you ever change your mind, come and find us. If there's more you want to know, ask.
Hyunjin pulled himself back in to do the next plate, and then decided to listen to his radiation saturation alert and decontaminate his suit.He turned back before he went for the airlock, looking at the figure of Changmin, long-legged, unfamiliar, perfectly assured. Thank you. I owe Yunho a lot. I won’t forget.He won’t hold you to it, Changmin said, and held out his hand.Hyunjin took his disc off, but Changmin shook his head. Hyunjin looked closer. Glinting between his fingers, held fast between the fingertips, was the one which had been on his helmet. Hyunjin took it, very carefully, and placed it next to the one he was already wearing.Hyunjin still didn’t know how to accept gifts gracefully, but Changmin didn’t seem to expect him to.
-
Hyunjin went to bed before he was tired.There was too much to think about to stay at the table, too many voices combining all of a sudden. He hadn’t minded in space, when the reminder of other living people so nearby had always been a chaotic reminder that life persisted even in a place so hostile to it.This planetoid was hostile too, in its own way. Nobody would die from walking outside, but the soft, gentle blackness of it was seductive, and Hyunjin could feel himself drawn into the peace of it, which he knew couldn’t be permanent.Chan got in beside him and buried his face in Hyunjin’s shoulder. Warm skin, warm breath, the sounds of his body.He didn’t say anything, resting there.Hyunjin let him, listening hard. Chan, taking deep breaths. The thrum of power conversion stations, buried in the ground. The faint sounds of people moving around in the house; all the noise which had become so much less evident in space, cocooned in the ship with its own particular, encompassing soundscape. Chan, who snored. Whose bed he had climbed into before he’d really understood why he wanted to.Physical attraction, he’d learned, wasn’t something which could be distilled to a simple formula. It came from so much more than just the pull he’d felt so strongly in his body for the first time only months ago. It was as complex as everything else he’d had to take hold of.He felt naive now for having thought he’d understood it so well when he’d unraveled what it was that made Chan heat up, and learned what it felt like to be able to rouse it in him. It had felt like power, willingly given over to him, a sensation which had been as thrilling as it had been new.He rolled over, gently disengaging Chan so he could look at him, face to face.Chan stayed where Hyunjin put him. Letting him look. Without the curtain of his hair Hyunjin felt sparer, more visible in turn.Hyunjin put his thumb on Chan’s lips and felt his breath rush past it. It did something to him he still didn’t have a name for. A soft, enveloping heat as though it were alive between them, like the warm air of the surface outside. The part of Hyunjin which was sharpened and older than any of this cut at him, still, colored now with the spectre of Yunho and Changmin, so inextricable from each other that it showed on their faces, in their bodies, in the way they touched each other.This was far more fragile, and it scared him.He’d told Felix what it meant for him to have seen this place. He hadn’t expected any grace from Chan, not ever, and yet he’d received it time and again, even when Chan had still been battling his own fear of him.Not fear of what Hyunjin was but of what Hyunjin could reveal in him.A thing between them which called to itself, which they shared.Hyunjin kissed him wordlessly, moving his thumb out of the way to do it, just enough to press down on the corner of Chan’s mouth where his lips met, the pressure of his skin, the resistance of it a reassuring density.Chan kissed him back, with a sigh like he’d been hoping for it and hadn’t asked.He hadn’t spoken, still not ready to ask Hyunjin for what Hyunjin already wanted to give him: the kind of comfort he deserved, the time to discover it, the safety to do it in. All the things Chan had given Hyunjin already.Hyunjin reached past him, ignoring his confusion.When he’d found it, Hyunjin pressed one of the little discs Changmin had given him to his own head, over the temple.Nothing adverse happened. There was no zing of connection or awful burr of static. Just the same quiet peace it had given him through the helmet. The sounds of the house were gone. The sounds of Chan were gone too, whatever field it generated smothering everything but his own breath, moving through his lungs, a feeling more than a noise.He pressed the other one to Chan’s temple in the same place.Chan’s eyes widened, comical for a moment before he said what the fuck is that? without moving his mouth.Chan wasn’t intending to talk until Hyunjin did. It was a habit he only broke when he was in command, a sort of authoritative calm which came on him when he was, which Hyunjin had begun to recognize for what it was.All of a sudden, Hyunjin understood. Changmin told me I was being very quiet, he thought, trying it without saying the words.Chan jumped, his whole body tightening with the force of his surprise. He ripped it off, staring at it, held between them.He said something which Hyunjin had to focus on to hear. “Where did you get this?”“Changmin,” Hyunjin said, again. “He wanted to speak to me.”“And he let you keep this? It’s insane. Tech like this–”“Is in their heads. Not mine.” Hyunjin tapped him very gently where the disc had been. “Did it hurt?”“No,” Chan admitted, wariness all over him. “Does it hurt you?”“No,” Hyunjin said.Hyunjin waited for him to decide. Whatever he chose, Hyunjin could live with.Carefully, slowly, Chan put it back.Now you don’t have to try to talk, Hyunjin joked.
This is so much scarier than talking to you. Can you really hear me?
Hyunjin didn’t think it was hearing, really. Whatever it was transmitting, it was direct. Hyunjin had no access to his thoughts, memories, feelings, the things which made a person. Only what Chan sent through the link, what it picked up and carried. Possibly something to do with the speech centers of the brain, things Hyunjin didn’t have time to interrogate and didn’t want to. Yes.
I thought your thoughts would be louder.
Hyunjin smiled at him, pleased the way only Chan ever seemed to manage to provoke. You still sound sheepish in your own head.Hyunjin kissed him again, slower this time. Gentler.Now that he was listening, Hyunjin could hear Chan’s delight in it, buried in the surprised ah which formed in his mind. I still can’t believe you want to kiss me.Hyunjin kept doing it, beginning to understand why anyone might have something like this buried inside their heads forever.Chan let Hyunjin take his clothes off, not gently.He was so wonderfully compact, so perfectly proportioned in himself. There was a new joy in discovering bodies now, in how differently they reacted to being touched, but it shocked him when Chan took a deep breath and thought: stop.Hyunjin did, leaving one hand on the dip of Chan’s waist, the dense muscle under the skin there. Why?Chan looked right at him and Hyunjin could almost feel his hesitation, an insight he didn't need the link for.Chan didn't answer.You’re still trying so hard not to want me. The thought came fully formed, and Hyunjin found that with a bit of direction he could shape it into words and let Chan hear it.
I’m worried if you see too much of me you’ll change your mind.
To me there's no such thing. Hyunjin dug his fingers in and pulled him closer, wanting to breathe him in, feeling Chan’s faint gasp as he did it, burying his face in his neck. As though by reflex Chan’s arms went around him. Chan held him very tightly, silent for a long time.Hyunjin had explained it as well as he could, and it would be enough or it wouldn’t.Chan drew away, only slightly.Hyunjin couldn’t read his mind, really. Whatever the link was doing, it wasn’t the kind of interior view Changmin and Yunho had with each other. The thought of it was still horrifying, but Hyunjin meant what he’d sent to Chan, that knowing someone was a privilege he’d never get tired of.Something he valued more than he could say, and didn’t know how else to explain the terror of having to stay here where there were so few people, and the people that were here lived inside each other, a true universe of two.Chan rested his forehead against Hyunjin's, his eyes closed. Not serene. I don't feel like I'm worth that.So many things Hyunjin still didn't know about him, and wanted to. Why he'd let them stay. It wasn't just attraction. Hyunjin wanted the years it might take to find out, even if he never did. Hyunjin knew from such bitter experience that he might not get to, but instead Chan reached for the disc Hyunjin had nearly forgotten and took it off, placing it carefully next to the bed. Without hesitation, he took Hyunjin's too, removing it with light, careful fingers.“I want you to kiss me again,” Chan said, a telltale blush heating his skin where he took Hyunjin’s wrist and put his palm against his cheek. Hyunjin had undressed him, but he somehow seemed more exposed than ever when he trailed his fingertips down Hyunjin’s neck, across his collarbone, back again, down his chest. Just touching him. “But I also want you to keep making me say what I want. Deal?”“Deal,” Hyunjin whisperered, and drew him in.Chan still reacted the same way when Hyunjin took him very gently by the hair and held him still while he bit a line of little bruises into his collarbone, lit all the way through with the power of it, the trust he was being offered with both hands, too precious to describe.
-
Felix came to bed smelling of the air outside, a streak of dirt still on the side of his neck where he must have wiped it. He’d taken to walking in the evenings, getting the most out of consistent gravity and the stable atmosphere.Hyunjin knew he loved it.When he climbed in with them Hyunjin was awake and Chan wasn’t, snoring quietly, sprawled over on his side where Hyunjin had turned him.Felix’s skin was faintly damp from the humidity, and Hyunjin felt it as a pleasant coolness when Felix touched him, laying down beside him in a pair of shorts and nothing else.“Good day?” Felix whispered, tracing a finger around the shell of Hyunjin’s ear, a quiet, easy touch which was still so new between them.They’d touched each other for years without even thinking about it. Tangled in each other at night since they’d been children, living in each other’s pockets. Going to each other for comfort. The only body Hyunjin had ever known better than his own.For all that Hyunjin had thought he’d figured out what it meant to want him, he had never touched Felix the way he’d just touched Chan.There was a great undiscovered place between them.“The ship will be fixed soon.” Hyunjin closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling, focusing on it. “Only a few more plates and some testing, Changbin says.”Felix didn’t say anything, but he did keep touching him, trailing light fingertips over his hair, growing in short and soft, more quickly than Hyunjin had expected it to. He had begun to wonder about asking Changbin to shave it again.“I can’t wait to go home,” Felix whispered.Hyunjin turned towards him, wanting to see his face. In the darkness of the room Felix’s white hair looked nearly blue. “Home?”“Space,” Felix said, nearly shyly. “I miss it. Is that strange? It feels like I’m not allowed to.”“I miss it too,” Hyunjin said, before he tipped forward and kissed him, wanting very badly to taste him, and the outside on him.A hunger had grown where he’d least expected it to.Felix sighed and kissed him back, soft and easy, like he’d been waiting to.Chan stirred, a faint pause in his breaths, and Hyunjin knew he was about to wake up. It felt right somehow that he be here, a warm, living presence.“Felix?” Chan muttered, sitting up. “Oh, I—” he seemed to remember where he was all at once, and Hyunjin heard his heart rate increase, the rapid acceleration of his embarrassment chasing him out of sleep. “Should I go?”“No,” Hyunjin said, looking at Felix when he said it.“No,” Felix echoed, his eyes skimming the bruises Hyunjin had left on him before he looked back at Hyunjin, a faint smile beginning to light his eyes. “We were just saying we missed space.”“Do you?” Chan asked, a hint of disbelief in it. “Why?”“It’s ours,” Felix said, as though it wasn’t the first time he’d ever heard that, the faint and lingering fear Chan had that they’d leave one day when they got tired of the hardship of it, the way it was hostile to life no matter how luxurious an enclave he made of it. “It’s not up to you to make it like where we came from. You can’t. It isn’t.” He glanced at Hyunjin, and then reached for the light controls, gently easing them up so the room had a warm, orange glow, a color which never hurt Hyunjin’s eyes.In it, Chan looked young, younger than Hyunjin had really thought about before. There was so much which space changed; the way people experienced time was only one of them.“It’s home because we chose it,” Felix said. “It’s home because you chose us.”Only Felix could have said it. Only Felix, who could have had anything he’d ever wanted if he’d just stayed where he’d been placed, and accepted what he’d been told. The cost would have been so incredibly high, and Hyunjin might have been selfish for it, but if he had, if Felix had chosen to be what he’d been made for, Hyunjin would never have chosen him.He would have loved him and protected him for the rest of his life, but he would never have been able to lose him, to find him, to learn to love anyone else.There would never have been anyone else.Chan gasped when Hyunjin reached for him and grabbed him around the waist, flailing as he deposited him in the middle, between them. Felix, Yongbok, his name hidden in the ink Hyunjin had put in him. As known to him once as his own face, but not of those had changed. Chan, who Hyunjin wanted to know so much more about. To keep discovering.Hyunjin had never had a home that wasn’t a person.“You left the same place,” Hyunjin said, touching the wound Chan never talked about, either. Why he’d done it, and why in taking them in he’d made himself an exile too. “So where’s home for you?”Chan looked between them, silent and a little bit outnumbered. Hyunjin had to fight not to smile.“I don’t really know,” Chan said, starting to look less cornered, the faint shyness Hyunjin was so curious about coming back. “But if the ship’s fixed, that’s a start. I can’t wait to get out of here.”Hyunjin agreed.He didn’t think Chan was telling the entirety of the truth. He loved his crew more than Hyunjin could describe, and it showed in everything he did. If home was anywhere for Chan it was his ship, full of his people.Maybe that would change, and maybe it wouldn't. Maybe he'd never have a better answer than that.
-
Yunho’s lab smelled terrible.Even Felix balked at it, and Hyunjin couldn't stop the little gasp of recognition it raised from him, the sense memory of his earliest years cracking through him.Yunho didn’t seem to notice, chatting gently to his captive audience as though neither of them had paused by the door, and as though Hyunjin hadn't grabbed Felix’s hand by earliest reflex, desperate in a way that called back to his first memories of him; that he was made to protect him, yes, but also that Felix alone was safety.The one thing he’d ever truly hated in all the time they’d lived planetside was this smell, and all it brought with it. He hadn’t even realized that pain wasn’t just an inevitable byproduct of this scent — antiseptic and stabilizers, a faint smell of burning, as though something not too far away had been cauterized, and the cleanness of it all, wiped away under the cloying mask of a sterile field — and not something which could always have been mitigated.“— so that’s how we germinated our first self-sustaining flora. Oh, are you going to be sick?” Yunho asked, when Hyunjin recoiled. “Here, be sick in this.”He handed him a little bag, open at the top. Hyunjin took it, numbly.“Changmin hates it too,” Yunho explained, either immune to the look Hyunjin was giving him or choosing to ignore it. “I didn’t think we could throw up unless we were expelling metabolic byproducts, but we can, as it happens.”“You don’t seem to mind it,” Felix said, gripping Hyunjin back.“Oh, I lived in a research facility for a very long time.” Yunho smiled, strangely. “You get used to it after a while. Besides, they gave up on experimenting on me very quickly. I don’t return repeatable results as an individual specimen, and I prefer to work.”Hyunjin really did feel sick, but not from nausea.He felt the stupid little bag crinkle in his fist, shocked at how angry it made him to hear Yunho refer to himself that way.“Can you really edit my hair?” Felix asked, squeezing Hyunjin’s hand in protest at how tightly he had just grabbed him but betraying nothing at all on his face. In the even, well-balanced lighting his freckles stood out against his warm skin, the whiteness of his hair even more obvious.“I can certainly try, although I can't promise results. Gene editing is tricky in humans, and very good technicians are usually specialists who offer repeat protocols. It's also much easier to remove pigment from follicles than it is to stimulate its production, since the cells are already prone to degeneration,” Yunho said. “It will take a while to grow in, too. You can’t change what’s already there.”“Like aging in reverse,” Felix said, sitting where Yunho was waving him.Hyunjin still had a grip on his hand, coaxed in only by Felix’s assertion that he wanted to ask Yunho for a favor, and Yunho blithely agreeing to do it over dinner, carrying the conversation with gentle, deliberate ignorance of the awkwardness they were all still trying not to betray. Hyunjin couldn’t think of anything he wanted less than to see where Yunho spent his time, because the smell followed him out once in a while, and it still made all the hair on Hyunjin’s arms stand up.Hyunjin folded the bag and put it down, standing next to Felix’s chair. “Will it hurt him?”“It didn’t hurt the first time,” Felix said, only to him, except, of course, Yunho could hear him too. “You remember.”Hyunjin looked down, past the top of his white head.He’d done it on a break from school. Hyunjin had gone into the city with him because there was no way he could have possibly let Felix go alone, but it was one of the only times he could ever remember Felix ignoring his advice. That the density of the city was a danger Hyunjin didn’t think was warranted, that Felix would have to give up any ease of extraction. That the editor he’d chosen might not take him as a client.But Felix had only said he needed to, and not why. His hair had grown in white ever since, and Hyunjin had a vivid, awful memory of the shouting which had followed, that Felix was making a mockery of himself by engaging in such an obvious modification, that it flew in the face of the ethos of his position; elegance, understatement, the weight of the attention of everyone he’d ever know, watching everything he did.Hyunjin hadn’t been punished for letting him. It was never his job to gainsay Felix’s whims.Felix, letting it grow in, first a streak right down the middle of his head and then a short, pale crop after he cut all the black off, had only ever said that now when people told him he looked just like his grandfather it wouldn’t be true, with an awful little smile.The thing was that he didn’t, and never had.Felix — tiny, delicate, kind — had a wicked, thrilling sense of humor, and had so rarely expressed it.He was also stubborn to a fault, and no amount of recrimination had ever made him change his mind.The white hair had been a declaration, of a kind. That he wasn’t going to allow himself to be shaped in quite the way he was meant to, and that the near-eternal vision of his family was nothing but an illusion, cosmetic, layered over their insistence that they were only as human as the people they controlled.No implants or modifications could hold them to anyone else’s account, but Felix had no intention of pretending there weren’t any.And now he couldn’t claim them, choosing to live out his years just like every other human in existence.“What will you do with it? After?”Yunho looked at Hyunjin, a tiny, thin smile on his face. “You really are very good at your job,” he said, too kindly. “I’ll destroy it. You have my word.”Felix held his arm out, and Yunho began his work.Hyunjin had seen it last time and didn’t need to focus on the details, and had to turn his mind away from the reminder that time had passed, more time than he could have easily measured. Instead he couldn’t help but notice all the differences between Yunho and his adopted child, the person Hyunjin had chosen to trust all that time ago.Hyunjin hadn’t seen him properly in days, and it suddenly occurred to him that maybe there was a reason for that aside from just the ongoing business of repair. Yunho had been in here with his father more than he hadn’t, but he wasn’t here now. “Where’s Yunho?”The other Yunho paused, his now-gloved hands hovering over a tray of bloodwork. He tilted his head like he was listening to something. “With Changmin in the greenhouses. Why do you ask?”Felix reached out and stroked his forearm, gently, just for his attention. Hyunjin looked down, caught in the teeth of his reflexive curiosity, wrapped in the eternal small horror of what Yunho and Changmin had done to each other to be able to know that without thinking. Knowing the peace it came with, he understood it better.“Go,” Felix said. “I’m fine here.”Hyunjin didn’t need to be inside his head to know he meant it. He could trust him with it. Hyunjin squeezed his shoulder and went.
-
The greenhouses weren’t really greenhouses as Hyunjin understood the word, even accepting a bit of linguistic variance. They were enormous tunnelled spaces under the thin topsoil, with variable light sources set in at different angles. From the surface they looked like hillocks or mounds, and their entrances were a series of subterranean doors Hyunjin had memorized but infrequently used.The complex was enormous, and clearly had once held more than two people.Yunho and Changmin were in the one which grew tomatoes, a mass of irregular red and purple and yellow fruiting shapes all in meandering clusters rather than rows.Hyunjin could hear them laughing, and neither of them was surprised when he showed up.Changmin likely had told Yunho that Hyunjin was looking for him, and now that he was here he could only stand next to a plant and feel its leaves between his fingertips. “Can I talk to you?”Yunho excused himself right away. Changmin went back to checking the undersides of the leaves, and Yunho stopped just short of close enough to touch. If they stayed here Changmin could hear them, but Hyunjin found he didn’t have much to say that Changmin and Yunho couldn’t hear together. “I just wanted to thank you,” he started. “For everything.”“Oh.” Yunho’s face — filled out a little since they’d landed — softened quietly. “You really don’t have to thank me for that.”“I do, though. I want to.”Yunho had never been demonstrative the way Felix could be, and Hyunjin knew him so much less intimately, but he would always know everyone less intimately than Felix, so it wasn’t a fair comparison.There was nothing about Yunho which had really changed since the very first time Hyunjin had met him, and that was the more important part. He was a solitary sort of person for reasons Hyunjin understood better now, more reserved than Chan’s crew of friendly miscreants, more used to a necessity of violence.He had been extremely kind to him once when he hadn’t needed to be, and without him Hyunjin would have still been in space quietly withering, and would never have known why.Felix could have insisted Hyunjin was his own person for the entire span of both their lives but without Yunho it would have been so much less true.Hyunjin came closer and hugged him, wrapping his arms around his long torso, pressing his ear to his broad, solid chest. The crackle of his damaged lungs was still present, but the warm air and whatever Yunho and Changmin had done in the lab had eased it. He hadn’t been lying that rest would solve the remainder of what could be solved.Yunho returned it after one quick, startled breath. His long fingers teased at the base of Hyunjin’s skull, where the hair had started to grow back. “This looks great by the way,” Yunho said, his low voice a pleasant rumble against Hyunjin’s cheek. “It suits you.”“Thanks,” Hyunjin said again.There was so much more he could have tried to tell him; that watching him fight had ignited something so antithetical in Hyunjin that he’d never experienced before, a quiet conviction that being forced to it was a hurt nobody should have to endure, but that he understood. That he hoped this wouldn't be the last time they saw each other. That he was desperate to know why Yunho and Changmin had raised a human child, when they seemed to accept they were further from human than Hyunjin could stand to look at.He didn't think there was room for any of it here. “I'll keep in touch.”“Felix told me you like to draw,” Yunho said. “Maybe you could send me something.”When Hyunjin pulled away Changmin was looking at them, and Hyunjin found he didn't care as much as he'd thought he would about being intruded on. Hyunjin nodded at him, thankful in his own way for what Changmin had given him, too. Changmin tapped his temple, smiling just enough, and Hyunjin understood, even if he couldn't quite bring himself to smile back.Between them was a quiet, peaceful place, but Hyunjin found he didn't need it yet.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Jisung looked a little shocked to be back in the pilot’s seat when Chan finally made it back to the bridge after all the pre-departure tests had been cleared. Changbin followed him in, still half-yelling to Yunho about their pressure distribution in the propulsion chambers, even though Chan thought the jump drive, the only thing they hadn’t been able to test, was by far the more important unknown.Yunho had written Jisung a jump plan which had already been received by the navigation system and checked for viability. Yunho himself went straight to Minho, who’d been running all the emergency simulation protocols, including the gravity stabilizers which had only just come back on.Seungmin came running up, stone-faced, and skidded to a halt by the hatch. “Oh, good,” he said. “You’re all here. We’re on our secondary air filters for some reason and I can’t get them to change over, so if two or three of you could die that would be great.”Yunho burst out laughing, and Chan realized all of a sudden that in all the days they’d been living in his house he’d never actually heard it before, the real, genuine sound of his amusement.“Oh,” Yunho said, regaining himself with a hand over his stomach. “I really will miss you. I can fix that, Seungmin. It’ll be the recycling waste gate which must have gotten its saturation tolerance increased when your primaries were damaged.” He leaned back over Minho, who was staring at him. “There, see?”“Ugh,” Minho said, precisely, and typed something into a command line which altered a few segments of the code he had up on his display.“I guess that’s easier,” Seungmin muttered, and disappeared again to go check.“You’ll miss us?” Chan asked, knowing Yunho would hear him.“Of course I will.” Yunho approached with his usual grace, reminding Chan just how tall he actually was when he leaned against Chan’s seat, towering over him. “It’s been lovely to have company.”“I thought you were going to send us off with a threat to never reveal your location or you’d send Changmin to hunt us down and kill us one by one.”“I could still do that,” Yunho said. “Or I could leave a navigation buffer in your jump codes so you can’t get back without directions.” He smiled down at him, too kindly. “It’s just hard not to enjoy new faces.”He patted Chan on the shoulder, deeply unsettling to the last. “Is this your full bridge crew?”“We don’t really have— well. Yeah. This is the usual one.”“Then this is goodbye,” Yunho said. “Don’t jump before I’ve cleared your radius.”“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Chan said honestly.He expected Yunho to walk off the bridge the same way he’d approached Chan, with a hard-earned sort of ease, but he didn’t. Instead, he left his hand on his shoulder, warm the way Hyunjin’s was, radiating through Chan’s suit. “Don’t panic. Changmin wants a word.”Chan nodded and watched Yunho’s face change. “Chan,” Changmin said, using Yunho’s voice. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share anything you saw here. Including this.”Chan had turned the little discs Hyunjin had left in their room on the planetoid in his hand, feeling the smooth, odd metal rubbing against itself. There was absolutely nothing about them which indicated what they were. Implants, maybe. Chan could imagine them sitting quiescent inside a body, edgeless and awful. He didn’t think Hyunjin had left them behind expecting him not to pick them up, or not to keep them safe.He hadn’t asked about them.Maybe it was naive of him to assume Changmin didn’t know exactly what he’d given away, or where they were, quietly stowed in Chan’s quarters.“I don’t think I’d ever be able to explain it,” Chan said, honestly.“Don’t be so sure,” Changmin said. He smiled, and Chan could immediately tell the difference. “Thank you, though. I did want to make sure I said it. Yunho often reminds me I can be stern.”“Which one?” Chan managed, but he was gone, leaving Yunho in his body again, still smiling.“Both of us, I suspect.” Yunho looked around. “He says you take good care of people. Would you be willing to take on more transport for us, if we asked?”Chan couldn’t reasonably refuse, and found he didn’t want to. “Yeah, sure.”“Wonderful,” Yunho said. “Say goodbye to Felix and Hyunjin for me, please. And Jeongin, wherever he’s hiding. I’m aiming to be back for dinner.”“Wait, you haven’t—” But Yunho was already walking away, and Chan knew he’d never catch him. “Yeah, sure,” Chan repeated, watching him go, his heart tight and high in his chest.
-
Felix felt the thrusters fire all around them, the last of the scrap they hadn’t taken to the surface and the bulk spares Seungmin had asked them to stow lashed down and triple checked.Felix hadn’t honestly expected a big goodbye, but he could tell the difference now between a system test and a full reactor cycle. It was in the sound, in the way the ship vibrated, in the faint difference of the lighting.He reached for Hyunjin, but Hyunjin was already jogging away, his boots clanging on the plating like he knew exactly where he was going.Felix followed, exhilarated to be going somewhere at last.Hyunjin ran all the way up past the passenger deck to the bridge, where Chan had the full display up, not quite a window but as close as any ship came to having one, the whole spread of stars and rocks which marked out the section of space they were just leaving, crawling quietly away from the planetoid receding out of their sensor range, marked only by the box Jisung had put around the blank space where it ought to have been.“They’re not much for a big goodbye,” Chan said, like he’d read Felix’s mind. “Sorry. Yunho made us a flight plan and it’s—”“Mandatory,” Jisung griped. “Minho, can you slow us down?”“Me? No.” Minho, navigating, just waved at the display and shrugged. “The jump is pre-set, we have about six minutes. I bet the whole nav memory crashes after.”“Son of a bitch,” Changbin said, leaning over the back of Chan’s chair. “That’s genius, actually.”“You should sit down,” Minho told him. “If you don’t want to get splattered. If you do, that’s fine.”“Call Seungmin and Jeongin,” Chan said. “I want everyone here.”Jeongin poked his head in shortly after Changbin sat down to send the hail. “Are we malfunctioning or did the ship move by itself?”“Just the second one. Can you find Seungmin and get him to strap in for a jump?”“Oh, cool, thanks for the warning,” Jeongin said over his shoulder, as deadpan as Minho on his best day. “I’ll get right on that. Oh look, he’s here.”Seungmin smacked him in the back of the head when he walked past, in no hurry as usual. “Jump seat?”“Secondary navigation please,” Chan said. “Jeongin, can you monitor fault codes?”“What about us?” Felix asked, when they’d sat down. “What can we do?”Chan looked at him, at both of them, looking more at home than Felix had seen him in a long time. “Help me decide where we’re going next,” he said. “But let’s get through the jump first. Hyunjin can go second engineer.”Hyunjin sat down with Changbin, keying himself into the display.“Hey, Felix,” Jisung called, looking over his shoulder. “Come pilot, we’ll need to be on manual if we do lose our nav after we jump, and you’re good with the stabilizers. More hands better. It’ll be fun.”Felix looked at Chan for confirmation.“Great idea,” Chan said, already scanning his own display. “Three minutes.”Felix sat down and keyed in before the jump alarm started to sound.When it did happen, the bizarre sensation of slipping out of formed space felt too familiar all of a sudden, like a kind of deja-vu he’d abruptly learned to love. In an intact ship it still wasn’t safe, but the press against his chest just before gravity ceased to exist was like a great big hand, and the way everything distorted around them did feel like seeing something huge just out of sight, a glimpse of the fabric of the universe. Everything which held it up.When they snapped back into navigable space the display flickered, and when Minho input a command the whole thing reset, just like he’d guessed it would. The ship spun on its own momentum, locked into a turn by its deceleration. Felix let the harness take his weight and balanced the thrusters on manual while Jisung cursed and passed him the primary control, managing the reset for their outputs while Changbin and Hyunjin put a slow deceleration on the reactor.He’d done it before. Jisung had taught him the basics, sensing Felix’s interest was genuine, but in all the time he’d spent with the training simulations and the mapping programs he’d only ever thought it might be something useful one day, in some distant and unspecified future.How to get a ship out of a roll. How to plan for travel to places where you might not be welcome. How to teach yourself to fit.When the navigation came back the ship was stable, though Felix couldn’t have said where they were. He held it there, watching the proximity sensors, until someone could figure out where they’d ended up. Even a sector would be a start, but the thrill had only just caught up with him when Chan came over, looking past him at the display which had just started to render a better scan.“Fuck,” Felix whispered, engaging the autopilot when the option appeared, his pulse thumping in his throat. “I didn’t think I’d have to actually fly it.”“Hey, Lee Yongbok,” Chan said, quiet and low, just for him. “Keep going like that and we’ll make a pirate of you yet.”Felix turned to kiss him, quick and furtive, knowing Chan would have to go elsewhere in a second. “Only my family calls me Yongbok,” he said, close to his ear. “You should do it again sometime.”“Gross,” Jisung contributed. “Good job, though.”Felix took his hands off the controls to laugh, and didn’t need to look to see if Hyunjin was laughing too.He would know the sound of it anywhere, as long as he lived.The joy of it lingered.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hyunjin rolled over one day when they’d decelerated to come into a station where they were going to drop their passengers, a prosperous one near a core colony world which always made Felix nervous, and took a second look at the timer he’d mounted above their desk. It was halfway through the second shift, well into what passed for afternoon, and Hyunjin had slept for nearly an entire day cycle.Hyunjin had long since gotten used to keeping different hours from him most of the time now, and was more surprised than anything that Felix was still in bed with him. He was sitting against the bulkhead, quietly playing a game on a console set he’d linked with everyone else’s, and Hyunjin caught a glimpse of Seungmin’s icon stealing something from Felix’s cache.Despite three years of competition Felix hadn’t gotten any better at it, but Hyunjin didn’t think that was the object, anyway.Hyunjin, for his part, had amassed a little collection of art supplies including a shyly-given kit to build a tattoo gun from Chan, a minutely complex task which had been a good dexterity benchmark at the time, even before he’d started using it. He liked the feeling of a single needle more, precisely applied, but Felix had asked for another gift, a pattern over his fingers to match the ones Hyunjin still put on himself when he felt like it, and it had felt right to use it, considering who it was from.It still gave him a little thrill to see Felix’s hands, small and strong now with all the work they all had to take a share in which was just part of running a ship, patterned with the little bands and chevrons Felix had asked for, now faded to a pleasing blue under the rings he’d never taken off.Hyunjin had also come by some paints, colors he didn’t yet know what to do with.Felix stroked over Hyunjin’s newly-shaved hair when he stirred, scratching pleasantly against his scalp. “Hi,” Felix said, low and quiet, before he went back to treasure hunting, or whatever he was doing on the shared network. “You okay?”Hyunjin was still groggy, something sluggish clinging to him. “Yes,” he answered, before he really thought about it. “I didn’t know it was so late.”“It’s not the first time,” Felix said, shifting a little so Hyunjin could put his head on Felix’s thigh. “Are you working too hard?”He and Changbin had been slowly replacing reactor control materials on the auxiliary, which was an exercise best conducted in deep space when the ship could be stabilized more easily in case of a runaway. It wasn’t inherently dangerous, but it required a few complex test cycles to calibrate the release ratios. Hyunjin enjoyed it. “I don’t think so.”Felix paused the game so he could actually look at him, making Seungmin’s icon display a few angry red characters in response. “Then why are you so tired?”Hyunjin didn’t have a real answer, except that they’d been long-hauling for a while now, partly because the work was lucrative and partly because Yunho and Changmin really had sent them a job or two, which Chan took very, very seriously.“Maybe I just need to sit under a lamp more,” Hyunjin said, more at ease with the necessities of maintaining his body than he’d ever expected to be when it had passed into his control.Felix frowned but didn’t contradict him, still stroking him very gently, looking down with his hair in his eyes. Despite its initial return to the natural black of his childhood, whatever Yunho had done hadn’t stayed. It had grown in white again after a while, first in streaks and then all at once, as though the choice Felix had made all those years ago to edit himself was still in his body’s memory. Not an exact science, Yunho had said.Hyunjin hadn't stopped shaving his off. One day he might let it all come back, but he liked the way he could decide not to. It grew so quickly that it was like a race between how fast it came in and how soon he noticed, and he’d laughed so many times when Changbin had cut it back into a new style, just because. He also liked the way it made his face stand out, even if he had gotten thinner than usual lately.“Do you think that’s enough?” Felix asked, gently.Hyunjin took his hand and kissed his knuckles, one by one, enjoying the way it made Felix smile. “I’m fine,” Hyunjin insisted.His eyes hadn’t weakened too much yet. He wasn’t exhausted all the time. Any injury he suffered in the course of their ordinary lives still vanished in moments.“Okay,” Felix said, and let it go.-Chan didn’t bring it up specifically, but Hyunjin could tell right away when he wanted to.Hyunjin flicked his nipple when Chan opened his mouth and then hesitated, perfectly balanced on the edge of lover and captain, something Hyunjin knew in him much better now.“Ow!” Chan exclaimed, and put his hand over it before Hyunjin batted it away and kissed the hot, hard flesh where he’d hit him. “Oh, fuck.”“What were you going to say?” Hyunjin asked, when he’d lapped his tongue over it, dragging Chan back down into his body, making sure he knew Hyunjin wasn’t quite finished with him, and that he didn’t have to be in charge again quite so soon.Hyunjin toyed with the other one for good measure, letting Chan throw an arm over his eyes to hide his face, even though he usually wouldn’t have.“You look tired,” Chan blurted out. “I know it’s you, and that’s a crazy thing to say—”“Did Yongbok put you up to this?”“Leave me out of it,” Felix said, splayed out on Chan’s bed and recovering from the slow-build orgasm Hyunjin had talked Chan through giving him, something which had yet to become less satisfying to him, an animal hunger caught in his chest whenever he remembered he could, and that they’d let him. “I don’t meddle. Chan meddles.”Chan lifted his elbow, irreparably teased, and Hyunjin gave up on what he knew was always destined to be a losing fight in the end. Chan would always put his crew first, no matter how much Hyunjn loved to take his mind off it for a while, and to be the focus of his attention the way only Chan could give it, like it was so fragile between them for him to be so seen. “Yes, fine, I meddle,” Chan said, looking at Hyunjin properly. “I meddle when I have to. What do you need that you aren’t getting?”Suddenly the husbandry was too much, even though Hyunjin knew where it came from. “Space,” he said, dryly, and left.-“Man, you gotta stop wearing Chan’s shirts around, you know he cuts the bottoms off them.” Changbin waved the cards in his hand. “Am I dealing you in?”“Waste of good fabric,” Minho opined, making room on the cushions so Hyunjin could sit down.Minho offered him some of what they were drinking, even though Hyunjin usually declined. There was no point wasting perfectly good booze on someone who couldn't get drunk, but he appreciated the gesture. “What are you playing?”“Slapjack.”“Sure.” Hyunjin accepted a hand and sprawled down on his front, and then, noticing it all too quickly, realized it had hurt. There was an ache at the base of his spine which he’d found too easy to ignore, like a pull across the muscle.“Oh, shit,” Changbin said, nudging him. “What’s that face?”“Can you turn the UV on?”Changbin frowned but did it anyway, and the soft glow of the artificial sunlight soaked into him slowly over the next hours, while he did his best not to let his better reflexes mean he slapped the absolute shit out of the rest of them. It wasn’t hard to be slower.It almost felt like a relief.It only occurred to him afterwards how long it had been since he'd set foot on a real planet, with gravity that could be taken for granted. Atmosphere, and all the scent it carried. Sunlight that felt like a touch, instead of the gentle substitute which was a fair price to have paid for all he'd gained, but still nothing on the real thing.-“I need some time off.”Hyunjin had never said those words in that order before, and it had taken several begun and discarded messages to Yunho to understand exactly what he’d been trying to articulate.He knew Yunho’s crew were too far out of range to receive any messages quickly, but Hyunjin had a habit now of speaking to him anyway, a kind of focusing point which he could imagine himself facing.A friend.It was strange to think he might miss him. Hyunjin had let out the edge of his worry, that maybe something in how they lived now was inimical to his physiology, no matter how good Yunho’s advice had turned out to be. Supplying himself with the nutrition his metabolism demanded and paying his body the attention he’d spent years divorced from had given him more than just knowledge.It had given him pleasure, and a kind of quiet conviction that nobody would take it from him again.He knew his pain much better than he ever should have.The Yunho who lived in his head had smiled at him and asked if he’d rested enough, which was a patently ridiculous thing to consider. Hyunjin slept well when Felix was nearby, just like he always had.But if it wasn’t enough, then a part of Hyunjin already knew it.Chan looked up from their stores report, ready to make some judicious alterations before they docked to avoid a higher tax bill, something he fully intended to be caught in and have to pay, to divert more intense scrutiny of his vessel. “Right now?”“Soon, I think,” Hyunjin said, and then walked off the bridge before he could betray that his mouth had gone dry with it, the still-new sensation of claiming something which he knew in his mind was his right, but which hadn’t entirely settled into him yet, somatic, until knowing it was easy.-“Chan says you want to take a vacation.”Felix had joined him in the shower. It was an old routine, one which came with a certain kind of comfort that Hyunjin never questioned. Felix was still Felix, and Hyunjin was never more relaxed than when he was nearby.They didn't do this so often anymore though.Hyunjin rinsed the soap off his face with a swipe of his hand and tried to look at him, but Felix was washing his back, and it felt too nice to try very hard. “I said I needed time off. It doesn't have to be a vacation.” He hadn’t considered that's how Chan might interpret it, rather than just not asking him to take shifts on the ship for a while.Felix massaged up the back of his shoulder, digging his knuckles in just how Hyunjin liked it, firm, familiar pressure. “Where do you want to go?”Hyunjin hadn't really thought about it. When he'd gone to Chan with his statement he'd only been trying to listen to what his body was telling him. That he wasn't immune to being tired, and that something was asking him to rest. “I want to paint,” Hyunjin said, because Felix would understand. He'd seen the collection growing, all the untouched colors. “I don't really care where.” He let Felix turn him so his back was to the spray, warm and heavy, and Hyunjin took the soap to do his. Felix’s freckles stood out starkly where his skin had gone space-pale, sunless. “Maybe somewhere with sun.”“Will you wash my hair?”Hyunjin never minded doing that, and accepted the shampoo when Felix offered it. The water cycle would finish soon, so he did it quickly, running his fingers through with a bit of conditioner just in time.In their first days aboard Hyunjin remembered thinking this was the only place they wouldn't be overheard if he spoke.He’d always liked water, another thing which was so scarce and precious in space, far beyond what he'd understood in those early months. Chan’s ship had luxuries so many others would never consider.Felix shook his head in the drying cycle as the reclaimers worked, flinging his wet hair everywhere. He threw it back, damp and smiling. “Can I come?”Oddly, Hyunjin hadn't considered that it would even be a question, because he hadn't thought of actually going anywhere, on purpose, just to rest. Now that Felix had asked the possibility was real, and just as real that Hyunjin might say no, he'd rather go alone.He didn't want to yet. The thought of it was the opposite of restful. Not bad, anymore. Without the edge of panic it had raised in him once, even after he’d been forced to understand that he could survive it, but Felix was a peaceful place to him, still. Maybe always.“I don't know where I'm going,” Hyunjin reminded him.“Do you want me to find somewhere?” Felix seemed to realize he hadn't gotten an answer and handed him a towel. “Sorry.”“I want you to come,” Hyunjin told him, meaning it. “Chan should come too.”Felix paused, his own towel draped over his head. “Really?”“He might not want to.”“I'll ask,” Felix said, soft and pleased.He kissed Hyunjin on the cheek.It would have been easy to turn and kiss him on the mouth, the deep, slow way he knew Felix enjoyed.He didn’t, too comforted by his ordinary nearness to change it.With Chan in their bed there had opened a space Hyunjin could never have imagined before, but between them, just them, it always seemed to come back to the way Hyunjin loved him irreparably, with all the habits they rested in. Yongbok, beloved, older now, changed by Hyunjin’s hands, but still never just a lover.-He heard Chan and Felix discussing it a shift later, sitting together in the galley with Jisung and the door open, the sound of the blender fading off until it was just their voices. “–will you be away?”“We’ll want at least a few day cycles for the sun to be effective,” Chan said, as though speaking from experience. “I mean, that's usually about how long I last.”“You can just say you don't trust me with the keys to the kingdom for any longer,” Jisung said, slurping something right afterwards. “I'll only be a little bit offended.”“It's not that I don't–”“Changbin will stay if we ask,” Felix said, clearly amused.Hyunjin left them to it. Any resentment he could have allowed himself at being managed was lesser than the other feeling he had to reach for to grab hold of, that they cared about him this much. Enough for Chan to consider leaving his ship – his home and theirs, but more his than anyone else’s – just for him. Just because Hyunjin had asked for something.It still felt odd in a detached way, as though years of conditioning was still the scaffolding which braced so much of how he thought, but it was easier to push it away than it ever had been.Chan was someone he’d had to work to understand.Hyunjin had known all his life that when people’s eyes lingered on him it was either because they were afraid of him or because they wanted something from him he wasn’t allowed to give, but Chan had been looking at him and wanting him and that had been what he was afraid of.Baffling in a way to Hyunjin, whose wants had always been an afterthought, and not deserving to be lingered on. He had never feared them.He caught Chan in it sometimes, still, the way he looked at Hyunjin like he still wasn’t quite sure he was real, and that he might disappear like smoke at any moment. Hyunjin had taken a long time to understand that being around Chan made him want to prove that wrong, even outside of Felix.It wasn’t a given anymore that where Felix went Hyunjin would follow.Sometimes now it was the other way around.-“So I was thinking,” Chan said, like he was approaching a topic brand new, and not with someone who could often hear every conversation on the ship, depending on the ambient noise level and how hard he was concentrating, “what if we went camping?”“What’s camping?” Hyunjin asked, genuinely surprised, and surprised by that in turn. He covered it by taking a mouthful of dinner, which was Felix’s breakfast.Chan blinked at him, shocked. “You– what? You’re from… we’re from the same planet and you don’t know what camping is?”“Hey,” Felix said, low and warning. “Don’t.” He passed Hyunjin the bowl they’d been eating from. “Chan just means he’s found us somewhere that’s not in a settlement to stay, but we’ll have to bring our own stuff.”“Oh.” Hyunjin finished the food and handed the bowl back. “Emergency survival.”“Well not like that,” Chan said, sheepish again. “Yeah, kind of. But it’s somewhere warm, with a beach.”Hyunjin had an abrupt memory of the first time he had ever felt the texture of sand, gritty and somehow soft at the same time. It had been warm to the touch, a strange pleasure he'd had to quietly push aside to chase after Felix, even though he remembered wanting to sift it through his fingers. He’d had a chance later on when Felix had demanded to be buried in it, delighted by the warmth. He could suddenly imagine the sun on him, the sound of the water sucking back and forth across the shore, in a kind of unfathomable balance he’d wanted to look at for far longer than he’d been able to.There had been a villa set back into the trees, a security cordon out of sight. A sheen over the sky which was the delineation of an atmospheric exclusion zone, barely visible.Twenty-six people, all ghosting around the house for the needs of Felix’s family, and him, newly paired.This time it would just be three.“Okay,” he said, too hoarse, and left.-Hyunjin couldn’t sleep.The sounds of the ship were louder than usual, even during the periods when he was normally unconscious. He lay in their bunk with the lights off, listening, and then eventually he got up.Chan’s door was closed but unlocked. If Felix was in there Hyunjin couldn’t hear him, which meant he was somewhere else, maybe logging some time in the pilot’s seat.Hyunjin could hear music instead.He opened the door when Chan didn’t respond to the buzzer, curious as to why, when Hyunjin knew he was in there, but didn’t go inside. Chan hadn’t heard him. He had a pair of headphones on and was prone on his back with his eyes closed, more relaxed than Hyunjin was used to seeing him.Chan didn’t notice him right away, so Hyunjin had a chance to look.Hyunjin could hear what he was listening to, a percussive thrum of something, fast-paced, at odds with the look on his face, the nearly-rapturous calm it was giving him.Hyunjin crept closer until he was next to Chan’s bunk, looking at him. His shirt really was cut off at the bottom, riding up over his hips, leaving a soft, bare depression under the bone before the waistband of his soft shorts covered it over. Hyunjin put a finger on him, just where the skin was.Chan screamed and threw the headphones at his face. Hyunjin caught them before they landed and tackled Chan back to the bed, one knee on his sternum to keep him there before he’d really thought about it.Chan stared up at him, breathing hard. Hyunjin was still clutching the headphones and the music was still creeping out of them, louder without Chan’s head in the way. Hyunjin could hear Chan’s breath, and the thump of his heart as it beat, quick and staccato.Everything in Chan’s quarters was perfectly arranged and perfectly stowed, except for Chan himself, staring up at him and beginning to wheeze, stunned.Hyunjin pulled off him, shocked.“Hyunjin?” Chan asked, “are you okay?”It was too much, suddenly. Hyunjin had only come looking for him because if Felix was out Chan would let him stay nearby if he needed to. Hyunjin loved him for it, and took it for granted now. And Hyunjin had just startled him so badly that he’d screamed, and Hyunjin had reacted in a way he’d thought he was long, long past doing.It felt awful, a deep grind like something scraping against his teeth. “I’m sorry,” he said, forcing it out of himself. “I couldn’t sleep.”Chan rubbed his chest where Hyunjin had pinned him, unconscious. “Why didn’t you just climb in?”“Would it have been better?” Hyunjin asked, feeling raw and thin. He handed him back his headphones, more tentative than he could ever remember being.“Yes.” Chan moved over. “Come on, don't just stand there.” Hyunjin hated the feeling of being pitied, but not more than the sensation of knowing he might have really hurt him, just because Chan had moved too quickly. He lingered, deciding, for too long. Chan reached out, slowly, and took his hand. “Hyunjin,” he said, drawing him forward in increments. “It's really creepy when you just stand there staring at me.”Hyunjin couldn't help but laugh, and he let himself be pulled in, arranging himself so that they both fit. He put his hand on Chan’s chest, under his shirt. “Did I hurt you?”“A little. I think I just forgot how fast you are.” Chan sighed, his heart still quick under Hyunjin’s palm. “Will you let me forgive you for it?”“You’d be better kicking me out.” Hyunjin muttered it into his shoulder, listening to Chan turn the music off. “Can you play it properly?”“What?”“On a speaker.”Chan did it, turning the lights off with a flick of his fingers too.Hyunjin let the sound wash over him, the intertwining beats more soothing than noisy after a while. Chan had always used it to relax, but Hyunjin had always had to be too alert to really relax into it before, except in the rare moments when Felix had gone to performances, recitals, the kind of things which demonstrated a support of culture and the arts that Hyujin had once quietly told him he enjoyed, nearly as much as Felix did.They’d gone more, after that.Felix had always loved to dance, too, and Hyunjin remembered the lessons Felix had fiercely demanded to be allowed to continue, long after the time when he ought to have been focusing on other studies.Hyunjin had danced with him a few times, alone in their room. Shared movement, the feeling of Felix’s slighter body in his arms. Music in the background, long before Hyunjin had manifested any real desire for him.Chan stroked his forearm, gently bringing him back. “Hey, can I ask you something? How come you didn’t know what camping was?”Hyunjin shrugged, letting himself stay still otherwise, with his eyes closed. “Why would I? It’s not something anyone I was around did for fun.”The music filled the silence, and Chan kept touching him. “Felix knew what it was, though.”“I’m not him.”“I know, I just… I keep forgetting you weren’t– this is going to sound crazy. I keep forgetting you weren’t raised the same way. I know you weren’t, I really do, it’s just now that I know you it’s harder to remember.”“I think,” Hyunjin said, feeling it out, feeling that perhaps he owed Chan something for all that he’d given, “they paired us so young as an experiment.”“How young?”“Too young.”Chan breathed, his chest rising under Hyunjin’s hand. “Do you still want to go camping?”Hyunjin nearly laughed, but didn’t, thinking of Felix in the shower, asking if he could come. Remembering himself saying they should all go. The three of them. Wherever Hyunjin went, if he asked. “Yes.” He rubbed a tiny circle into Chan’s chest, tracing across his sternum. “If I don’t like it I can leave.”“Always,” Chan promised, just as the song changed. “Another one?”Hyunjin nodded, thinking of the sound of waves.-It was so much hotter than Hyunjin had anticipated, even by the end of the first day. The work of setting up camp and disguising the lander had taken most of the daylight, and Hyunjin felt nearly delirious with it, the pressure of it overhead and the way it moved across the sky, seeded but cloudless, a clear, indescribable blue.The air was wet the way it never was on the ship, a kind of ghostly touch along the back of his neck which made him sweat instantly, warm all over.Chan took care of food, even though Felix had made it a little mission of his to learn to cook. Hyunjin had learned enough, but after the cabin had been bolted together and the climate control was running Felix had taken his hand and reminded him that this was meant to be rest, too.For a long, strange hour, banned from the work, Hyunjin hadn’t known what to do.He’d gone to the shoreline where the tree cover abruptly turned to black, soft sand, and sat down.He could still hear them, two voices, so similar in accent and cadence and so different in timbre and tone that he had no trouble at all picking them out, but more and more, the sounds all around him took precedence.The sound of water on the shore, only meters away.Hyunjin took his clothes off before he’d even thought about it and walked right in. He hadn’t been immersed in anything for years, not since the last time he’d ever seen a swimming pool. It closed over his head with salty finality, and he realized all at once how much it felt like low gravity, the water all around him holding him up, alleviating all the things which felt like they’d been weighing him to the ground.He got out after a while, once night had fallen over the trees.Hyunjin was listening to birds, real birds, when Felix came down to the shore long after darkness had settled over them, the sky displaying a whole new array of stars.It was still warm, the air alive with the buzz of insects.Every human-touched ecosystem needed them, or it wasn’t complete.“This terraform is finished,” Hyunjin said, when Felix sat down, smelling faintly of something roasted. “Why are there no people here?”Felix took off his shoes, digging his feet into the sand with a long sigh. “Disputed investment,” he said. “There were. Technically this is criminal trespass. Have you been for a swim?”Hyunjin wrapped his arms around his knees. “Do you remember when I buried you in the sand?”Felix laughed, the sound he made when he was surprised, a low, breathy huff. “I do, yeah. You were very serious about it.” Hyunjin smiled at him, remembering it, and let it be. “You said you missed swimming,” Felix said, leaning back on his elbows. “On the ship, a while ago. When we decided we were really going to stay. I thought maybe if you needed some sun, maybe we could swim, too. Chan’s dying to get in.”“It’s warm,” Hyunjin offered him his hand before he pulled them both up. “But I’m hungry.”“Chan said it would be ready in a bit.”“It’s ready now.” Hyunjin could smell it, and heard faint cursing from the cabin when Chan dropped something which clattered.-Chan set a pair of sunglasses next to his head when Hyunjin woke up, late in the day.Hyunjin hadn’t seen any need to try and alter his routines, and had slept through most of the daylight. He’d gone down to the shore again and had fallen asleep there, too. It was shockingly bright after the dim lights of the ship, and he’d found a spot in the shade of the trees to go and watch the water, a stack of things to draw with laid next to him in the sand which he hadn’t touched yet, absorbing the heat of the afternoon until it made him slow and somnolent instead.He’d heard him coming, and when he’d cracked his eyes against the glare he’d seen that Chan was shirtless and had his own pair on, along with a smear of something white across his shoulders and the bridge of his nose to stop himself from burning.“You smell terrible,” Hyunjin observed.“It’s coconut, actually,” Chan said, nudging the sunglasses closer. “Put those on.”Hyunjin did and immediately felt less punched-out, riding the odd delirium of so much sunlight all at once, all around him. “What’s coconut?”“Very funny. I’ve put it all over Felix, too.”Hyunjin wrinkled his nose. “Yuck.”“If our skin starts to peel we won’t want to have sex.”“I take it back,” Hyunjin said, feeling lazy and strange. “It smells amazing.”Chan laughed and lay down next to him. “Don’t you want a blanket or something?”“I like how the sand feels.”“You are so fucking weird,” Chan muttered. “Felix says you like to swim.”Hyunjin looked over at him, shaded over by the nearly-black lenses Chan had given him. “And?”Chan looked shifty for a second, the way he always did when he wanted something and was hesitating to ask. Hyunjin would have to wait. “Do you want to race?” Chan said, letting it out too quickly.Hyunjin grinned at him and sat up.-Felix would arbitrate. He set lines on the shore in the sand, and there was no moon to affect the tides, so the water would always be at a certain level. All this was discussed with Hyunjin unable to stop himself from smirking about it, amused by how much Chan seemed to want this to be fair. “You know I’m going to beat you, right?” Hyunjin murmured to him, bending down so he could whisper in his ear.“We’ll see,” Chan said, a glint Hyunjin liked very much in his eyes.They got in, the immersion still wonderful as the shore sloped away under his feet.The sun was going down behind them, and Hyunjin swam lazily to the start, where Chan was already impatiently treading water.“Play fair,” Felix called from the beach. “Don’t let him win just because!”“He’s talking to me,” Chan said, smiling evilly.Hyunjin hadn’t had a chance to see Chan so competitive in a long time, and found he liked it. “If you say so.”“Go!” Felix yelled.Hyunjin had been so certain he’d win that it genuinely took him by surprise when Chan shot off through the water like a fish, every compact centimetre of him diving into motion. Hyunjin had only barely caught him up by the end of the course, his heart thumping loudly in his chest, oxygen rolling through him as he finally broke the surface for the last time to gasp, only to find that Chan had beaten him by an arm’s length, and was so smug about it he was yelling, floating on his back to slap the water in victory. “Ha!” he declared, pointing a finger right at Hyunjin’s face. “That’s what you get!”Hyunjin laughed, delighted, and dunked him with the entire weight of his body.Chan spluttered and went down, and splashed him in the face when he came back up.Hyunjin was still thinking about it hours later, when it was dark and Chan had lit a fire on the beach, even though it was still very warm. “How come you can swim like that?” Hyunjin asked, finally, trying not to linger on the fact that Felix had known and he hadn’t, like there was still so much about Chan which was out of his sight.“I used to race. At home. It was the first reason I ever traveled. My parents thought I should be able to participate, lobbied for access, even though they'd been barred from corporate properties.”“And they won?”“Ha. No.” Chan poked the fire with a stick, Felix silent on his other side. “I figured out how to steal people’s identities instead.”“You're really fast.”“I know.” Chan shrugged. “I got them off the planet eventually. And my sisters, too.”Hyunjin let it be, sensing the pain in it.“I'm glad you're a talented thief,” Felix chipped in, nudging Chan over with his shoulder so they were in a better position to kiss. “Look what you walked off with.”Hyunjin only watched them, thinking what a good fit they were. He didn’t know why he asked. “Do you ever go and see them?”Chan broke away with a hunted, guilty look in his eyes. “No. It would be dangerous.”Hyunjin didn’t think that was the whole of it, even slightly, but if befriending people, if loving them had taught him anything it was that sometimes – a lot of the time – people didn’t want to speak about the things which they regretted or which had hurt them, or which they held very close to their hearts. Hyunjin had seen it from both sides, the way Yunho hadn’t wanted them to see his parents, and the way Changbin didn’t talk about what he’d done to join Chan’s crew. Chan was no different. To know any of this was a privilege Hyunjin didn’t take lightly. It was just that Hyunjin did want to know him, even the regrets.Even the surprising talents, and the way he still blushed when Hyunjin tipped his chin up to kiss him, as softly as he dared, when he knew Chan didn’t particularly want him to be soft about it. “Yeah?” He asked, nipping him. “What isn’t?”-Hyunjin opened the paints on the third night, trying to identify the specific smell of them dry, and then again as he wet them, painting each color on the heavy paper he’d gotten them with, carefully spending money down an alleyway in one of the huge recyclables markets which popped up on fringe stations. They’d been someone’s luxury items once, with a lingering dip in some of the blocks which meant they’d been used, someone else’s hands choosing where and how.He liked how translucent they became with more wetness, rippling the paper as it absorbed.Each color had its own gradient, but he found himself drawn to the blues, sketching out the negative spaces in the landscape with indigo shadows.It was dark enough that he could see the stars with incredible clarity, but there was, in the end, nothing which compared to seeing them from space. The tiny pinpricks in the blackness, very far away.He covered two pages in blue before he looked up again, warned by oncoming footsteps that Felix was awake. “You don’t usually like being up at night,” Hyunjin said, so Felix wouldn’t hesitate to interrupt him.“Can I see?”Hyunjin made room for Felix next to him, shifting over in the sand so Felix could spread down the blanket he’d emerged from the cabin wrapped in, like a big dumpling. He pressed himself into Hyunjin for warmth instead, even though the night was hot enough that Hyunjin hadn’t bothered dressing beyond loose shorts. “They’re just blue.”“Lots of different blue,” Felix observed, shifting a page into the faint hand light he’d brought with him. “Is that what it looks like to you?” Hyunjin nodded, without explaining all the rest of it. The depth contour and the way the faint light made bright edges of things which he hadn’t been able to paint yet. “It’s beautiful.”Hyunjin didn’t need to tell him that he was always trying to keep track of it, the way detail on close surfaces seemed slippery and blurred sometimes, when he was very tired. Like he had been just before they’d landed, which still hadn’t quite lifted its hand off him. He’d thought often of Yunho’s reading glasses in the years since they’d seen them. He didn’t really want to think about it now, the dissonance of a body that could heal from so much but whose connective tissues and nerves were so specifically strange. Hyunjin had years to worry about it. “Can I ask you something?”“Sure.”Felix didn’t betray it, if he was surprised. Hyunjin usually didn’t need to preface anything he said to him, but if felt important, suddenly. “Why did you want to come to a beach?”“I just thought it might be nice.”Hyunjin turned a new piece of paper over, reaching for the paints again, waiting.He’d made the shape of a cluster of stars before Felix spoke again. “I wanted a few happier memories to go with the old ones.”Hyunjin remembered the weight of so much observation, the weight of Felix, Yongbok, newly his, and so willing to include Hyunjin in the things children did, which Hyunjin had no idea how to engage with except to do what he’d been told to do. Putting his body in the way of other children, ending the roughhousing whenever it began spontaneously, reminded at every turn that he’d been made for a purpose and this was it, a small, freckled boy with an enormous smile. Nobody had ever smiled at Hyunjin before, not like that. Expressions of satisfaction with his conduct, for what little he remembered now of the time before, but not with genuine delight in him, a brilliant new friend. “How much did you understand when I was assigned to you?”“Just that my parents thought I was too young. My grandfather disagreed.”“I loved you right away.” Hyunjin kept painting, wanting to listen instead of look. “I thought if I was made to protect you then you must deserve to be protected,” he said. “You never proved me wrong.”Felix sighed, deep and heavy. “So those are good memories for you?”“Not always,” Hyunjin admitted, trying to shape the way he wanted to say it. “But you were there. I’d never touched sand before. Nobody had ever smiled at me like you did. So not always bad, either.”“Who taught you to swim?”“You did. I watched you.” He put the paint away, weighed the paper with a stone and set it aside to dry, then leaned over and kissed him. It felt like a deep breath after a long dive when Felix kissed him back.Hyunjin pushed him over onto the blanket. Felix went, clutching at his shoulders.For such a long time they hadn’t had to speak to each other to be understood. Not the way Yunho and Changmin had made themselves, but something specific to the two of them, Felix and Hyunjin, who knew each other nearly inside out. Felix put a hand on the back of Hyunjin’s neck and Hyunjin kissed him again, wordless, letting Felix set the pace.He’d filled out and hardened in the time they’d been in space, just like Hyunjin had, but his body had such a familiar density that it felt strange to think they hadn’t done this before, just them, just two.Felix sighed, long and slow, and relaxed into his arms. “I thought it might be different,” Felix murmured, close against his lips. “Just you. Just us.”Hyunjin buried his face in Felix’s neck, inhaling. He smelled like the terrible sunblock Chan had smeared him in, washed off for the night but lingering, just a trace. The rest of him was just Yongbok, the first person Hyunjin had ever loved. Not the last, or the only, but the first. Yongbok and Chan, who had touched him recently, too. “Did you want it to be?”Felix stroked a fingertip down Hyunjin’s bare back, soft and lingering. “I never let myself want you,” Felix said. “You know that.”“It’s fine if you don’t want me now.”Felix shifted against him in answer, and Hyunjin could nearly feel him smiling. “I don’t think that’s it.”Gently, very, very gently, Hyunjin bit him, right on the join of his neck and his shoulder, where the freckles had gone dark from the sun and the sunscreen left a lingering chemical taste. Felix hissed, pleased surprise, not pain. Hyunjin only had him in his teeth, skin soft against his tongue. His, in a way that felt inexplicable.He let go, Felix’s hand still warm on his back, and kissed him at the base of his throat, where his voice lived, the familiar low thrum of it, even when it was Hyunjin who spoke. “I can smell Chan on you.”Felix drew a sharp breath, as though that was the thing which aroused him, the tangle of them all. Hyunjin couldn’t lie and pretend it wasn’t something which had its teeth in him too, his breath coming in, quick and sharp. He still couldn’t take for granted the way his body tightened over it, the fierce heat which built with it, until he wanted to touch every part of him.Felix wriggled out of his shirt only a few seconds before Hyunjin kicked off his shorts. He pulled Felix’s down and buried his face in the hard just of his hip, nipping across the bone, reveling in Felix’s voice, in the curl of his nails across Hyunjin’s scalp where there was so little to grab, asking him for nothing.Hyunjin had spent such a long time hungry, a desire that had no name or possibility of satisfaction living in a place he had also never allowed himself to look.Even now, Felix wouldn’t take what Hyunjin was offering him unless it was Hyunjin who handed it to him, giving himself over with both hands. “Tell me you want me,” Hyunjin said, into his skin. Into the soft dip under his bone where he’d touched Chan only a few days ago, scaring him witless. “Say it.”Felix’s palm spread over the back of his head. “Hyunjin,” he said, shakily, the smell of him so strong, so specific, Hyunjin’s cheek and nose pressed against the place it was strongest, “if you don’t blow me in the next thirty seconds I’ll explode.”Close. So close, and to resist was an agony. “Yongbok,” he said, pressing his thighs apart, feeling the tremble of muscle, jumping under his fingers. “Say it.”“I want you,” Felix breathed, so low and quiet even Hyunjin had to work to hear it, but it was enough.For now, it was enough. Hyunjin swallowed him slowly, drawing it out. Making Felix shake with it, with the effort he was making not to take too much.Hyunjin pulled off him, furiously aroused by the noise it made, wet and obscene, not remotely forbidden. Felix’s protest was inarticulate, a whine more than anything else. Hyunjin reached up and grabbed his chin, wanting to be looked at. Warm skin, the rasp of a day’s beard, faint and present under the pad of his thumb.After an eternity, Felix looked at him. Big eyes, wet eyelashes.“Now what?” Hyunjin asked, waiting.He’d spent long enough ignoring himself, even if now it was nearly unbearable.“Whatever you want,” Felix whispered.Hyunjin shook his head. “You’ve thought about it. Tell me.”This time it was for him. Not for the thing about Chan he’d figured out too quickly, called to it by something he’d also wanted.Felix opened his mouth, but only to nip at Hyunjin’s thumb, letting out a long, warm breath before he tugged Hyunjin up by the wrist, shockingly dense and strong despite all the time they’d spent in lower gravity. He’d worked on it, determined to maintain what their earlier lives had given them, the solidity of a planetary body. He wrapped his legs around Hyunjin’s waist, pulling them together, so he could kiss him. So Felix could speak into his ear. “If you’re inside me I don’t care what else you do.”Hyunjin could feel him shaking, echoed in the way the heat flushed through his own chest at the thought of it. The perfect edge of the forbidden still lingering between them. “Now?”Felix smirked at him. “Yeah, now’s good.”Hyunjin really could smell Chan on him, not faintly.When Hyunjin pulled Felix’s leg up, high enough to lean on, knee curled into his chest, it was so much easier than it should have been to slip into him, like Felix had known, or hoped. Like he’d been waiting. Hyunjin let out a huge, too-held breath, lost in it, in the heat of it and the way Felix grinned up at him, in the faintest rasp of sand against his shins.Hyunjin couldn’t hold off the way it flooded him, the terrible relief of it, the way Felix whispered perfect into the darkness between them, the way Hyunjin could see him so much better than Felix knew, every flicker of pleasure on his face, reflecting Hyunjin’s own when he finally lost himself to it.He had always felt like home and it wasn’t different. Only newer.-Chan found them a few hours later. Hyunjin had gone to sleep with his head on Felix’s chest, Felix’s fingers gently tracing over the newly-shaved side of his scalp, just behind his ear.It was the most relaxed he’d felt in a long time, and it surprised him to notice it, as though it were something with distinct boundaries, a sensation in itself.He heard Chan walk up, tuned to his footsteps.“Aren’t you sandy?” Chan whispered, sitting close.Hyunjin reached up and took his hand, silently tugging him down. Felix stirred but didn’t wake up, and Hyunjin waited for him to settle before he put his hand over Chan’s throat, stroking the contours of it, the faint roughness where he shaved and the movement of it when he swallowed. Hyunjin loved the way he always did, like he was preparing himself for whatever Hyunjin wanted to do, even if it was just to touch him. “How long are we staying?”“We’ve got a pickup in three days, so Jisung was going to get us on their supply run. Another night, maybe. He’ll hail us.”“Okay.” Hyunjin could see the gradual lightening of the horizon, out to sea.They’d have to make their last day count, but the thought didn’t feel urgent. The days here were long, liquidly hot, a sticky embrace in themselves. He was still languid with it when Felix woke up and groaned, just like he always did when he wasn’t quite sure where he was and was still groggy.Hyunjin slid off him, landing between Felix and Chan, who had stayed to watch the dawn. “What time is it?” Felix rumbled, his morning voice always so deep.“I don’t know,” Hyunjin said, delighted not to. “Time for breakfast.”Before it got too bright and he had to hunt down the sunglasses again.-Hyunjin was floating on his back when Chan swam up to him, smooth and quiet, like he really did belong in the water. There were so many games which had water as the base of them, a history of it as long as there had been humans. Hyunjin hadn’t known the other side of it; its scarcity, the way people fought over it. The stunning luxury of Chan’s ship, given new light.The way only people from planets used it for play or pleasure.Hyunjin splashed him a little, so Chan couldn’t have the satisfaction of thinking he’d snuck up on him. “I don’t want to race you again.”“Thank fuck for that, I’m still sore from kicking your ass.”Hyunjin fought back the smile, letting his breath move him up and down in the water.“Do you want to stay longer?” Chan asked, floating nearby in his own pair of sunglasses, looking like he’d quite happily float out here forever. “We can.”Hyunjin had a painting he wanted to finish at dusk, and a faint, pleasant heat settling into his face from the sunburn he had only just noticed, which would be gone as soon as he put himself in the shade. Nobody was going to make him go inside if he didn’t want to, even to sleep. “No,” he said. “I’m ready to go back.”“You've never taken time off before, have you? I was thinking about it.”“You don't either.”Chan made a sheepish noise, swimming a little closer. “It's not the same.”“I've done what I wanted to do,” Hyunjin explained. He didn't know how else to put it. Part of it had just been in asking for it, and the way he'd received it only mattered because he'd been heard. “Did Felix tell you?”“Tell me what?”Hyunjin turned it over, moving through the water towards him. “He didn’t ask me if I wanted to leave.”Chan flopped like he hadn’t expected Hyunjin to approach him. Even now, even knowing him so well, better than Hyunjin had expected anyone but Felix to ever know him, he was still like this. Maybe he always would be, like he was constantly surprised to have Hyunjin’s attention. Hyunjin treaded water next to him, drawing him closer to shore until they could both touch the black sand under their feet, chest deep. Hyunjin took him by the face and kissed him before Chan could squirm away.“What was that for?” Chan asked, wet and breathless.“You didn’t have to let us stay,” Hyunjin said, resting their foreheads together like he did to Felix, the only way he’d had for such a long time to be near him the way Hyunjin had wanted to be near him, their thoughts almost shared but never quite. “Neither of us knew how dangerous it would be for you. All of you.”Chan closed his eyes. “Is it naive to say I didn’t either?”“I don’t believe you.”Chan went very still, like Hyunjin had touched something he wasn’t meant to.“I think when you told Felix we could stay you knew what you were doing.”“I did ask the others,” Chan said, very quietly, quieter than the birds and the water, but Hyunjin could hear him. “I said it would be hard to hide him. They all agreed.”“They did it for you,” Hyunjin said, still breathing him in, salt-wet and hotter in the sun now that it was beating down on their heads. “You did it for us.”“I did it for Felix,” Chan confessed, but he took Hyunjin’s hand, lacing their fingers together, pressing them to his chest. Hyunjin could hear his heartbeat if he concentrated. “I didn’t know what you wanted.”Hyunjin hadn’t either, but he’d had a lot of time to think about it. A lot of space.He’d had such a brief window into his mind, once and never again since. The two little discs, dormant in Hyunjin’s drawer, easy to use and untouched. They’d made a deal, he and Chan, and Hyunjin intended to stick to it. Learn to talk to him. “Now you do,” he said, and let go.-It got dark very gradually here, long shadows turning blue until the sun had disappeared.Hyunjin had never wondered what made a planet a good candidate for a terraform but it must have been so much to do with its proximity to a star, in such a stable orbit. There were so few of them, comparatively.For this one to be empty felt wrong, somehow, as though they’d violated something by coming here which had nothing to do with its status as a disputed asset and everything to do with the fact that it felt like they had reminded it somehow that it ought to have more life on it.It had been very, very kind to them, and Hyunjin wasn’t used to thinking of planetary bodies as animated like this. Only the planet they’d come from, and all he’d known about it. That Felix’s family had founded the colony which had become its sprawling capital city, covering half the landmass. That the natural reserves and ecological stability they’d enjoyed had been guarded by force. That people who couldn’t find work on it had been offered positions in alternative holdings, a euphemism Hyunjin had known to be a polite lie from as early as Felix had.He remembered being frightened of Felix’s horror at it, not because he was immune to it but because Felix wasn’t.Felix, chosen heir not because of his acumen or his ruthlessness but because he was young, naturally born, beautiful to look at. Selected to be easy to shape, until he wasn’t.He had always been in danger, long before the first time Hyunjin had saved his life.And here this was, empty of human life but for them, sneaking in under the exclusion order only because they were small, not in any way a threat of colonization by possession.He finished his painting and put it aside, wondering if he should go in, if their last night here should be indoors where Felix and Chan preferred to be when it was dark. Hyunjin never precisely forgot they couldn’t see at night, but it did surprise him how long it took for their eyes to adjust, just like he’d started surprising himself with how much more difficult he found it now to deal with glare from screens, or how much harder it was to focus his vision up close when he was tired.Living in artificial light had given him a new appreciation of the blackness of real night.“Shh, he’ll hear you,” Felix rumbled, fruitlessly, crunching through the vegetation with pointless care.“I can,” Hyunjin confirmed, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Were you trying to sneak up on me?”“I told you it wouldn’t work.” Chan sat down next to him, Felix on his other side. They both smelled a little bit like alcohol and sugar, but Felix more so. It was on Chan’s lips but not his breath. He didn’t metabolize it well. Chan handed him a bottle. “Here, we’re celebrating.”Hyunjin twisted the top off and tried it, enjoying the burn of the liquor and the surprisingly tart flavoring, almost fruit but not quite. “Why?”“Well, people don’t celebrate birthdays in space,” Felix said, leaning his head on Hyunjin’s shoulder, “so we did some maths and Chan’s would have been a month ago, maybe. Seemed close enough.” He laughed, very quietly. “And we never have to sit through one of those banquets ever again.”Hyunjin clinked their bottles together, remembering how long they’d been. Felix had a gift for talking to people, for remembering their names and faces and interests, but Hyunjin had been the one who’d seen the strain afterwards, the way Felix had needed to build wariness into himself, when every interaction with an important stranger was a test.“If you owned this planet what would you do with it?”The question came out fully formed, without hesitation.“Make it a refuge,” Felix said after a while, drinking slowly. “Make it invisible, like Yunho and Changmin did.” He finished his drink and set it aside. “I don’t know how they managed it, but it probably wouldn’t work here. It’s too well mapped. Their sector is owned by another company.”“It’s so weird to think you would have owned all of this,” Chan said, on Hyunjin’s other side. “I mean. Technically.”“I wouldn’t have owned anything I could actually touch.”He was still leaning against Hyunjin’s shoulder, his cheek to the bare skin there, warm and soft. Hyunjin wrapped his arm around him, drawing him closer. Touching him. For a long time this had been theirs, no matter what small liaisons Felix had with other people. In a grim, certain way they had all been strategic even if he’d never have wanted them to be. Felix’s body was as much a commodity as the rest of him to a certain kind of speculative eye. Powerful associates pushing their sons and daughters for his attention, so few of them genuine. Hyunjin had been spared the complexity of fumbling teenage sex as much as he’d been barred from it in some ways, but he’d always been there to see the way Felix was never quite himself until it was just the two of them again.That had changed, too.Chan knew him very well, and Hyunjin had always been so grateful to him for it. His loyalty, yes, but also the way he had offered Felix a place to grow, just as much as Hyunjin had, and had welcomed it when he did.Hyunjin could never take for granted the gift of real friendship, of knowing people who weren’t Felix, outside of him. Felix had had a whole world in some ways, and only him in others. Being on a planet that was so like the one they’d come from again had brought it all home, back into Hyunjin’s body. He did feel different. “How long has this planet been under an exclusion order?”Felix made a low noise, thinking. “Lots of maths tonight. The dispute was started in my grandfather’s father’s generation, I think. Shareholder statements took a few decades, and it’s been in settlement appeals for a few more. A hundred and fifty years, maybe. Two hundred at the outside.”Two human lifespans, for people with every health need taken care of without thought or challenge. Generations for everyone else. “And when it’s settled?”“It’ll be repopulated I guess.” Felix dragged his fingers through the sand, silicate and soft, likely from seeded supplies but now part of the ecology. “Farmed, most likely. Foraged. Built over when it’s expired, but it’ll take hundreds of years for that to happen. The atmosphere will be very valuable.”Its materials studied and replicated for new synthesis, the way all ecologically viable food sites were. It was efficient, highly regulated, wildly profitable. There was an inevitability to it that felt very heavy all of a sudden. It wasn’t going to become a core world, even if there were birds. It was too far from the center to govern.“I think about stealing stuff like this all the time,” Chan said, with a hint of the steel in him that Hyunjin knew was in there, had seen come to the surface more times than Chan would ever have admitted. “Just claiming it. Taking people somewhere just to live how they want to.”Felix sighed, his breath ghosting out hot against Hyunjin’s skin.Hyunjin finished the cold bottle he’d been handed, concentrating on the taste and texture of it. “We’ll take some air when Jisung comes to get us.”It was as close as they could come right now, but the thought of it was huge anyway. A different way to live, a very different thing to want. Hyunjin had come to love space despite the hostility of it, the huge black void they lived in, something they were always so aware of. It was freedom too, a place with so few borders, but it wasn’t self-sustaining, not like this place was.It didn’t feel right that any one person should claim it.Of all of them, any of them, Felix probably could.He’d have to reveal himself to do it. He’d need more than he had, more people, more power, more attention than he’d ever wanted. Hyunjin hadn’t been lying when he’d said he didn’t think Felix inheriting the company as it was would have changed it.But Felix could have had power he had chosen not to claim, and Chan had always respected that decision better than anyone else Hyunjin had ever met. Long before Hyunjin had known how well Chan understood the value of anonymity as much as the value of information.“It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Felix asked, wry enough that Hyunjin knew he wasn’t serious.“If you ever want to, I’ll come with you.” It was as much of a declaration as Hyunjin was willing to make, but if Felix ever did come back for his power he would never need protection more. “Both of you.” Chan made a strange, strangled noise and Hyunjin finally looked at him, gently shoving the bottle out of the way when he leaned over to kiss him. Chan let him, not pretending at surprise but giving it anyway. Hyunjin’s attention was never an expectation for him, and Hyunjin wanted to look at him so much more for it, to touch him the way he’d learned he enjoyed with such delight. “We couldn’t do it alone,” he said, when Chan had let him bite very gently at his lips, wide-eyed and shaky even if it wouldn’t let him see any better. “Nobody can.”Chan chased him back when Hyunjin pulled away, pushing all three of them down so that they were lying shoulder to shoulder in the sand, listening to the water. “You scare the shit out of me when you say things like that.”“He’s not lying,” Felix murmured, quiet and warm and right. Hyunjin never did, not to him.“I know,” Chan said. “That’s why.”Hyunjin put his head on Chan’s chest, listening to his body, and didn’t say anything else.The sunlight had filled him with all the things Yunho had told him he’d need, but that was only his body. Only the physical, the things which were him and not him, the technology which had grown him and the way it had been delivered into his hands to care for. The rest of it was this, a quiet confluence of breath as they lay together, thinking about it. To disappear, or not.What to sacrifice, knowing all that they had.Selfishly, Hyunjin could only be glad to know it would be a choice they’d have to make together.Bigger than any one of them. Equally shared.“Now can we please go inside?” Chan asked, slightly plaintive. “I have sand in… everywhere.”Hyunjin felt Felix laugh before he heard it, their bodies still pressed together. There because Hyunjin wanted him to be, just like Hyunjin wanted to go back to space, to the ship, to the way they all fit so well inside it, too.With a last burst of terrible mischief, Hyunjin rolled Chan over, picked him up, and walked him straight into the water despite his protests, letting it soak them both until Chan couldn’t claim it hadn’t washed out the sand he was complaining about.Felix joined in when Chan had spat an entire mouthful at Hyunjin’s face, outraged, and Hyunjin could only think that if it was their last chance for a long time to let it hold them like this, he really didn’t mind.“Demon,” Chan muttered, shaking his hair out. “What was that for?”“Fun,” Hyunjin said.He would never take it for granted.-